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Name
Willinakaqe (indigenous for "southern duck mimic"); pronounced WILL-in-ah-KAH-kay
Habitat
Woodlands of South America
Historical Period
Late Cretaceous (75-70 million years ago)
Size and Weight
About 30 feet long and 2-3 tons
Diet
Plants
Distinguishing Characteristics
Large size; small head; occasional bipedal posture
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About Willinakaqe
For reasons that remain unclear, duck-billed dinosaurs never dominated the South American landscape the way they did in North America and Eurasia (or at least they haven't been well preserved in the fossil record).
Announced to the world in 2010, Willinakaqe is one of only a handful of identified hadrosaurs from late Cretaceous South America; this 30-foot-long, three-ton plant eater seems to have had a lot in common with its close cousin Secernosaurus. (By the way, both of these plus-sized dinosaurs probably figured on the lunch menu of comparably large South American theropods like Carnotaurus.)