Talk:Edmontosaurus/Archive 1

Proposal to resurrect Anatosaurus
Anatosaurus may one day be resurrected as a distinct genus to include Edmontosaurus annectens and E. saskatchewanensis. Source [1] supports my suggestion that Anatosaurus deserves to be a distinct genus from Edmontosaurus in its own right, since Anatotian is more related to annectens and saskatchewanensis than to E. regalis. Once this idea is accepted, Anatosaurus will be put n a separate page. This will restrict Edmontosaurus to the type species, E. regalis Lambe, 1917.

Anatosaurus Lull & Wright, 1942

Type Species: A annectens (Marsh, 1892) (originally Claosaurus)

Other Species: A. saskatchewanensis (Sternberg, 1926) (originally Thespesius)

Sources:

[1] http://dml.cmnh.org/2004Oct/msg00235.html
 * If this idea is acepted, and if it's supported by future phylogenetic studies. It souds a whole lot like Bakker's argument for ressurrecting Brontosaurus, actually, so we'll see if it ever gains acceptance or is even published on. Dinoguy2 05:00, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Anatosaurus could use its own page anyway, since it was a popular dinosaur in its time, and had five species referred to it from a variety of taxa and that went to a couple of different pages (it would be like the Brontosaurus exemption).
 * Of course, one does not need a new genus for those species that are closer to Anatotitan if one considers A. copei to just be a large species of Edmontosaurus... J. Spencer 14:11, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I wasn't happy with the old page on Anatosaurus, so I threw this one together: User:J. Spencer/Anatosaurus. There are no refs yet, but what do you think? Too esoteric? J. Spencer 15:43, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I generally dislike retaining seperate articles for junior synonyms... could this new content be merged into Edmontosaurus? Dinoguy2 15:59, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I suppose, but I'll need to add refs first. J. Spencer 16:44, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Size and speed
Lately, we've been going over the size and speed of this animal, and I think it would be better to discuss them here instead of reverting each other. So, let's take the discussion here, howzaboutit?


 * Size: I have no problems with a 13m edmontosaur, but at this point I'd prefer Bamboozlingbert to make the citation, because I want the editor to learn how to do it.


 * Speed, agility, and Tyrannosaurus: This is getting into original research territory, and unless it's cited, it should stay out.

