The duckbilled dinosaurs, also called hadrosaurids, were the most common herbivorous dinosaurs in the late Mesozoic Era and all had a snout of similar appearance. The front of the jaws is U-shaped to support a cup-shaped beak used for growing plants. The beaks of some species are wider than others, but there was no evidence of a significantly different shape and, therefore, probably also a different feeding style in duckbills up to the discovery of Aquilarhinus. The lower jaws of Aquilarhinus meet in a particular W shape, creating a wide, flattened shovel.

About 80 million years ago, this particular dinosaur would have shoveled into moist, wet sediments to collect loose-rooted aquatic plants in the tidal marshes of an ancient delta, where we now find ourselves. the desert of Chihuahuan. When the dinosaur died, some of its bones were transported downstream by the tide and lodged in the vegetation. The tidal wave twice a day dropped the silt that built the channel bank around its body, fossilizing thick iron stone bones.

The jaw and other characteristics of the specimen show that it does not correspond to the main group of duckbill dinosaurs called Saurolophidae. It is more primitive than this group, suggesting that there may have been a greater number of lineages than previously recognized ones that evolved before the great radiation that gave birth to the bewildering range of unembellished, full and with hollow ridge. Most saurolophids had cranial bone ridges of different shapes and sizes. Aquilarhinus also had a bone ridge, although simple, shaped like a hunchbacked nose. The discovery of a solid ridge outside the major radiation of hadrosaurides confirms the hypothesis that all ridges are derived from an ancestor common to the simple hunchbacked nose.