Students from the Sul Ross State University Geology program visited Big Bend National Park in March on a research mission and to retrieve dinosaur bones belonging to Alamosaurus.

Led by Dr. Jesse Kelsch, an assistant professor, and Dr. Thomas Shiller, an associate professor, participants included students in Stratigraphic Analysis and Structural Geology courses. The goals of the trip included conducting structural and stratigraphic analyses of Cretaceous—Eocene rocks and to retrieve a large vertebra belonging to Alamosaurus, a long-necked dinosaur that lived in North America during the Cretaceous Period.

Alamosaurus is the largest known land-dwelling animal to have lived in North America. Fossils from the giant sauropod are known in the Big Bend but are usually fragmentary and poorly preserved. The specimen collected by SRSU belongs to one of the most complete skeletons in the area, originally collected and described by researchers from the University of Texas in the 1970s.

Associated vertebrae were previously collected from the same quarry by Dr. Shiller and his students and are currently being studied in the SRSU paleontology lab.

For more information about the Geology program, visit www.sulross.edu/geology.

Photo: Alamosaurus is the largest known land-dwelling animal to have lived in North America.