Comments? J. Spencer 14:51, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed on both points. It should only be included with cites if the speed papers in question address E. specifically. Dinoguy2 00:00, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I see no problem with helping out an editor who doesn't know how to make citations, but we can't continually add the citations for him, or fix it so there isn't a conflict between his new number and the source cited. There are already citations for the size of various carnivorous dinosaurs, and the daily reverting is getting to be a disturbance. Firsfron of Ronchester  00:10, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Discussion of Hell Creek find?
I was hoping to see material related to the Tyler Lyson find in Hell Creek, North Dakota, 1999. Are there any plans to expand the article to discuss the work being done by the University of Machester? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.8.49 (talk) 18:59, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes (assuming it's Edmontosaurus, which is a good assumption since Edmontosaurus is almost the only game in town, Hell Creek-wise); it would be nice to have more than press releases, of course. Some coverage has been added to Hadrosaurid, so far. J. Spencer (talk) 19:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The press release and upcoming TV show are all we have to go on, as the specimen is still in prep. I'm guessing it won't be published until at least next year. They don't know what species it is because last I heard, they hadn't found whether or not the head is present in the big chunk of rock being worked on, and the head is pretty important for classifying hadrosaurs. Dinoguy2 (talk) 22:01, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Or longer... Anyway, I bet it'll be E. annectens; either that, or the long-awaited find that returns Thespesius to validity (joke). J. Spencer (talk) 23:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thespesius is such a great name I wouldn't mind some Bakkerian taxonomic wrangling to bring it back ;) Dinoguy2 (talk) 02:35, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone who replied, and to J. Spencer who pointed me to the Hadrosaurid page. I also agree that Thespesius is one fantastic name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.143.199.21 (talk) 21:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Edmontosaurus mastication
A three-dimensional animation model of Edmontosaurus (Hadrosauridae) for testing chewing hypotheses. Unfortunately, they don't give you the animation to play with on your own. J. Spencer (talk) 05:26, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The movies are fun to watch, though. J. Spencer (talk) 20:20, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Edmontosaurus integument
For the aesthetically inclined among us, there is a pdf available from the AMNH of Osborn's 1912 description of the "Trachodon mummy" with numerous excellent figures of skin impressions. This is public-domain age, and I'd like to cherry-pick a few. What are the best? The document can be had here, although you may want to start here, because it is a 76000 kb file. It also includes an article on Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus skulls with some vintage figures, but who cares about them? J. Spencer (talk) 18:38, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Wow, those images are in insanely high resolution! Many of those images are on Commons already, though in much smaller versions, so I'll update them to the larger versions. Are there more of those public domain PDFs? FunkMonk (talk) 00:27, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * By the way, should the Trachodon mummy article not be merged into this one as a section? FunkMonk (talk) 01:09, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * On public-domain pdfs: there are a number of old dinosaur/paleo articles at the AMNH, although it helps to be familiar with abandoned names in some cases (I searched on "Trachodon" for this article).
 * On Trachodon mummy: it's not a bad idea, although I think that article should be repurposed as "Dinosaur mummies" in general, which would also cover the other Sternberg mummy (the Senckenberg edmontosaur), the lost "Mount Temple" hadrosaur, "Leonardo", "Dakota", etc., as well as some taphonomy. J. Spencer (talk) 02:11, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was actually going to add that an article about dinosaur mummies in general would be a good idea too. So well, the merger proposal would apply to the text in the current mummy article then, some of it could maybe be copied to this article, to a sub-section about the mummy. FunkMonk (talk) 02:27, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Anatotitan
Before I dive into this, what about Anatotitan? Horner et al. in The Dinosauria II synonymized it with Edmontosaurus annectens. Since then, there have been only a few papers that touch on hadrosaurines. The 2007 redescription of Hadrosaurus identifies Anatotitan with Edmontosaurus, although does not identify species. Greg Paul's 2008 iguanodont revision mentions the combination Edmontosaurus (Anatotitan) annectens. The description of Gryposaurus monumentensis does not use the word Anatotitan anywhere. Aside from articles in Horns and Beaks (which was not published in 2007, as I had my copy in Oct. 2006, and which had been held up for a long time), and the description of Wulagasaurus and Sahaliyana, Anatotitan seems to have disappeared. Shall we sink it here, and if so, what species should it be known under? J. Spencer (talk) 02:38, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that last bit is the problem. While it's getting towards consensus to sink it, it doesn't look like there's consensus as to how. I think this will wait until someone studies the two skulls in detail to confirm/refute the idea that the "duck bills" are a result of distortion. For now I'd mention that some authors synonymize it, and in different ways, with a link to the article until one or two more conclusive opinions come along to settle it (like we did with Seismosaurus). Dinoguy2 (talk) 04:09, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, sounds like a good plan. Hopefully someone's got something in the works, as the species-level taxonomy of Edmontosaurus is unsatisfactory as far as I'm concerned.  The only reason anyone advances for a distinct E. saskatchewanensis is that it's smaller, and E. annectens and E. regalis are differentiated on the basis that E. regalis has a proportionally taller, shorter, more robust skull. J. Spencer (talk) 14:45, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * A really thorough morphometric study of edmontosaurs skulls is out today: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025186 I've already incorporated some of this info into the article. This seems to solidify the emerging consensus on Anatotitan as a synonym of E. annectens. Sink or float? MMartyniuk (talk) 14:23, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I say it's a sink. The fun part will be when some bright researcher realizes "hey, now it's really easy to resurrect Anatosaurus!" (taxonomically, not literally, unfortunately) J. Spencer (talk) 05:03, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Some have, though not yet in a technical paper. Albertonykus (talk) 03:04, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If we'd like to merge the two, I'd like to be the one to do it, given my experience with the two articles. J. Spencer (talk) 02:20, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * My only concern here is, if we merge these articles, it will be difficult to de-merge them if consensus starts to favor use of Anatosaurus again for the Lancian species. As noted Tom Holtz has already started doing this. Maybe a different interim solution would be to buck normal convention and have a separate page titled Edmontosaurus annectens? This case might also illustrate that it might be a good idea to change the Wikiproject convention when it comes to multispecific taxa, if there is enough to write about, and employ both a genus page (overview) and species pages (data specific to either one) for any multispecific genus? It's not like there are a lot of them among dinosaurs. If Edmontosaurus had been split among several pages based on species to begin with, it would be somewhat easier to disentangle them all. MMartyniuk (talk) 13:52, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I set up a page for Edmontosaurus annectens for now. J., do you want to take a crack at merging any appropriate annectens-specific material and cleaning up the classification section? MMartyniuk (talk) 15:09, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I would like to do that, when I get some time... J. Spencer (talk) 04:10, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Cool, I started merging some sections but it could really use some attention from someone involved in writing the originals :) MMartyniuk (talk) 13:58, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Cheeky pedantry
There comes a point where exactitude becomes pedantry. :-)

