A new species of dinosaur identified by Mexican paleontologists is believed to have been “very communicative” and used low-frequency sounds like elephants to talk to each other, a researcher said on Friday.
The specimen, which has been named Tlatolophus galorum, is thought to have died about 72 million years ago in what is now Mexico’s northern state of Coahuila.
After initially discovering the tail, paleontologists said that they later found most of its skull, including a 1.32m bony, hollow crest, through which it communicated, as well as bones such as its femur and shoulder.
Photo: Reuters
“We are calculating the size, which could be between eight meters and 12 meters long, because just the tail is around six meters,” said Angel Alejandro Ramirez, a paleobiologist at
National Autonomous University of Mexico.
“We believe that these dinosaurs were very communicative. They even produced and perceived low-frequency sounds like those made by elephants, which travel several kilometers and are imperceptible to humans,” Ramirez said.
These “peaceful, but talkative” dinosaurs could also have had the ability to emit loud sounds to scare off predators, the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History said when it announced the discovery.
Researchers think that the dinosaur’s crest might have been red.
“We believe that these dinosaurs, like modern birds, saw in color, and so these structures like the crest were possibly brightly colored. They could have been completely red, or multi-colored, with spots,” Ramirez said.
The discovery is still under investigation, but research about the ancient reptile has already been published in the scientific journal Cretaceous Research, according to the institute.
“It is an exceptional case in Mexican paleontology,” it said. “Highly favorable events had to occur millions of years ago, when Coahuila was a tropical region, for it to be conserved in the conditions it was found in.”
The name Tlatolophus is derived from tlahtolli — which means “word” in the Nahuatl language — and lophus, which means “crest” in Greek, the researchers said.
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