Meet Gonkoken nanoi, a new hadrosauroid from the Late Cretaceous of Chile

[VD231991]

A new paper is out regarding the first hadrosauroid from the Late Cretaceous of Chile:

Alarcón-Muñoz, J., Vargas, A.O., Püschel, H.P., Soto-Acuña, S., Manríquez, L., Leppe, M., Kaluza, J., Milla, V., Gutstein, C.S., Palma-Liberona, J., Stinnesbeck, W., Frey, E., Pino, J.P., Bajor, D., and Núñez, E., 2023. Relict duck-billed dinosaurs survived into the last age of the dinosaurs in subantarctic Chile. Science Advances 9 (24). doi:10.1126/sciadv.adg2456.

Although Gonkoken is the first hadrosauroid to be described from Chile, it happens to be outside Hadrosauridae yet more derived than Eotrachodon, indicating that a handful of Late Cretaceous non-hadrosaurid hadrosauroids immigrated to South America from North America and that non-hadrosaurid hadrosauroids co-existed with saurolophine hadrosaurids. The paper by Gonkoken also happens to coin the name Austrokritosauria for a clade formed by Kritosaurus-like kritosaurins from South America, including Bonapartesaurus, Huallasaurus, Kelumapusaura, and Secernosaurus.

[Dynomikegojira]

Alas another surprise from South America I would've thought this would be related to the European hadrosauroids be I was wrong.

[Faelrin]

Very good find. Fragmentary, but not scrappy at least. Skeletal showing the remains from the paper:

[Halichoeres]

Definitely interesting from a biogeography perspective, thanks for posting!

[Faelrin]

Just came across this really nice video of this animal. Figured I should share here too:

Another article here (which featured this clip):

https://www.livescience.com/animals/dinosaurs/never-before-seen-missing-link-dinosaur-walks-drinks-and-socializes-in-stunning-new-animation

And the paper itself:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg2456