00:05Sol Ross Students Unearth Alamosaurus Vertebra in Big Bend
00:08An Alamosaurus vertebra rose from Big Bend National Park.
00:12In March 2025, Sol Ross State University geology students crossed West Texas Desert Rock to collect a giant dinosaur bone.
00:20The students worked inside Big Bend National Park, where Cretaceous and Eocene rocks stretch across cliffs, washes, and fossil beds.
00:26Jesse Kelsch and Thomas Schiller guided the field team as students lifted a large vertebra from an Alamosaurus quarry.
00:33Alamosaurus carried a long neck across late Cretaceous North America and first appeared on the continent around 69 million years
00:39ago.
00:39The Cretaceous period ended about 66 million years ago, when giant sauropods disappeared from North American floodplains.
00:46Sol Ross State University called Alamosaurus the largest known land-dwelling animal to live in North America.
00:51Big Bend National Park holds Alamosaurus fossils, but many bones from the giant dinosaur break apart or preserve poorly.
00:59This vertebra belongs to one of the most complete Alamosaurus skeletons in the Big Bend area.
01:04University of Texas researchers first collected and described that skeleton in the 1970s, tying the new fieldwork to an older
01:10fossil trail.
01:11Sol Ross students now study associated vertebrae in the university paleontology lab, where desert stone becomes dinosaur evidence.
01:18In Big Bend's dry rock, one huge backbone can pull a 69 million year giant back into view.
01:2321 years ago
