It was announced that a team of archaeologists has discovered the fossilized remains of a 72-million-year-old dinosaur tail in a desert in northern Mexico.
The five-meter-long tail, “unusually well preserved,” was the first found in Mexico, said Francisco Aguilar, director of the country’s National Insтιтute of Anthropology and History.
The team, made up of archaeologists and students from INAH and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, identified the fossil as a hadrosaur or duck-billed dinosaur.
The five-meter-long tail, “unusually well preserved,” was the first found in Mexico. It is 72 million years old.
The tail, found near the small town of General Cepeda in the border state of Coahuila, probably covered half the dinosaur’s length, Aguilar said.
Archaeologists found all 50 tail vertebrae completely intact after spending 20 days in the desert slowly lifting sedimentary rock that covered the creature’s bones.
Around the tail were other fossilized bones, including one of the dinosaur’s hips, INAH said.
Precision: Archaeologists painstakingly excavate the tail. Spokesman for the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ: The tail, from a hadrosaur, will allow experts to learn about the bone conditions that affected the colossal beasts.
Despite Mexico’s rich paleontological heritage, this is the first dinosaur tail found in the country
Around the tail were other fossilized bones, including one of the dinosaur’s hips.
Finds of dinosaur tails are relatively rare, according to the INAH.
The new discovery could improve understanding of the hadrosaur family and aid research into diseases that affected dinosaur bones, which resembled those of humans, Aguilar said.
Scientists have already determined that dinosaurs suffered from tumors and arthritis, for example.
Dinosaur remains have been found in many parts of the state of Coahuila, as well as in other desert states in northern Mexico.
“We have a very rich history of paleontology,” Aguilar said.
He noted that during the Cretaceous period, which ended about 65 million years ago, much of what is now north-central Mexico was on the coast.
This has allowed researchers to unearth remains of both marine and terrestrial dinosaurs.
The presence of the remains was reported to INAH by locals in June 2012. After initial inspections, excavation began earlier this month. The remains of the tail will be transferred to General Cepeda for cleaning and subsequent investigation.
An artist’s rendering provided by the National Geographic Society shows what a hadrosaur is believed to have looked like. Most dinosaur groups, except hadrosaurs and ceratopsians, were in decline during the last 40 million years of the Cretaceous.