I changed "gathered plant material was held in the jaws by a cheek-like organ" to "gathered plant material was held in the jaws by cheeks".

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition gives definitions for "cheek": 1. The fleshy part of either side of the face below the eye and between the nose and ear. 2. Something resembling the cheek in shape or position. http://www.bartleby.com/61/56/C0265600.html

Edmontosaurus had (we think) "cheeks" according to the second definition here. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 23:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Just to play devil's advocate, is there any evidence that it had cheeks, or any published sources speculating such? See the recent hoopla over at Deinonychus for a parallel situation regarding feathers... Dinoguy2 (talk) 00:39, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Speculated since 1942 (L&W p. 98, 100), expanded to all ornithischians by Romer (1956), detailed article by Galton (1973), Sereno's Genasauria (1986) meaning "cheek lizards", mentioned in Weishampel and Horner in the first Dinosauria ('92 ed., p. 543) and Horner et al. in the second (p. 447, albeit the same wording as before), Fastovsky and Smith (Dinosauria II) using the old "inset tooth row" to suggest cheeks for ornithischians, etc.
 * The "con" side is Papp and Witmer 1998, which comes down to "birds and crocs don't have them". This doesn't explain what you would do with several hundred grinding teeth (regardless of the exact motion used to grind them) if you didn't have some way of keeping the stuff you were grinding in contact with the grinders, but it is true that the Extant phylogenetic bracket doesn't have them.  The Extant phylogenetic bracket also couldn't have predicted hadrosaur teeth.  Czerkas (1999) had some interesting thoughts about stegosaurs as well, but stegosaurs weren't set up much like hadrosaur either.
 * However, this is why I had described them as "cheek-like organs", because they wouldn't be homologous with mammal cheeks, and nobody knows what exactly hadrosaur buccal organs would be like. Simple skin sheets?  Heavily muscled like a mammal's?  Rich corythosaurian leather? J. Spencer (talk) 03:25, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Feedback
OK, I will jot some notes here - looks pretty good overall, if you have all images and refs sorted, I'd say it was worth a tilt at FAC. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:27, 22 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Edmontosaurus ranged widely in time and space. - makes it sound like a TARDIS..(chuckle) I know what you mean, and not sure how can be rephrased or if it needs to be really. I am tempted to remove it as I don't think it adds anything.


 * Like other hadrosaurids, it was a bulky animal with a long, laterally-flattened tail, and a relatively large head with an expanded, duck-like beak. - this is tricky - I thought it only looked ducklike in older restorations which were bereft of cheeks (?)


 * The skull had no hollow or solid crest, unlike other hadrosaurids. - it isn't all hadrosaurids, but many (?), is it better to just ditch the bolded bit (?)


 * There are lots of teeth in para 2 of  Skull - I am trying to think of how to reduce repetition.


 * The number of vertebrae differs for those specimens where counts are given - "...are known" (?)


 * Is frill the right word for the ridge running down the back? Frill always reminds me of a collar-like structure, like in the Frill-necked lizard...


