2023-06-17 10:45:42
Scientists have discovered the remains of a species of duck-billed dinosaur in Chile for the first time. The “Gonkoken nanoi” are “slender-looking dinosaurs that could stand on both two and four legs to reach vegetation on high and on the ground,” said Alexander Vargas, director of the university’s paleontological network Chile and co-authors of the study published Friday in the journal Science Advances.
The dinosaur could therefore be four meters long and weigh a ton and lived 72 million years ago in the extreme south of what is now Chile’s Patagonia region. The discovery shows that hadrosaur species – duck-billed dinosaur species – also lived in Chilean Patagonia very long ago.
Previously, the distribution of hadrosaurs during the Cretaceous period in North America, Asia, and Europe was known. The scientists were surprised that they also appeared in the southern hemisphere. They now want to find out “how their ancestors got there,” Vargas said.
The remains of the “Gonkoken nanoi” had already been discovered in 2013, followed by years of investigation. It is the fifth dinosaur species discovered in Chile. The name “Gonkoken” means “resembling a duck or a swan” in the language of the region’s original inhabitants.
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