Tech Digest

U researcher identifies real Texas dinosaur

ACCORDING TO UNIVERSITY RESEARCHER Peter Rose, a Ph.D. candidate in geology and geophysics, the current Texas state dinosaur, Pleurocoelus, has been misidentified. It turns out the dinosaur bones found near the Paluxy River in Glen Rose, Texas, and named the state dinosaur weren’t Pleurocoelus bones at all, but a whole new dinosaur.

The discovery came while Rose was working on his master’s degree in Texas. He began scrutinizing fossils from the Jones Ranch in central Texas. The fossils were from a sauropod, a huge plant-eater from millions of years ago. It was longaccepted that the large bones were Pleurocoelus, and by 1997 they gained the title of Texas State Dinosaur.

Doctoral candidate Peter Rose discovered dinosaur bones found in Texas were misidentified.

Rose determined the fossils were not Pleurocoelus at all, and did not match any known genus and species. He named his new find Paluxysaurus jonesi, in a tribute to the Jones Ranch and its collection of fossils.

Rose’s discovery is behind a resolution in the Texas Legislature to change its official state dinosaur from Pleurocoelus to Paluxysaurus, which he’s excited about.

“But when you come down to it, whether it’s a new species is not the big question. More important are some of the bigger picture ideas about how these organisms evolved and what they were doing when they were alive. I hope the future work I do has some broader implications,” Rose said.