 * For fossils, if isotope ratios are not altered by fossilization and later change, they can be studied for information about the original factors - this scans a bit oddly and a bit of massaging for flow may be in order.
 * I had a whack at all of these except the "duck-like beak", as it's the end of the beak that's considered duck-like. Actually, Cope was much closer back in the 1880s when he compared Anatotitan copei (then "Diclonius mirabilis" - don't ask) to a spoonbill.  "Frill" was the way Osborn and Lull & Wright always referred to the thing, but I agree it's confusing because frill has come to symbolize horned dinosaurs more than anything. J. Spencer (talk) 02:12, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

E. regalis formations
The Species section lists E. regalis as present in a number of formations spanning the Campanian and Maastrichtian. However, most recent sources I've seen on this such as Campione's conference presentations suggest that E. regalis is present only in the Horseshoe Canyon formation. Recent chatter on the DML supports this, with both Tom Holtz and Greg Paul stating that E. regalis is not present in the Maastrichtian, and implying that E. regalis and E. annectens are chronspecies. I'm deficiant in recent hadrosaur papers, but can anybody clarify this? I'm thinking many of the reported E. regalis in the Hell Creek etc. are misidentification or based on specimens later reclassified as something else. MMartyniuk (talk) 06:54, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The source for the formations roster is the dear old Dinosauria II. I found the assignments kind of silly myself, but on the grounds of "how are they telling species apart in the field, especially if they don't have skulls?"  Going by the fantastic figure in the Dyoplosaurus redescription, E. regalis is indeed only in the Campanian part of the Horseshoe Canyon Fm.  Whether it is anywhere else is unfortunately beyond the scope of the figure.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if E. regalis is limited to that one little slice, and it is of course high time for edmontosaur species to be revised, since the last published occasion was 1942 (there have been a few theses).  Why are people still using E. saskatchewanensis when seemingly the only character ever given is that it's smaller? Does C.M. Sternberg's ghost haunt you if you sink it? J. Spencer (talk) 03:00, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Huh. It is a bad situation, but good to know it's being worked on. Short of using Campione's two abstracts as a source for a fairly major piece of info I guess we should WFTP. Campione does indeed sink E. saskatchewanensis into E. annectens, btw. Interestingly, Greg Paul also suggested that E. annectens and Anatotitan are conspecific, showing the same growth pattern as the Campanian E. regalis, with the added touch of flaring out the bill into a spoon-shape at maturity. This would leave noly one species of hadrosaur in the Maastrichtian... which by rights should be named Thespesius occidentalis ;) MMartyniuk (talk) 03:09, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Fortunately, it's not as bad as, say, Iguanodon. A. copei certainly looks like it could be an annectens morph (I've mentioned it elsewhere, but the Senckenburg skull makes a great transition).  I wonder if Horner et al. (2004) knew more than they could say in a review paper, which is why they had crushing as a justification for synonymy. As for Thespesius, you find a diagnostic character, then we're getting somewhere ;)! J. Spencer (talk) 02:34, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Does it need a diagnostic character? If there's only one hadrosaur species known from good remains in a fairly well-sampled formation, then is there really any mystery which species those non-diagnostic vertebrae came from? If a second hadrosaur genus is every described from the upper Maastrichtian of NA, then Thespesius would become non-diagnostic. It would be like finding a hominine molar in recent deposits of Central Park. Gee, guess we'll never know which hominine species this came from... ;) As I mentioned on my lbog at one point, imploding the Maastrichtian hadrosaurs this way will result in the same thing as merging Triceratops and Torosaurus--Agathaumas now has a valid claim again, barring ICZN action.MMartyniuk (talk) 04:48, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Trachodon atavus; Agathaumas milo
There is no such taxon as Trachodon atavus Cope, 1871. I searched Cope's 1871 work on Google Books (http://books.google.com/books?id=hP0CAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false) and there is no mention of Trachodon. Therefore, Trachodon atavus is a typographical error made by Weishampel and Horner (1990) and Horner et. al. (2004). Likewise, Agathaumas milo is based on a now-missing sacral centrum and a tibia fragment, both of which cannot be identified beyond Dinosauria and cannot be considered a synonym of Edmontosaurus regalis.68.4.61.237 (talk) 01:03, 25 September 2010 (UTC)Vahe Demirjian
