Texas geology students unearth bone of giant dinosaur in Big Bend National Park
Students from Sul Ross State University's geology program visited Big Bend National Park in March to retrieve the bones belonging to an Alamosaurus, the largest known land-dwelling animal to have lived in North America.
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BREWSTER COUNTY, Texas – Budding geologists on a research expedition in a Texas national park have unearthed a massive vertebra from a giant long-necked dinosaur that roamed during the Cretaceous Period.
Students from Sul Ross State University's geology program visited Big Bend National Park in March to retrieve the bone belonging to an Alamosaurus, the largest known land-dwelling animal to have lived in North America.
Fossils from the sauropod are known to be found in the Big Bend but are usually fragmentary and poorly preserved, according to researchers.
Alamosaurus is the largest known land-dwelling animal to have lived in North America. (Sul Ross State University)
The university said the trip's goals included conducting structural and stratigraphic analyses of Cretaceous—Eocene rocks.
The specimen collected by the students, led by assistant professors Jesse Kelsch and Thomas Shiller, belongs to one of the most complete skeletons in the area, originally collected and described by researchers from the University of Texas in the 1970s.
Associated vertebrae were previously collected from the same quarry by Shiller and his students and are currently being studied in the campus' paleontology lab.