'Musical' dinosaur unveiled today

A new dinosaur from Mexico that was unveiled today may have been able to "make some kind of music, some kind of note," says a paleontologist at the University of Utah.

Terry Gates, one of the excavators and the man who described and named the Velafrons coahuilensis, added, "We really have no idea what kind of note it would be, because there's so much soft tissue involved" that could have made a note higher or lower.

But based on comparisons with other duckbill dinosaurs and other studies that have been done, he said, the sound probably would have been a higher note than a trombone, most likely something like a cornet or a trumpet.

Birds are dinosaurs, he added, and based on bird studies, "It's our best guess that these things would be honking away pretty bad during the mating season, hoping to attract females."

The dinosaur is a hadrosaur, a duck-billed vegetarian dating to 72 million years ago, which is during the Cretaceous period. It was not quite full-grown at 25 to 30 feet. An adult would have been about 35 feet long, weighing five or six tons, he said.

This newest-discovered member of the hadrosaur family had a crest on its head, as many duckbills did. "This group of duckbill dinosaurs radically changed their skull," Gates said during a press conference. The nose bones were on the top of their heads, and the bones on the front of the face grew together to fill the gap.

"In the course of that, it really lengthened its nasal passage," he added.

Velafrons breathed in air through its nostrils, which were at the front of the face. The air "would then flow up through its nasal passages at the front of its face, make an S curve right in front of the eyes, then enter the crest." The air finally entered its body just above the eyes. This odd crest looked like a hatchet sticking out from the top of its head.

Officials from Mexico were present at the press conference to express their excitement about the find, which was near Saltillo, north-central Mexico. The dinosaur is the first ever to be named based on a discovery in that country, but it may not be the last. According to the university, dinosaur searchers have found nearby "bone fields" where hadrosaur and horned dinosaur remains are jumbled together.

They may have been killed at the same time by violent weather, as that area was the end of a peninsula in a shallow, warm sea that split the North American continent.