The arm bones belonging to a baby Pentaceratops is unveiled at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque
Scientists had cut open the giant plaster jacket that protected the skull as it was airlifted out of the desert badlands of northwestern New Mexico and trucked to the museum.
They revealed the shield-like part of the dinosaur’s skull, some teeth, an arm bone, a rib and what looked like a vertebrae, but museum curator Spencer Lucas said there’s still much work to be done.
Now, technicians will begin the painstaking work of digging out the fossils from the rock in which they have been encased for some 70 million years.
Lucas said the fossils are significant and sure to provide new insight into the rhinoceros-like, plant-eating dinosaurs that roamed North America tens of millions of years ago.
Tom Suazo, right, a fossil predator with the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, tells a group of children about the museum’s latest find as discover Amanda Cantrell, left, listens during a public unveiling in Albuquerque
Less than 10 adult Pentaceratops skulls have been unearthed over the past century, and this marks the first baby skull to ever be recovered, Lucas said.
“So here now we have the first glimpse at growth and the early stages of life of this dinosaur,” he said.
Experts say Pentaceratops was one of the largest, if not the largest horned dinosaur that ever lived. It could be up to 27 feet long and weigh 5 tons or more.