Mexican Dino May Have Made Music

The dinosaurs add to yet another unusual find, a possible venomous dinosaur, recently excavated by Francisco Aranda-Manteca of the University of Baja California. Aranda-Manteca found a dino's grooved tooth, whose features "could be found in most theropods," he said.

These and possibly more creatures all lived on a long, narrow, peninsula-like western landmass known as Laramidia, or "West America." The landmass was the western side of the continent, which was split into two during the Late Cretaceous by a shallow sea extending from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

Some of the excavated Mexican dinosaur bones actually had shellfish, such as oysters, attached to them. This reveals that most of the prehistoric animals resided in a coastal habitat.

Bone beds of jumbled duck-bills and horned dinosaurs indicate mass death events, possibly associated with powerful storms that still affect coastal regions around the tips of South America and Africa. Since Velafrons coahuilensis lived just before dinosaurs became extinct, it's possible that climate change and resulting weather contributed to the dino wipe-out. Paleontologists hope to research that possibility further.

"We can think of the unfolding drama in the Late Cretaceous as a long-lasting, highly successful play like Cats or The Phantom of the Opera," Sampson said. "Although the drama lasted a long time and played in a lot of different places, the actual players differed from place to place and changed regularly through time."

He added, "Velafrons, which belongs to the crested duck-bills, is the most recently discovered player in this ancient drama, and one with special significance because of where it lived, at the southern tip of West America."

Related Links:

Jennifer Viegas' blog: Born Animal

Dinosaur Fossils Found in Mexico

Utah Museum of Natural History

Late Cretaceous Climate