Duck-billed weed-whacker dinosaur knocked down trees

Fossils discovered by a volunteer in Utah near the Arizona line in 2002 provided amazing physical details of what has been called the “Arnold Schwarzenegger of dinosaurs” and a “Cretaceous version of a weed-whacker.”

With more than 800 teeth and a compact skull, the duck-billed dinosaur, Gryposaurus monumentensis, was 30 feet long and 10 feet wide. It could eat any plant and its heavy body could knock down trees.

When it lived 75 million years ago, Utah had a climate more like that of modern-day New Orleans. The bones were found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Researchers from the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah worked on the bones for several years and published their findings in the Oct. 3, 2007 Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

You may not have room for a Gryposaurus monumentensis, but a nice skeleton drying her hair fits most anywhere.