 * Cope published several papers in 1871, did you check them all? MMartyniuk (talk) 01:49, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It's true that Cope published several papers in 1871 (see http://www.dinohunter.info/html/1870/1871.htm), but his paper "Supplement to the synopsis of the extinct Batrachia and Reptilia of North America" doesn't mention      Trachodon, so it's clear that Trachodon atavus is a typographical error for Hadrosaurus cavatus. 68.4.61.168 (talk) 03:42, 4 March 2012 (UTC)Vahe Demirjian
 * Unfortunately we would need confirmation of this published before incorporating it in the article. MMartyniuk (talk) 19:34, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Error in size chart?
I'm pretty sure there's an error here, the article text describes Edmontosaurus annectens as the largest known species of Edmontosaurus, also shows it as being the larger species. But the scale chart used on this article shows E. regalis as being larger than E. annectens. 50.195.51.9 (talk) 14:22, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, this is embarrassing. As the author of that chart, I can tell you I apparently mixed up the labels. MMartyniuk (talk) 20:25, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Could it possibly be fixed? 50.138.213.207 (talk) 21:52, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok, I take that back. Looking at my originals I based these on the sizes given in this very article. However, this is based on the largest A. annectens specimen pre-synonymy with A. copei. So I can simply scale it up to "Anatotitan" size or leave it as-is and mention this in the caption. MMartyniuk (talk) 22:13, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * If A. copei is synonymous with A. annectens, then the largest size of the animal should be the one in the graph, at least if you ask me. 50.138.213.207 (talk) 23:43, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Unclear sentence
What does the following mean? "The scalation of the rest of the leg is not presently known, although impressions on a specimen of the crested hadrosaurid Lambeosaurus suggest that the thighs were under the skin of the body, like modern birds." FunkMonk (talk) 14:13, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing it means the leg anatomy was fully encased in the skin/body wall as in all modern parasaggital-walking vertebrates, rather than 'separate' like the forelimbs (i.e. there would not have been a 'leg pit' and the legs would seem to emerge from the belly rather than the hip as often depicted in paleoart, particularly art influenced by GSP. MMartyniuk (talk) 17:15, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Do you know of any restorations that show this properly? Seems this is another case of something we actually know, but isn't incorporated into paleoart anyway. I still don't get why hadrosaurs are always depicted with claws on their hands either... Or too many claws in general in all dinosaurs, basically. Same with the huge eye thing, which seems to be particularly widespread. FunkMonk (talk) 17:30, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * John Conway's Triceratops may be a good example. Albertonykus (talk) 03:13, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Cool, and now I think of it, Frederik Spindler does it a lot, on almost all dinosaurs: FunkMonk (talk) 06:50, 8 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is especially well done and visible in Spindler's ornithischian pencil drawings. I wonder if, given a reasonable amount of fat and connective tissue below the skin, the upper leg anatomy would be that visible at all in many species. Images of featherless chickens with prominent thighs might not be the best example since those muscles are abnormally huge thanks to selective breeding. MMartyniuk (talk) 17:16, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Since AW isn't around any more, I took the liberty to modify his restorations, so they reflect the article. I also added dewlaps (per Dinoguy's size comparison, I know it's known from "Leonardo" at least) and removed the hand claws. Are they alright? FunkMonk (talk) 07:23, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Crest
With new evidence showing it had a fleshy crest, at least i E. regalis, shouldn't this be added to the text. Also, could A. copei be a separate specie of Edmontosaurus without being it's own genus? It's not something i see mentioned often, usually it's one of the two extremes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.176.114.76 (talk) 14:46, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Probably not, consensus right now seems to be that copei and annectens are the same species. Whether or not that species should be kept in Edmontosaurus or classified in the separate genus Anatosaurus is open to debate. MMartyniuk (talk)


