Location : Eastern USA

Hadrosaurus was the second dinosaur named in North America and a whole family of dinosaurs - hadrosaurs - was named after it. It was the first duck-billed dinosaur found, and one of the first on the East Coast of the U.S. It was a large plant-eater and is often shown standing upright, although it actually would have spent most of its time on all four legs.

The original specimen of Hadrosaurus was found in the Cretaceous marls of New Jersey in 1858. Joseph Leidy, an anatomy professor from Philadelphia, assembled the skeleton and named it.

Hadrosaurus was large for a hadrosaur and had a typical hadrosaur body. Its skull was typical of non-crested hadrosaurs, except for a noticeable bump on the nasal bones that created a resemblance to a prizefighter with a broken nose. Hadrosaurus is sometimes erroneously used as a generic name for hadrosaurs.