Feb. 12, 2008 -- A massive beach-dwelling, plant-eating dinosaur in Mexico might have produced music, according to the international research team that analyzed its fossils and identified it as a new species from south of the border.
Dinosaur finds from Mexico are relatively rare, so the new species, dubbed Velafrons coahuilensis, represents one of the first dinosaurs to be named from Mexico, the research team announced in a press conference today.
Coahuilensis refers to Coahuila, Mexico, where the dino was excavated in an approximately 72-million-year-old rock unit known as the Cerro del Pueblo Formation. Velafrons means "sailed forehead," and refers to the sail-like crest that grew on top of the dinosaur's head.
"Velafrons belongs to a group of duck-billed dinosaurs, or hadrosaurs, called lambeosaurs, which are characterized by having bony crests associated with the nasal cavity," co-author Scott Sampson told Discovery News.
Sampson, a Utah Museum of Natural History paleontologist, explained that these crests take different forms, ranging from "tall and crown-like" to "long and tube-like," in other duck-billed species.
This dinosaur's crest actually transformed its head, so that its nose bone rested atop its skull. The snout then extended backward up the face to fill the gap left by the relocated nose bone.
When breathing, the dinosaur would take in air that flowed through a series of passages from the snout into the crest and then through a hole above the eyes. Since air did go through the crest, scientists speculate the system worked like a musical instrument.
"If the crest was suited to being a resonating chamber, it could have made a distinctive sound that may have been used to signal other members of the species," Sampson said, adding that the theory is still speculative at this point.
Based on several bony features on the skull and skeleton, the researchers think the dinosaur was just a 25-foot-long youngster when it died. If it had reached adulthood, the dino would have grown up to 35 feet long.
Velafrons coahuilensisis is only the first dinosaur to be named from the team's project. It appears that a veritable treasure trove of dino fossils exists in Mexico, a place that receives minimal rainfall, and therefore little erosion to expose the ancient bones.
"There is also a very large horned dinosaur, a cousin of Triceratops, which will be named later this year," Sampson said. "In addition, we have evidence of large tyrannosaur predators, small raptor-like hunters, and ostrich-like dinosaurs that may have been omnivorous."
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