Olorotitan Model now in Stock (CollectA Dinosaurs)

The CollectA Olorotitan model is available from Everything Dinosaur.

The new model of a duck-billed dinosaur from Asia, a lambeosaurine called Olorotitan is now in stock at Everything Dinosaur.  This model, part of the CollectA “Prehistoric Life – Age of Dinosaurs” series is based on fossils of a large duck-billed dinosaur excavated from a site close to the Amur river in the far east of Russia.

The CollectA Olorotitan Dinosaur Model

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

To view the Prehistoric Life model range: CollectA Prehistoric Life Models.

Fossil Skeleton

A nearly complete fossil skeleton was excavated, making this discovery the most complete fossilised member of the Lambeosaurinae found outside North America.  Olorotitan was a large duck-billed dinosaur, based on the one major find to date its size has been estimated at approximately 12 metres long.  The Tsagayan Formation, the stratigraphic layer of rock within which the specimen was discovered, dates from the very end of the Age of Reptiles.  This particular dinosaur lived at the end of the Cretaceous (Maastrichtian faunal stage), 67-66 million years ago.  It shared the environment with a number of other lambeosaurine genera, as well as nodosaurids (a type of armoured dinosaur) and meat-eating theropods.

Interestingly, Maastrichtian aged strata in North America contains relatively few lambeosaurine hadrosaur remains, the flat-headed dinosaurs such as Edmontosaurus seem to have dominated the megafauna in this part of the world, whilst in Asia the lambeosaurine hadrosaurs seem to have been much more common,  surviving up to the very end of the Mesozoic.  The differences in the fauna may be due to climate or environmental factors.

CollectA Olorotitan Model

The name Olorotitan means “gigantic swan”, this particular hadrosaur had 18 cervical vertebrae, more than any other known duck-billed dinosaur.  Its long neck reminded the scientists of the graceful neck of a swan and that is how this particular duck-billed dinosaur got its name.

A bit like the story of the ugly duckling growing up to be a swan, except in this case it is a 12 metre, Late Cretaceous hadrosaur with the swan-like neck connection.

An Olorotitan Scale Drawing

An Olorotitan scale drawing.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur