New Mexico is now home to a new species of dinosaur. Not only that, but this discovery is changing the timeline of when dinosaurs roamed North America.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico is home to a new species of dinosaur. Not only that, but this discovery is changing the timeline of when dinosaurs roamed North America.
“This is literally decades in the making,” said Dr. Anthony Fiorillo, executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.
A fossil discovered in southwestern New Mexico is part of the skull of a new species of animal. tyrannosaurus rex.
“This confirms that this is a new species, and we were excited to actually invite other researchers to continue this project on a larger scale,” said Sebastian, lead author of the project.・Mr. Dolman said.
Several scientists have studied it for decades and announced their results Thursday morning.
“This fossil was originally discovered by ordinary people, not paleontologist scientists like me. They were people who lived in Las Cruces who were on boats in Elephant Butte Reservoir.” said co-author Dr. Spencer Lucas. of the project. “This was in 1983. They landed on the east shore of the lake and there was this big chunk of jaws lying on the ground.”
The seeds are called Tyrannosaurus macraiensis And it’s about 5 million years older than other tyrannosaurus specimens around the world. Tyrannosaurus macraiensis It’s a cousin of the Tyrannosaurus we know.
“But we’re not the only ones. It’s been a few years since we discovered the volcanic ash layer in the rock that contains this fossil, and we’ve been able to determine its numerical age, and we can now use that numerical age to So there’s no doubt that this fossil is 72 to 73 million years old,” Lucas said.
The artist’s rendition shows what the 40-foot-tall, 12-foot-long dinosaur looked like. Scientists say the differences are small, such as slight differences in the jaw bones, but are enough to prove New Mexico is an important dinosaur discovery site.
“Science is a process. Every new discovery forces us to go back and test and challenge what we thought we knew,” Fiorillo said. .
The public can view the fossils on display at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.