New 26-foot long duck-billed dinosaur discovered; largest ever found in Japan

MUKAWA TOWN, Japan — An almost complete skeleton of a new species of dinosaur was discovered by scientists in a 72-million-year-old marine deposit in Mukawa Town in northern Japan.

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The skeleton belongs to a species of herbivorous hadrosaurid dinosaur, or duck-billed, and was named Kamuysaurus japonicus, according to a press release from Hokkaido University.

Scientists from Hokkaido University and Hobetsu Museum, in a joint excavation, first found a partial tail in 2013 then discovered the almost entire skeleton in following digs.

It turns out it's the largest dinosaur ever found in the country at 26 feet long and weighing between 4 and 5.3 tons, depending on whether it walked on two or four legs, CNN reported.

Researchers at Hokkaido University believe the animal was an adult around 9 years old or more and that it had a crest, which would mean it might have resembled Brachylophosaurus, whose fossils have been unearthed in North America.

The dinosaur most likely lived on coastlines near the ocean, which was an important factor in it early evolution, especially in North America, Hokkaido University said.

The study on the new dinosaur was published in Scientific Reports.

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