When the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum investigated the fossils of dinosaurs found in Nagasaki City, it was found to be one of the largest fossils of "Hadrosaurus Superfamily" in Japan with a total length of about 9 meters.
According to the dinosaur museum surveyed, "it is an important fossil that shows that large dinosaurs lived in groups."
The Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum and Nagasaki City have jointly conducted excavations in the 81 million-year-old Cretaceous stratum called the Mitsuse Formation on the west coast of the Nagasaki Peninsula.
A fossil was found in the 2016 survey, and when the Dinosaur Museum proceeded with the restoration work, the restored fossil was found to be the scapula of the left shoulder of a large dinosaur from the shape of the joints and bones.
Upon closer examination, a characteristic protrusion was found on the joint and it was found to be the bone of the evolutionary herbivorous dinosaur "Hadrosauridae" called "Ornithopoda".
The total length of the dinosaur is estimated to be about 9 meters from the size of the bone found, which means that it is one of the largest ornithopoda dinosaurs found so far in Japan.
A wide variety of fossils such as "Hadrosauroidea", large "Tyrannosaurid", and small carnivorous dinosaurs have been found in other places on the Nagasaki Peninsula.
"It's an important fossil that shows that large dinosaurs lived in groups in Nagasaki," said Kazushu Miyata, senior researcher at the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum.