Describer

Cope, 1892

Time

Cretaceous Late Campanian

Classification

Ornithischia Ornithopoda Hadrosauridae Nomina Dubia

Diet

Herbivore

Fossilsite

Montana, US

Info

Genus - Typespecies

Fragmentary premaxillae , predentery.

\\\"Three-sided broken snout\\\" probably so-named because Cope thought the end of the beak in the fragmentary fossil \\\"was well designed for crushing hard substances\\\".

Claorhynchus trihedrus was described by Cope as a Ceratopian dinosaur. A restudy by Lull and Wright (1942) resulted in a replacement from the Ceratopia into the Hadrosauridae. Later Douglas A. Lawson rediscovered the type material in the basement of the American Museum in New York and after having examined the specimen (AMNH 3978) concluded that it is part of a ceratopsian frill, most likely the lateral edge of the squamosal of Triceratops. Brett-Surman (1988) in his Ph.D. Dissertation, George Washington Univesity stated \\\"it is certainly not a hadrosaurid\\\". Horner, Weishampel & Forster, 2004 mentioned Claorhynchus trihedrus in there Hadrosauridae chapter of \\\"The Dinosauria\\\" as a Nomen Dubium.