Science News has an article about a newly described dinosaur from Japan.  It’s a duck-billed dinosaur that lived 72 million years ago during the Cretaceous period.  Named Kamuysaurus japonicus, it belongs to a family Hadrosauridae.  All the details can be found in a paper in the journal Scientific Reports.

The specimen was analyzed by paleontologists from Japan, the United States and Mongolia who concluded the dinosaur belonged to the hadrosaurid clade Edmontosaurini and was closely related to other hadrosaurids from the Far East such as Laiyangosaurus from China and Kerberosaurus from Siberia.

“The individual was an adult aged 9 or older, measured 26 feet (8 m) long and weighed 4 or 5.3 tons — depending on whether it was walking on two or four legs respectively — when it was alive,” said lead author Professor Yoshitsugu Kobayashi from the Hokkaido University Museum and colleagues.

The researchers also identified a number of unique features, including a small crest on the skull and a short row of neural spines that point forwards.

“We found that Kamuysaurus japonicus has three unique characteristics that are not shared by other dinosaurs in the Edmontosaurini clade: the low position of the cranial bone notch, the short ascending process of the jaw bone, and the anterior inclination of the neural spines of the sixth to twelfth dorsal vertebrae,” they explained.