Draft:Dinosaurs of Central America

In Central America there have been two important reports of dinosaur fossils, one completely studied (1971) and another with historical support (1933). The only dinosaur fossil from Central America documented by paleontologists and found in a museum's scientific collection, is a femur from an ornithopod, discovered in the central part of Honduras in 1971, on the old way between the towns of San Luis and Rancho Grande, municipality of Comayagua, by the American geologist Gregory Horne and his assistant Bruce Simonson. It was found in the highest part of the red layers of the Valle de Ángeles formation. The specimen is located in the National Museum of Natural History of the United States in Washington (with catalog number USNM PAL 181339). It was identified as an ornithopod bone by John Ostrom and by Nicholas Hotton as the femur of a juvenile hadrosaur.

Research carried out by Leonel E. Zúniga and David Aguilar from the National Autonomous University of Honduras since 2015  have extensively documented this discovery, and found historical evidence of a second important dinosaur report in Honduras. This report mentions the discovery in 1933 of a metatarsal bone from the hind leg of a dinosaur near the town of Olanchito, Department of Yoro, Honduras; by explorer and researcher Gregory Mason. This information is described in various newspapers in the United States, being an important example the news published on page 9 of The Washington Post newspaper on August 23, 1933.

The presence of dinosaur fossils in Honduras deepens the problems and inconsistencies of the models proposed to explain how Central America was geologically formed. Theories such as the theory of the Great American Interchange, which has as one of its main foundations the presence of mammal fossils and the absence of dinosaur fossils in Central America, are shaken and challenged by these reports, like the same Gregory Mason stood out in 1933 for the report of the fossil he brought to the United States. Some academics have tried to solve the problem that the presence of these dinosaur fossils in Central America generates in theories, with the theory of the "Pacific Model", that is, the idea that Honduras belongs to a block that broke away from the southwest of Mexico; but other academics such as the Canadian geologist Fraser Keppie have highlighted the great inconsistencies of this model, mainly due to the absence of congruent bathymetric and orographic evidence, which clearly reflects the displacement of more than 1100 kilometers of that block, since they should have remained evidence from the Middle America Trench in the Pacific Ocean to the Cayman Trough in the Caribbean Sea through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico.

Recent reference articles
Zúñiga, L. E. (2017). "Evidencia fósil de dinosaurios: un aporte a la historia de la paleontología en Centroamérica". Revista Ciencia Y Tecnología, (20), 29–49. https://doi.org/10.5377/rct.v0i20.5494 https://www.camjol.info/index.php/RCT/article/view/5494

Zúñiga, L. E., Enríquez, L., Vides, C., & Aguilar, D. (2019). "Recuperación de tejidos blandos de perezosos fósiles gigantes (Mammalia, Xenarthra, Pilosa) de la zona central del Departamento de Yoro, Honduras". Revista Ciencia y Tecnología, (24), 32-48. https://www.lamjol.info/index.php/RCT/article/view/7875

Zúñiga, L. E., & Aguilar-Armijo, D. (2022). "Reinhold Fritzgaertner y los reportes de fósiles de Honduras a finales del siglo ". Revis Bionatura, 7(3)20. https://www.revistabionatura.com/2022.07.03.20.html

Zúñiga, L. E., & Aguilar-Armijo, D. (2023). "Evidencia fósil de Honduras desaparecida en el siglo ". Revis Bionatura, 8(2)31. https://www.revistabionatura.com/2023.08.02.31.html

Reference videos
1.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE3PhJ_P69M 2.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo56fk6pylE