Pleurocoelus adult and baby (PLUR-oh-SEE-luss)
Click to zoom.
Pleurocoelus was a sauropod (SORE-oh-pod) dinosaur, a plant-eater similar to Diplodocus (di-PLOD-oh-kuss) but with a shorter neck and tail. It may be related to the giant Brachiosaurus (BRAK-ee-oh-SORE-us), which lived about 40 million years earlier. It also may be the same as another dinosaur called Astrodon (AST-roh-don), but scientists are not sure.
Each of these bones is the knee-end of a femur, or thigh bone. The large specimen came from an adult, and the smaller came from an animal only a few years old. These fossils show that dinosaurs of all ages lived in this environment. Click to zoom. |
This curved, spoon-shaped Pleurocoelus tooth has a broad, rounded tip adapted for cropping soft, leafy plants. Click to zoom. |
Would you like to know more about:
- How can dinosaurs be identified from bone fragments?
- How do we know that some dinosaurs cared for their young? Watch a video or read about the evidence
- How do paleontologists identify dinosaur teeth? Watch a video.
- Watch a Discovery Channel video animation of Astrodon, which may be the same dinosaur as Pleurocoelus.