New fossils from Patagonia may rewrite the history of duck-billed dinosaurs

The finding may mean that some duck-billed dinos were not quite as widespread as thought

An illustration of a Gonkoken nanoi dinosaur walking on the shore of a lake

Gonkoken nanoi, illustrated here, lived 72 million years ago in what is now subantarctic Chile. The creature belonged to a lineage of duck-billed dinosaurs that had since gone extinct elsewhere in the world.

Mauricio Álvarez Abel

Fossils from the southern tip of Chile are adding a wrinkle to researchers’ understanding of how duck-billed dinosaurs conquered the Cretaceous world.