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Edmontosaurus annectens (Anatosaurus) Skull & Jaws

Edmontosaurus annectens was a species of flat-headed or saurolophine hadrosaurid ornithopod dinosaur (a "duck-billed dinosaur") from the very end of the Cretaceous Period, in what is now North America. Remains of E. annectens have been preserved in the Frenchman, Hell Creek, and Lance Formations. All of these formations are dated to the late Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous Period, representing the last three million years before the extinction of the dinosaurs (67 to 66 million years ago). Edmontosaurus annectens is known from numerous specimens, including at least twenty partial to complete skulls, discovered in the U.S. states of Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming, Colorado and the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It was a large animal, up to approximately 12 meters (39 feet) in length, with an extremely long and low skull. E. annectens exhibits one of the most striking examples of the "duckbill" snout common to hadrosaurs. It has a long taxonomic history, and specimens have at times been classified in the genera Diclonius, Trachodon, Hadrosaurus, Claosaurus, Thespesius, Anatosaurus, and Anatotitan, before being grouped together in Edmontosaurus.

In 1978, it was argued that Anatosaurus annectens was really too similar to an Edmontosaurus (discovered and named in 1917), and so it was renamed Edmontosaurus annectens.