Archaeologists discover a 72 million-year-old dinosaur
tail in Mexican desert
A team of archaeologists have discovered the fossilised remains of a 72 million-year-old dinosaur tail in a desert in northern Mexico, it has been announced.
The ‘unusually well-preserved’ five yard-long tail was the first ever found in Mexico, said Francisco Aguilar, director of the country’s National Institute for Anthropology and History.
The team, made up of archaeologists and students from INAH and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, identified the fossil as a hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur.
Archaeologists found the 50 vertebrae of the tail completely intact after spending 20 days in the desert slowly lifting a sedimentary rock covering the creature’s bones.
Strewn around the tail were other fossilised bones, including one of the dinosaur’s hips, INAH said.
