Southern Utah keeps pumping out the dinosaurs. Among the latest finds to come from a particularly fertile stretch of badland south of Green River is what may be the heaviest-armored dinosaur yet discovered. Reese Barrick, director of the College of Eastern Utah's Prehistoric Museum in Price, said the beast may have weighed in at 6 tons. "It's built like a tank," Barrick said of the 25-footer with spikes and bony plates along its back and sides. An armored relative also from Utah, Gastonia burgei, likely was a third of the size of this yet-to-be-named species. The creature dates to the Cretaceous era, maybe from about 125 million years ago. Barrick said researchers will need time to unearth more of the dinosaur before beginning to fully describe the find. Celina and Marina Suarez, who were graduate students at Temple University, discovered the site in 2004. The graduate students were working with Utah scientists in a nearby area that yielded Falcarius utahensis, a transition creature for one dinosaur group's move from meat eating to plant eating. State paleontologist Jim Kirkland turned the site over to CEU, which has worked the area for parts of past two years. Kirkland is working a third site in the area that may contain a host of new species from earliest part of the Cretaceous era, if the dates are proved correct. Field workers at the CEU site have pulled out more than 300 bones, of which about 10 percent are from the armored dinosaur, Barrick said. Most bones from this site are from previously known therizinosaurs, the group that includes Falcarius.

- Greg Lavine