ALBUQUERQUE, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- The first known juvenile pentaceratops fossil took a helicopter ride this week. The plastered ancient remains were airlifted from the badlands of northern New Mexico by the National Guard.
Motor vehicles aren't permitted in the Bisti De-Na-Zin Wilderness, where the fossil was discovered in 2011. Air travel via Black Hawk was the only option.
After a short trip, the fossil was deposited in the bed of a truck and driven to Albuquerque, where paleontologists will continue their excavation.
Since 2011, when the baby pentaceratops was first discovered, researchers have been slowly digging around the fossilized bones. Once isolated, the fossil was covered in plaster for preservation. Scientists will chip away at the plaster and remaining dirt and rock at their labs in Albuquerque.
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In the 1920s, researchers first began unearthing pentaceratops in northwestern New Mexico. Pentaceratops is a type of herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur, like triceratops, which lived during the Cretaceous Period between 76 and 73 million years ago.
The newly discovered baby is roughly the size of a rhino, but adults could grow to 27 feet in length and tip the scales at more than 5 tons, making it one of the biggest horned dinos of its time.
During the Cretaceous, New Mexico was a coastal jungle. Mud and sand quickly swallowed dying dinosaurs, helping preserve the fossils scientists continue to dig up millions of years later.
Pentaceratops is practically New Mexico's state dinosaur. Finally finding a baby is exciting and may help scientists better understand how they developed.
"This was really the first native New Mexican dinosaur," Spencer Lucas, curator of paleontology and geology at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, the fossil's new home, told the Albuquerque Journal.
The baby wasn't the only dino moved this week. An adult specimen, 10 miles away, also got an airlift. The two dinosaurs' remains were encased in a total of three plaster jackets, each weighing 1,500 pounds. Only two of the three were moved, with rain and mud complicating the travel. Another airlift will happen next week.
