4.6" Hadrosaur Ungual (Foot Claw) - South Dakota

Hadrosaur Ungual (Foot Claw) - South Dakota #4705

This is a large and nicely preserved ungual (foot claw) from a Edmontosaurus annectens. Edmontosaurus more commonly referred to as a "Duck-billed Dinosaur" It's 4.66" wide and only has a single repaired crack and no restoration. Really a nice specimen.

Edmontosaurus had four digits with the second and third ending in unguals. An ungual is a highly modified distal toe bone which ends in a hoof, claw, or nail. Elephants have ungual phalanges, as did the sauropods and horned dinosaurs.

This specimen was found at a private ranch in Butte County, South Dakota earlier this summer. It comes from a quarry known as the "Tooth Draw Quarry" that has produced many high quality dinosaur teeth over the past several decades. In the Late Cretaceous some 65 million years ago, this quarry was located in a sub-tropical floodplain that would have been similar to modern day coastal Louisiana. It consists of 2 meters of alternating sandstone and gravel, representing a river channel lag deposit. It contains many isolated dinosaur teeth including T-Rex, Nanotyrannus, Raptors and Triceratops, but teeth of this high quality are rare finds.

Hadrosaurs

are frequently referred to as duck-billed dinosaurs and are members of the Ornithischian family Hadrosauridae. They were fairly common herbivores that roamed Asia, Europe, and North America during the Upper Cretaceous Period. Many species of Hadrosaurs had distinctive crests on their heads, some of which had air-filled chambers that may have produced a distinct sound. These crests may have been used for both audio and visual display purposes.

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