After 20 days of working in the desert of Coahuila, within the Ejido Guadalupe Alamitos, municipality of General Cepeda, paleontologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), with support from the local council , 50 vertebrae recovered the only complete articulated dinosaur tail so far been discovered in Mexico.

Very slowly to not break what nature remained unchanged for 72 million years, paleontologists removed sedimentary rock covering the vertebrae of the animal and discovered the skeleton of a hadrosaur long tail that reaches five meters, the 50 vertebrae excavated remain bound together as when the dinosaur inhabited the planet.

For biological studies it is known that the type of dinosaur to which the specimen had between 50 and 70 caudal vertebrae. Besides the tail skeleton, within 20 days of the excavation carrying long bones were recovered and hip. The characteristics of the caudal vertebrae and sacral has helped to identify that it is a hadrosaur or duckbill Crested-named scientifically as lambeosaurine -, but still can not specify the species because they need to find more bones.

This was informed by the paleontologist INAH-Coahuila Center, Felisa Aguilar, who directed the excavation along with his colleague René Hernández UNAM, the specialist explained that the tail is half skeleton, which means that practically Articulated retained average hadrosaurio body part, whose total length is calculated 12 meters.

He noted that the recovery of this skeleton is of great importance for the Mexican paleontology because it is very rare to find this type of specimens with most of his bones together.

“For the biological study of dinosaurs this finding is important because we will have a sequence that will reveal the characteristics of the vertebrae. How they will be seen differentiating in size depending on their position in the spine, “said science teacher Angel Ramirez Velasco, paleontologists team member of this project.

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