{"id":16340,"date":"2025-09-30T21:30:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T03:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/duck-billed-dinosaur-identified-in-blm-badlands-of-san-juan-county\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:57:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:57:05","slug":"duck-billed-dinosaur-identified-in-blm-badlands-of-san-juan-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/duck-billed-dinosaur-identified-in-blm-badlands-of-san-juan-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Duck-billed dinosaur identified in BLM badlands of San Juan County"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rendering
Rendering of Ahshiselsaurus wimani, a dinosaur that lived 75 million years ago. The dinosaur\u2019s fossils were uncovered in the Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness of San Juan County. (Courtesy of New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Researchers have identified a new dinosaur species discovered in the badlands of San Juan County, according to an announcement Monday from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The duck-billed dinosaur likely weighed more than nine tons, grew up to 35 feet long and roamed what is now New Mexico about 75 million years ago. A team of researchers with the museum brought the newly identified species to light.<\/p>\n

Researchers named the dinosaur Ahshiselsaurus wimani, after the area where it was found \u2013 the Bureau of Land Management-run Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness<\/a> in southeastern San Juan County, within the Navajo Nation.<\/p>\n

The area is known for its surreal geological formations, also found in the neighboring Bisti\/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area, which has a signature species of its own: the Bistahieversor, or \u201cBisti Beast,\u201d a relative of Tyrannosaurus rex.<\/p>\n

The San Juan Basin is also rich in fossils. As early as 1916, the now-identified fossil was uncovered by John Reeside Jr., a well-known collector. In 1935, those bones were believed to belong to a species named Kritosaurus navajovius. But the latest team of researchers found several unique anatomical markers that made Ahshiselsaurus deserving of its own name.<\/p>\n

\u201cDiscoveries like this remind us that science truly is a community,\u201d said Anthony Fiorillo, a co-author on a research paper on the new discovery and executive director of the Museum of Natural History & Science. \u201cOur team of researchers spanning five institutions and two countries were able to build upon research that started nearly a century ago and now advances our understanding of what our state looked like during the Late Cretaceous Period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahshiselsaurus is part of a dinosaur family called hadrosaurids, known for their duck-billed appearance and herbivorous diet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

nine-ton Ahshiselsaurus wimani lived about 75 million years ago<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16340"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20146,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16340\/revisions\/20146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16340"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}