Duck-billed dinosaurs, also called Hadrosaurs , were common during the Cretaceous period in Europe, North America, and Asia. Often called the “cows of the Cretaceous,” they were herbivores who lived close to bodies of water and fed on overland vegetation.
Their duck-bill was an obvious characteristic, but they also boasted distinctive crests, which were almost certainly for social display. There is also some thought that they could use the crests to produce sound, but that’s yet unproven.
Beyond their bills and crests, duck-billed dinosaurs also had sizable bodies and a mouthful of teeth that were constantly falling out. Overall, they were good at surviving and did so in one form or another from around 88 million years to 66 million years ago. Here are four fascinating duckbill dinosaurs.
1. Edmontosaurus annectens
(Credit: Danny Ye/Shutterstock)
Edmontosaurus has been widely studied because paleontologists have a lot of specimens from the species. Not to mention, each animal had around 1,400 teeth that were constantly falling out and growing back in, says Gregory M. Erickson , a vertebrate paleobiology and expert in duck-billed dinosaurs at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.
“They were shedding teeth like crazy, so we constantly find them,” he says.
This mega-vegetarian lived at the end of the Cretaceous, on the tail end of the Age of Dinosaurs, from around 68 million years to 66 million years ago, until a giant asteroid barreled into Earth, and dinosaurs died out. They have been found in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and even Alberta, Canada.
Edmontosaurus was a social animal that lived in herds, which researchers know because specimens are often found together in groups, having died out around the same time in droughts and other weather disasters. But it’s less likely, by the size of the brain cavity, that it was particularly intelligent. It was as smart as it needed to be, says Erickson.
Read More: The Daunting Task of Measuring Dinosaur Intelligence
2. Tsintaosaurus
(Credit: kamomeen/Shutterstock)
There’s been much debate around Tsintaosaurus and whether it actually looked like a unicorn with a spike protruding from its nasal cavity. In 2013, researchers found that the spike was more likely a domed crest. Rather than pointing forward like a unicorn horn, it was more likely a spiky nasal bone that was connected just above the eye socket and angled backward instead of forward.
Additionally, Tsintaosaurus , like other Hadrosaurs, walked on all fours most of the time but could also walk on its hind legs in what Erickson calls “popping into two-wheel drive” when it needed to reach into trees for leaves and such. With their extensive teeth, they could pretty much pulverize any sort of greens that they came across.
Read More: How Scientists Reconstruct What Dinosaurs Looked Like
3. Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis
This original painting by James Havens of Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis, the new species of duck-billed dinosaur described in research published today in the international journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, illustrates a scene from ancient Alaska during the Cretaceous Period. (Credit: James Havens)
Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis is a new species of Hadrosaur that Erickson and his team recently described in the Arctic. It lived in darkness for months at a time during the winter and still grew to be 30 feet long. It was much warmer in the Arctic than it is today, and at the time, a polar forest would have also existed.
Similar to Edmontosaurus , it was a non-crested Hadrosaur. Judging by its incubation period, the species would not have had time to hatch babies and then migrate south for the winter. There’s also a theory that Ugrunaaluk ate insects and wood on the insides of rotting logs up north to survive, though this hasn’t been proven.
Read More: The Time of Giants: How Did Dinosaurs Get So Big?
4. Coahuilasaurus lipani
(Credit: C. Díaz Frías, 2023)
Life reconstruction of Coahuilasaurus lipani,
This newly discovered Hadrosaur was known for its giant nose. Unearthed in Mexico and documented in research this year, Coahuilasaurus lipani had strange tooth spikes jutting out from the roof of its mouth. The odd protrusion may have helped the species to eat the tough, spikier plants found in its neck of the woods when it flourished 73 million years ago.
Researchers contend that it was about 26 feet long or about the length of two sedans. The species appears to have lived only in Mexico and had a smaller range, which is important because we previously thought that larger animals like Hadrosaurs tended to also have larger ranges to fulfill their dietary needs.
Read More: A Complete Dinosaur Timeline to Extinction: How Long Did They Roam Earth?
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
University of California Museum of Paleontology. Introduction to the Hadrosaurs
Vertebrate paleobiology and expert in duck-billed dinosaurs at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Gregory M. Erickson
PLOS ONE. The ‘Unicorn’ Dinosaur That Wasn’t: A New Reconstruction of the Crest of Tsintaosaurus and the Early Evolution of the Lambeosaurine Crest and Rostrum
Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. A new Arctic hadrosaurid from the Prince Creek Formation (lower Maastrichtian) of northern Alaska
Diversity. Coahuilasaurus lipani , a New Kritosaurin Hadrosaurid from the Upper Campanian Cerro Del Pueblo Formation, Northern Mexico
Sara Novak is a science journalist based in South Carolina. In addition to writing for Discover, her work appears in Scientific American, Popular Science, New Scientist, Sierra Magazine, Astronomy Magazine, and many more. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. She’s also a candidate for a master’s degree in science writing from Johns Hopkins University, (expected graduation 2023).
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