Huge Dinosaur Tail Discovered in Mexico

A giant dinosaur tail has been uncovered in northern Mexico, paleontologists announced this week.

The well-preserved tail measures about 16 feet (5 meters) long, contains 50 vertebrae, and seems to have belonged to a hadrosaur — a duck-billed dino that lived about 72 million years ago. Hadrosaurs grew to be about 40 feet (12 m) long, so the tail would have taken up just under half the length of its body.

Buried within sedimentary rock in the desert region of Coahulia, this is the first intact dinosaur tail of this size to be discovered in Mexico, and only one of a handful that has been discovered around the world, according to a statement from the Mexican National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH). Back in 2008, archaeologists reported the discovery of another hadrosaur, dubbed Velafrons coahuilensis, found in Coahulia. That specimen likely belonged to a juvenile dinosaur; even so it the youngster would have been 25 feet (7.5 m) in length, suggesting V. coahuilensis adults grew to a whopping 30 to 35 feet (9 to 10.5 m) long. [Gallery: Gorgeous Dinosaur Fossils]

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