New species of dinosaur talked to each other
Palaeontologists have discovered fossils of a plant-eating dinosaur that belonged to a previously unknown species, one that was likely ‘talkative’ based on the ear structure, which would’ve been adept at picking up low-frequency sounds.
The tail of the dinosaur, which lived about 73 million years ago, was first discovered in 2005 in the Cerro del Pueblo formation near Presa de San Antonio in Coahuila, northern Mexico. About eight years later, palaeontologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) worked together to recover the tail and any other remains. They needed to quickly rescue the tail, which was protruding from the surface of the Earth and exposed to rain and erosion.
“Although we had lost hope of finding the upper part of the specimen, once we recovered the tail we continued digging under where it was located,” said Ángel Alejandro Ramírez Velasco from UNAM’S Institute of Geology. ”The surprise was that we began to find bones such as the femur, the scapula and other elements.”
The dinosaur remains were well preserved, suggesting the individual had died in a sediment-rich body of water that would have been quick to blanket and protect the remains. Palaeontologists were able to recover 34 bone fragments, making up 80 per cent of the dinosaur’s skull, including its crest, its lower and upper jaws, palate and neurocranium, the part of the skull that would have housed the brain.
Because the researchers could recover so much of the dinosaur’s skull, they were able to compare this individual with other known species. At first, based on its tail alone, the researchers knew the dinosaur belonged to a family of duck-billed dinosaurs called hadrosaurs. But they quickly realised that the crest and nose differed from those of any known hadrosaurs, and what they had in their hands represented a new genus and species.
The researchers named the species Tlatolophus galorum. They named the genus after the Nahua indigenous group’s word tlahtolli, which means ‘word’, and the Greek word lophus, which means ‘crest’. The name is fitting, as the dinosaur’s crest is shaped like a ‘virgula’, “a symbol used by Mesoamerican peoples to represent communicative action and knowledge in itself in codices,” said researchers.
By examining the structure of the ear bones, the researchers were even able to get a glimpse at how the dinosaurs may have communicated. “We know that they had ears with the ability to receive low-frequency sounds, so they must have been peaceful but talkative dinosaurs,” said Ramírez Velasco.