BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, Texas (AP) — Experts say fossil remains discovered in the 1980s at a park in southwest Texas have been identified as a new genus and species of duckbilled dinosaur.
Officials with Big Bend National Park on Monday announced details of the creature named Aquilarhinus palimentus for its aquiline nose and shovel-shaped jaw.
Texas Tech University Professor Tom Lehman discovered the fossil. Officials say the bones were weathered and stuck together, making study difficult. Research in the 1990s revealed two arched nasal crests.
The peculiar lower jaw was noted, but it wasn't until recently that researchers determined the specimen was more primitive than prior identified duckbilled dinosaurs. Duckbilled dinosaurs, known as hadrosaurids, were the most common herbivorous dinosaur at the end of the Mesozoic Era.
Details are in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.
