Palaeontologists discover dinosaur tail in northern Mexico

[The missing Link]

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A team of archaeologists have discovered the fossilized remains of a 72 million-year-old dinosaur tail in a desert in northern Mexico, the country's National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH) said on Monday.

Full link (with pictures):
http://news.yahoo.com/archaeologists-discover-dinosaur-tail-northern-mexico-010029019.html

Thought this is one of the coolest findings of the last 4- 5 years!

[Balaur]

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A team of archaeologists have discovered the fossilized remains of a 72 million-year-old dinosaur tail in a desert in northern Mexico, the country's National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH) said on Monday.

Full link (with pictures):
http://news.yahoo.com/archaeologists-discover-dinosaur-tail-northern-mexico-010029019.html

Thought this is one of the coolest findings of the last 4- 5 years!

Nice fossil find. Except its palaeontologists. Not archaeologists.

[SBell]

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A team of archaeologists have discovered the fossilized remains of a 72 million-year-old dinosaur tail in a desert in northern Mexico, the country's National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH) said on Monday.

Full link (with pictures):
http://news.yahoo.com/archaeologists-discover-dinosaur-tail-northern-mexico-010029019.html

Thought this is one of the coolest findings of the last 4- 5 years!

Nice fossil find. Except its palaeontologists. Not archaeologists.

The article was updated to fix that.

[The missing Link]

Ok, thanks for the tip, palaeontologists.

But on topic: Think it would be awesome to see some more pictures of it when they digged it out completely. Were is the rest of the Dinosaur.. Hope to see it in a while. Maybe they find some other/similar species too near this place.

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

That tail looks wonderfully preserved, i wonder though, why is it just a tail? When a dinosaur is found, aren't there usually fragments of other parts of the body associated with it? (Pieces of ribs, etc)

[The missing Link]

That tail looks wonderfully preserved, i wonder though, why is it just a tail? When a dinosaur is found, aren't there usually fragments of other parts of the body associated with it? (Pieces of ribs, etc)

Yes that's what i also thought. Kind a interesting story. Maybe the rest got wiped out by nature somehow?

[Everything_Dinosaur]

From what we have been told by the press office at the National Institute of Anthropology and History, there are probably more fossil bones from this individual awaiting discovery.  The dig team were only at the site for 20 days or so, the matrix is pretty tough and the original plan was to excavate around just 3 square metres.  The field team had to keep scaling up operations as more of the caudal vertebrae was revealed.  We were told that some portions of the rest of the skeleton, including hopefully cranial material (skull) were buried underneath part of the tail.  Hope this helps

[Gwangi]

For those also following the T. rex bite mark thread; this must surely be one of those cases where the Tyrannosaurus bit off the hadrosaurs tail and carried it off and seems to support the theory I posted in that thread. 

[The missing Link]

From what we have been told by the press office at the National Institute of Anthropology and History, there are probably more fossil bones from this individual awaiting discovery.  The dig team were only at the site for 20 days or so, the matrix is pretty tough and the original plan was to excavate around just 3 square metres.  The field team had to keep scaling up operations as more of the caudal vertebrae was revealed.  We were told that some portions of the rest of the skeleton, including hopefully cranial material (skull) were buried underneath part of the tail.  Hope this helps

Thanks for the responds!

@Gwangi, LOL