Mexican archaeologists find new species of ‘talking dinosaurs’

May
14, 2021

3 min read

Talking dinosaurs ? Only in Mexico! Although it seems a joke, it is a very real fact. The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced that its archaeologists discovered a new species of dinosaur that lived in northern Mexico 73 million years ago.

According to the official statement, a specimen of a herbivorous dinosaur, baptized as Tlatolophus galorum , died “in what must have been a body of water abundant in sediment, so its body was quickly covered by the earth and could be preserved along the way. throughout the ages ”.

The tail of this dinosaur was found in General Cepeda, Coahuila in 2013, but as excavations have progressed, the 1.32-meter-long crest of the animal has been discovered, as well as 34 other bone fragments of the skull.

^{Tlatolophus galorum / Image: Juan Miguel Contreras, Institute of Geology, Courtesy INAH}

Talking dinosaurs

Although this discovery is already wonderful in its own right, what makes it exceptional is the morphology of the animal’s skull. This type of dinosaur is part of the hadrosaur family and the crest allowed them to “talk” to each other.

The name Tlatolophus galorum means “word crest.” The genus ” Tlatolophus ” comes from the Nahuatl ” tlahtolli ” (“word), while” lophus “refers to the Greek word for” crest “.

“The examination showed that the crest and the nose were different from the Velafrons and more similar to what is observed in another tribe of the hadrosaurs: the parasaurolophins; The differences did not stop there: the crest of the General Cepeda specimen, shaped like a drop, was even opposed to the tubular crest of Parasaurolophus, the best-known species of the Parasaurolophins, which inhabited the current territories of New Mexico and Utah. , The United States, as well as Alberta, Canada, and which has been portrayed in films such as Jurassic Park, ”says INAH in a statement .

The INAH researchers compared this specimen with other dinosaurs found in the region of the lambeosaurus family, but discovered that it was a new species that could communicate through certain sounds.

“We know that they had ears with the ability to receive low-frequency sounds, so they must have been peaceful but talkative dinosaurs. Some paleontologists theorize that they emitted loud sounds to scare off carnivores or for reproduction purposes, which suggests that the ridges wore bright colors, “explains Ángel Alejandro Ramírez Velasco, a doctoral student at the UNAM Institute of Geology, in the statement.