GONKOKEN
A plant-eating hadrosauroid styracosternan ornithopod from the Late Cretaceous of Chile.

Pronunciation: gon-KO-ken
Meaning: Like a duck
Author/s: Alarcón-Muñoz
et al. (
2023)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Magallanes, Chile
Discovery Chart Position: #1095
Gonkoken nanoi
(Nano's Duck Likeness)Etymology
Gonkoken is derived from "gon" (similar to, likeness) and "koken" (wild duck or swan) in the language of the Indigenous Aónikenk people from the part of southern Patagonia where the bones were found.
The
species epithet,
nanoi, honours Mario "Nano" Ulloa, who first found dinosaur bones at Río de las Chinas Valley.
Discovery
The first remains of
Gonkoken were discovered in the Dorotea Formation at Loma Koken, El Puesto area, Río de las Chinas Valley, Estancia Cerro Guido, Magallanes Region, Chilean Patagonia, by Marcelo Leppe in 2013.
The
holotype (CPAP 3054) is a right hip bone (ilium).
Forty four fossils, representing at least three indivisuals, were assigned as paratypes, including bones from the skull, shoulder girdle, pelvis, arms and legs, ribs, and vertebrae from the neck, back and tail.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Cretaceous
Stage: Maastrichtian
Age range: 72-70 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: ?
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: ?
Diet: Herbivore
References
• Alarcón-Muñoz J, Vargas AO, Püschel HP, Soto-Acuña S, Manríquez L, Leppe M, Kaluza J, Milla V, Gutstein CS, Palma-Liberona J, Stinnesbeck W, Frey E, Pino JP, Bajor D, Núñez E, Ortiz H, Rubilar-Rogers D and Cruzado-Caballero P (2023) "Relict duck-billed dinosaurs survived into the last age of the dinosaurs in subantarctic Chile".
SCIENCE ADVANCES, 9(24): eadg245. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adg2456.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
GONKOKEN :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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http://www.dinochecker.com/dinosaurs/GONKOKEN›. Web access: 07th Mar 2026.