 * By the way, I added a crest and remove neck frill on the restoration, any thoughts? Also, anyone know why it is not shown with the supposed dewlap in the paper?FunkMonk (talk) 22:19, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The dewlap is still a rumor at this point, and rumored for E. annectens. In fact, most of what we know about the soft tissue of Edmontosaurus comes from annectens rather than regalis (the dorsal ridge etc.), and based on this new find the soft tissue might differ a lot between the two. MMartyniuk (talk) 13:22, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * One thing, on the crest, most sources only had a life restoration; the same one with the really small crest. One article however, the Everything Dinosaurs one, showed a picture of the fossil with the crest outlined, and it was about the size of a Corythosaurus crest. I know it's not the most trustworthy source, but as this was the fossil, not at life restoration, I thought it might be worth bringing up.142.176.114.76 (talk) 22:28, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The crest is only partially preserved, so any restoration of its extend is just speculation. FunkMonk (talk) 22:35, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Here is the picture I was talking about: http://blog.everythingdinosaur.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Edmonotosaurus_crest_orientation_blog.jpg142.176.114.76 (talk) 15:38, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Trachodon atavus
Can somebody explain where exactly in Cope's 1871 publication Trachodon atavus is mentioned? There is a whole section on Hadrosaurus cavatus (pp. 50-52), but I don't find neither genus name Trachodon nor species name atavus anywhere. Looks like we need to get this record straight. --Deinocheirus (talk) 01:38, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Upd. Oh, I see this issue is already discussed on this page. I guess we cannot change Trachodon atavus to Hadrosaurus cavatus withor credible sources, but at the very least we should attribute the mention clearly to Horner et al. instead of Cope's article itself. --Deinocheirus (talk) 01:53, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Species-level articles
As suggested elsewhere, I set up species-level articles for both included Edmontosaurus species as a trial/experiment for doing so with other non-monotypic genera. The suggestion would be to keep this article's info to Edmontosaurus in general (i.e. any biology and classification stuff that would apply broadly to both species), and move more specific information that pertains only to one or the other species to those pages. Given the wealth of info we currently have on these dinosaurs, there should be plenty of good info to go around, and I've already tried to prune anything genus-level from the species articles. However, I don't want to jeopardize FA status by removing species-specific stuff from here without discussion first. Dinoguy2 (talk) 11:26, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
 * As a start/first example, much of the classification history and "convoluted" taxonomy really applies only to E. annectens, since the type specimens of E. regalis have never been reclassified, while the type specimens of annectens are the ones that have bounced around 8 or so genera. This could easily be removed from here and kept on the annectens page. Additionally, discussions of soft tissue and skin impressions should be kept to annectens, since there are no real regalis mummies save for the new cockscomb specimen. We know from the closely related Saurolophus that skin details can differ significantly between closely related species, so info from the "Trachodon mummy" and Leonardo can't necessarily be applied to the genus as a whole. Dinoguy2 (talk) 11:28, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
 * As a start, at least everything specific to annectens should be copied to here. Would have to be done in case of a split anyway. As for cutting stuff completely from Edmontosaurus, would it perhaps be an option to make an E. regalis article with only info about that species (as a placeholder/template of sorts), and then copy that back into Edmontosaurus once/if the genera are split? FunkMonk (talk) 13:12, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see you're already doing that, hehe... FunkMonk (talk) 13:19, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I think I'll make species level categories for Edmontosaurus on Commons, the genus cat is very crowded, and it is hard to find which is which there... Perhaps the same should be done with Triceratops species cats. FunkMonk (talk) 14:50, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Dating query
"A 2007 study by Terry Gates and Scott Sampson found broadly similar results, in that Edmontosaurus remained close to Saurolophus and Prosaurolophus and distant from Gryposaurus, Brachylophosaurus, and Maiasaura.[28] However, the most recent review of Hadrosauridae, by Jack Horner and colleagues (2004), came to a noticeably different result: Edmontosaurus was nested between Gryposaurus and the "brachylophosaurs", and distant from Saurolophus." This sounds a bit odd. A 2007 study was contradicted by a more recent 2004 study? Dudley Miles (talk) 09:44, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Becky's giant and X-rex
Should there be a mention of these specimens? their extraordinary size is mentioned in Horner et al. (2011) and there's a conference abstract Horner and Woodward (2011), giving more concise estimates of their size and mentioning the results of histological analyses of the "classic adult" 8-9m specimens of E. annectens, revealing they are still in the active fast growth phase while the new giants have fully mature bones (EFS is implied). We already have Campione and Evans (2011) basically saying that even "large" E. annectens are subadults, this reinforces that conclusion. Mike.BRZ (talk) 07:41, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

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External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Edmontosaurus. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://www.nmnaturalhistory.org/science/bulletins/35/sci_bulletin35_2.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110719233932/http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=467 to http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=467
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080927073559/http://www.palaeos.com/Vertebrates/Units/320Ornithischia/320.750.html to http://www.palaeos.com/Vertebrates/Units/320Ornithischia/320.750.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 13:19, 17 September 2017 (UTC)