Excavating a Mummified Dinosaur

By Alex in Science & Tech on Mar 19, 2008 at 9:43 pm

When Tyler Larson, a 25-year-old doctoral paleontology student at Yale University discovered a dinosaur on his uncle’s ranch almost a decade ago, he stumbled upon something truly rare, a 65-million-year-old mummified duckbilled dinosaur:

Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota, a duckbilled dinosaur unearthed in southwestern North Dakota in 2004, is covered by fossilized skin that is hard as iron. It’s among just a few mummified dinosaurs in the world, say the researchers who are slowly freeing it from a 65-million-year-old rock tomb.

"This is the closest many people will ever get to seeing what large parts of a dinosaur actually looked like, in the flesh," said Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Manchester University in England, a member of the international team researching Dakota.

"This is not the usual disjointed sentence or fragment of a word that the fossil records offer up as evidence of past life. This is a full chapter."

Link (Photo: Will Kincaid / AP)


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  1. Warpig73
    Mar 19th, 2008 at 11:26 pm

    “This is the closest [u]many[/u] people will ever get to seeing what large parts of a dinosaur actually looked like, in the flesh,”

    This statement sounds a little strange to me. Seems to be implying that some (but not many) have actually seen a dinosaur in the flesh!

  2. Aar000n
    Mar 20th, 2008 at 12:38 am

    Wow! I can’t wait until pictures of the full body are made public.

  3. Jamie
    Mar 20th, 2008 at 7:17 am

    What’s great is the creationist thread that’s been tacked onto the Newsvine article. What is it with those people?

    The dinosaur is 65MM years old. Get over it!!!

  4. NiteWhite
    Mar 20th, 2008 at 8:01 am

    Jamie, didn’t you know Satan planted that dinosaur?!

    -An Atheist’s perspective

  5. =^..^=
    Mar 20th, 2008 at 11:23 am

    Wow. That’s amazing! The dinosaur and the planting!

  6. L
    Mar 20th, 2008 at 12:43 pm

    LOL… Where’d Satan get the dinosaur seeds?

  7. Jamie
    Mar 20th, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    NiteWhite, I never thought about Satan planting dinosaur seeds. s’pose he uses his pointy tail to stick them in. Now it all makes sense.

    http://www.dinosaurgardenplants.com

    I’m gonna get me some t-rex seeds. Big suckers, but they shore do surprise the rabbits when they come in the garden.


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