A Texas-sized Dinosaur

Colorado has stegosaurus and Wyoming has triceratops. And for the last eleven years the official Texas state dinosaur was the pleurocoelus, a 20 ton plant-eater. But last month, State Rep. Charles Geren of Fort Worth filed a resolution to change the name from pleurocoelus to paluxysaurus jonesi.

It may seem like a silly thing for lawmakers to worry about when the Legislature is embroiled in battles over the recession and hurricane damage. "It's important to get things right," said Aaron Pan, curator of science for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.

Just exactly what was wrong with the name was discovered by SMU graduate student Peter Rose in 2007. He was doing research around the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas when he began to doubt the fossils attributed to pleurocoelus had been correctly designated. He determined that the Texas fossils were a previously unrecognized species, not belonging to the large dinosaur that was first discovered in Maryland in the late 1800s. Rose named this new creature paluxysaurus jonesi after W.W. Jones, the owner of the land where the fossils were found.

As an Associated Press article pointed out this month, this is largely just a case of mistaken identity. "Pleurocoelus and paluxysaurus were both giraffe-necked and enormous four-footed herbivores." It was an honest mistake. Several states have official dinosaurs that are believed to have once roamed that land. Even Washington, D.C. has a dinosaur, the capitalsaurus, as its official state fossil.

Rose made his challenge to the name after comparing juvenile pleurocoelus specimens in Maryland to the adult bones found in Texas and discovered they didn't match. Rose told the Associated Press that he's unaware of any challenges to his paper. And so far the paluxysaurus hasn't been found anywhere else but Texas. In fact, many dinosaur fossils have been found in Texas, including the Tyrannosaurus rex. The terrifying king of the dinosaurs is thought to have roamed the Big Bend area.

Science Daily said in an article last month that SMU geological sciences professor Louis Jacobs, who was Rose's mentor, has described Texas as a kind of "free trade zone for the age of reptiles" since dinosaurs from three different geologic time periods have been found in the state. The paluxysaurus jonesi is believed to have lived 112 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period.

Mastodon fossils were found in a construction site on Congress Avenue several years ago and were the inspiration for the Dino Pit at the Austin Nature and Science Center. There have also been other findings in Central Texas from the Pleistocene period, or Ice Age, including fossils from mammoths and giant sloths.

So those other Texas icons like the mockingbird and the monarch butterfly better take note. Texas does not want any imposters, particularly ones from the east coast like the pleurocoelus. Our symbols need to be as original to the state as chili, the official state food; the bluebonnet, the official state flower; and the square dance, the official state dance. The official flying mammal, the Mexican free-tail bat, might want to watch out.

Ki has worked in the Austin real estate market for the last several years. He is the designer of a website with information and statistics on Austin real estate. The site encourages free searches on homes in the Austin MLS and provides a blog with statistics and analysis on Austin Texas real estate.