Eotrachodon

Eotrachodon (meaning "dawn Trachodon") is a genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous of eastern North America. The holotype was found in the Mooreville Chalk Formation (Upper Santonian) of Alabama in 2007 and includes a well-preserved skull and partial skeleton, making it a rare find among dinosaurs of Appalachia. It was described nine years later as the new genus and species E. orientalis, with the specific name meaning "of the east". Another primitive hadrosauromorph, Lophorhothon, is also known from the same formation, although Eotrachodon lived a few million years prior. A phylogenetic study has found it to be the sister taxon to the hadrosaurid subfamilies Lambeosaurinae and Saurolophinae. This, along with the other Appalachian hadrosaurid Hadrosaurus and the more basal hadrosauroids Lophorhothon, Claosaurus, and Hypsibema (both species), suggests that Appalachia was the ancestral area of Hadrosauridae.

thumb|Life restoration of Eotrachodon orientalis