Lambeosaurids

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Members of a family of crested, duck-billed dinosaurs from the Late Cretaceous period of North America and Asia
2. Extinct hadrosaurid dinosaurs distinguished by hollow head crests, known from fossils found in North America and Asia
3. Plant-eating dinosaurs with hollow crests on their heads, belonging to the duck-billed group that lived in the late Cretaceous

Etymology: Lambeosaurids are a family of duck-billed dinosaurs, and their name honours a Canadian palaeontologist, Lawrence Lambe, who did much of the early work on the group's fossils. The family name is built from Lambeosaurus, the type genus, which was named in his honour. Lambe's name thus passes down through three layers: a person, then a genus, then a family, with each step adding a standard suffix to the one before. The suffix tells the story of how taxonomists name groups. "-saurus" is the Greek word for "lizard," a conventional ending for dinosaur genera. The "-id" ending marks a family, and the "-idae" form in the scientific name Lambeosauridae is the Latin-style family ending. English then turns that family name into the plural "lambeosaurids," used for the members of the group taken together.