: Colombia’s ‘dinosaur of peace’ #IndiaNEWS #International Colombia’s 2016 Peace Agreement has led to an unexpected outcome: the discovery of a new species of dinosaur. Researchers now

Colombia’s ‘dinosaur of peace’ #IndiaNEWS #International
Colombia’s 2016 Peace Agreement has led to an unexpected outcome: the discovery of a new species of dinosaur.

Researchers now know that, around 175 million years ago, a 12-metre long sauropod, roamed around an area of northern Colombia. The scientific world is attributing the discovery of this new species of herbivorous dinosaur to the improved security situation that exists in Colombia since the signing of a 2016 peace deal, which put an end to half a century of civil war.
Just two years after the signing of the agreement, it was deemed safe for a group of researchers from the Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, and the University of Michigan, United States, to visit the Serranía del Perijá, and gather fresh data.

© Marcos Guevara
Professor Aldo Rincón and his guide, Pedro Pablo Contreras, conducting fieldwork in the Serranía del Perijá mountain range.

Searching for clues, 80 years on
The scientists returned to the place where a fossil of a dinosaur dorsal spine vertebra was found by a geologist working for an oil company in 1943. At the time no-one knew that it was part of a brand-new species and, after the find, the fossil was taken, along with some sediment samples, to the United States and given to the University of California scientific collection at Berkeley.
Aldo Rincón Burbano, professor at the Department of Physics and Geosciences at the Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla and one of the research leaders in Colombia, acknowledged that without the security conditions provided in the area today, it would have been difficult to return to the field. This is due to the Peace Agreement.
Those security conditions are monitored by the UN Verification Mission in Colombia, which was established by the Security Council in 2017 to support the progress of the Peace Agreement, and verify the reintegration of former combatants of the FARC-EP rebel group and their families into Colombian society.

© UNVMC/Jorge Quintero
Félix Arango, a 64-year-old former FARC combatant, was one of Professor Aldo Rincóns guides at the ETCR in Tierra Grata.

From fighter to guide
Former FARC-EP fighters provided logistical services, lodging, and guides for the researchers, as they tried to locate the site where the fossil had been unearthed some 80 years earlier.
Félix Arango, a 64-year-old former FARC-EP combatant who now works on an ecotourism project in Tierra Grata, accompanied them on long walks, searching for the exact spot. I didnt know they were looking for a dinosaur because they were studying rocks; luckily I was familiar with the area because the former 41st front of the FARC operated there.