Dr Tom Stubbs, lead author of the study and a researcher from Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, said: "Our study shows that the unique
hadrosaur feeding apparatus evolved fast in a single burst, and once established, showed very little change.
Hadrosaurs were plant-eaters and lived around 76-75 million years ago in Canada and the USA.
Duck-billed
hadrosaurs roamed in great herds, leaving tracks as small as softballs and as large as hula hoops.
(2013): The latest succession of dinosaur tracksites in Europe:
Hadrosaur ichnology, track production and palaeoenvironments.
The first
hadrosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
Surrounded by Viking swords,
hadrosaur skeletons, Egyptian mummies, and ancient Daoist murals, with two towering totem poles just to the east, the ROM provided the perfect setting for an occasion celebrating diversity of cultures.
Some of the more fascinating fossils consist of the head of a Triceratops which is around 68 million years old, the head of an Ichthyosaurus which is around 200 million years old and a complete nest of the
Hadrosaur, which is around 144 to 165 million years old.
The new exhibit also officially displays our
hadrosaur bones, which were on loan for research and only recently returned.
* Paleontologists in North Dakota recently made a rare discovery: a 66 million-year-old
hadrosaur skeleton with fossilized skin still attached.
These include Leidy's
Hadrosaur specimen, assembled for display in lifelike pose by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins in 1868, and Charles Willson Peale's travelling mastodon exhibit of the early 1800s.
Fossilised remains of the plant-eating duck-billed
hadrosaur were found beneath seven metres of sandstone in Montana.