This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Susanne Bard.In North America, fossils of duckbill dinosaur are abundant.So abundant that paleontologists sometimes ignore them in search of more exciting species, like T. Rex or Triceratops.“They were so common we often wouldn't collect them and just left them out in the field.”University of Bath evolutionary biologist Nick Longrich.But duckbills had never been found in Africa.So, Longrich did a double take when he was visiting the Natural History Museum of Marrakesh in Morocco and came across the 66-million-year-old jawbone of a previously undocumented duckbill species.“I instantly knew what it was, and I just couldn't figure out what it was doing there.”Its presence in North Africa was problematic because during the Late Cretaceous period the planet was warmer, which means sea levels were higher.“Africa was isolated from all the other continents by water, and there didn't seem to be any way that they could get there.”Unless, perhaps, duckbills swam hundreds of miles across open ocean from what is now Europe.It's not as far-fetched as it might sound.In fact, paleontologists once thought duckbill dinosaurs were aquatic, but that theory eventually fell out of favor.Nonetheless, there's evidence that duckbills were well-adapted for swimming.“They have these really big, powerful hind limbs. Great big feet.
