Ziapelta – New Mexico’s Newest Dinosaur

Another day, another dinosaur. The last to trundle out into public view was Rhinorex, a shovel-beaked herbivore that roamed southeastern Utah around 75 million years ago and given a scientific name just last week. Now paleontologists have unveiled another southwestern dinosaur that lived very close in time to the “nose king”, but was a vastly different animal. The newest dinosaur to step on to the scene was covered in armor.

Found in northwestern New Mexico’s Bisti/De-na-zin Wilderness, the dinosaur was excavated in 2011 by a crew led by New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science paleontologist Robert Sullivan. The recovered parts included a nearly-complete skull, two spiky half-circles of neck armor, and other fragments. That might not

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