a summer day in 1999 high school
sophomore Tyler Leeson is out on one of
his routine prospecting runs he’s been
hunting fossils on his family land since
he was practically a toddler as a
teenager he has already headed 20
dinosaur excavations but nothing could
prepare him for what he finds protruding
from the rocky hillside I followed the
bone fragments up the little gully and I
saw two spinal bones sticking out of the
hill nothing unusual there will preserve
dinosaur bones are scattered all over
Hill Creek these were different I
knocked off a little piece of what I
thought was just sandstone and I looked
at it and it had a weird pattern to it
and so I brought the piece of sandstone
back to the lab and after hours and
hours of slowly brushing it the scale
started to appear
Leeson held in his hands the scaly skin
of an animal that had been extinct for
65 million years even more intriguing
the skin retained its 3d shape the skin
hadn’t collapsed in around the bone at
that point I knew that we had a 3d
dinosaur mummy I was absolutely thrilled
they dubbed the amazing fine Dakota and
the excavation goes into full swing when
you first lay eyes upon such a
remarkable specimen you’re absolutely
gobsmacked how can you not be excited
it’s an incredible find the fossil is a
hadrosaur of 40 foot three and a half
herbivore this Dino roamed the lush
landscape of the Late Cretaceous though
they were one of t-rexes favorite meals
they were also one of the most
successful dinosaurs at the time more
hadrosaur fossils had been found than
any other dinosaur but this one is very
special if not in life getting dead
rather than just fossilized bones and
teeth its skin tissues and organs
somehow survived across the eons
dinosaur fossils are usually isolated
bones occasionally we’re very lucky and
get a partial skeleton and exceptional
circumstances we get a complete skeleton
articulated that is the absolute 10 out
of 10 for a dinosaur dinosaur mummies
come in off the scale these are so rare
so rare and so brimming with scientific
promise that even a single dinosaur
mummy has the potential to change our
understanding of all dinosaurs from
their skeletons scientists know how big
they were
but without tissue and flesh to fill
them out they don’t really know how the
animals looked from the size and shape
of a dinosaur’s leg bones scientists
have estimated how these animals moved
but without muscles they can’t know how
fast
by comparing the bones of some animals
with others we have discovered some 300
different species of dinosaurs but
without genes and proteins we can’t say
for sure how they came about or what
they evolved into a dinosaur mummy with
its tissues frozen in time will give
researchers the chance to investigate
the inner workings of these ancient
animals opening a rare window on how
they lived it it is quite fair to say
that our dinosaur mummy makes many other
dinosaurs look like roadkill simply
because the evidence we’re getting from
our creature is so complete compared to
the disjointed sort of skeletons that
we’re usually having to draw conclusions
from scientists experiment on Dakota’s
home turf in order to establish the
environment in which it died after
reviewing this data along with the
sediments that comprised the mummy
scientists think that the animal died in
or near a body of water submerged
quickly enough to escape scavengers in
the nastiest of microbes and was covered
over and compressed by a continuous
supply of sediment it’s probably a very
rare event but by understanding that
event keying into the position in the
environmental conditions which would
have created such a creature if we can
nail that down but this could be a key
to unlocking a box full of dinosaur
mummies
sophomore Tyler Leeson is out on one of
his routine prospecting runs he’s been
hunting fossils on his family land since
he was practically a toddler as a
teenager he has already headed 20
dinosaur excavations but nothing could
prepare him for what he finds protruding
from the rocky hillside I followed the
bone fragments up the little gully and I
saw two spinal bones sticking out of the
hill nothing unusual there will preserve
dinosaur bones are scattered all over
Hill Creek these were different I
knocked off a little piece of what I
thought was just sandstone and I looked
at it and it had a weird pattern to it
and so I brought the piece of sandstone
back to the lab and after hours and
hours of slowly brushing it the scale
started to appear
Leeson held in his hands the scaly skin
of an animal that had been extinct for
65 million years even more intriguing
the skin retained its 3d shape the skin
hadn’t collapsed in around the bone at
that point I knew that we had a 3d
dinosaur mummy I was absolutely thrilled
they dubbed the amazing fine Dakota and
the excavation goes into full swing when
you first lay eyes upon such a
remarkable specimen you’re absolutely
gobsmacked how can you not be excited
it’s an incredible find the fossil is a
hadrosaur of 40 foot three and a half
herbivore this Dino roamed the lush
landscape of the Late Cretaceous though
they were one of t-rexes favorite meals
they were also one of the most
successful dinosaurs at the time more
hadrosaur fossils had been found than
any other dinosaur but this one is very
special if not in life getting dead
rather than just fossilized bones and
teeth its skin tissues and organs
somehow survived across the eons
dinosaur fossils are usually isolated
bones occasionally we’re very lucky and
get a partial skeleton and exceptional
circumstances we get a complete skeleton
articulated that is the absolute 10 out
of 10 for a dinosaur dinosaur mummies
come in off the scale these are so rare
so rare and so brimming with scientific
promise that even a single dinosaur
mummy has the potential to change our
understanding of all dinosaurs from
their skeletons scientists know how big
they were
but without tissue and flesh to fill
them out they don’t really know how the
animals looked from the size and shape
of a dinosaur’s leg bones scientists
have estimated how these animals moved
but without muscles they can’t know how
fast
by comparing the bones of some animals
with others we have discovered some 300
different species of dinosaurs but
without genes and proteins we can’t say
for sure how they came about or what
they evolved into a dinosaur mummy with
its tissues frozen in time will give
researchers the chance to investigate
the inner workings of these ancient
animals opening a rare window on how
they lived it it is quite fair to say
that our dinosaur mummy makes many other
dinosaurs look like roadkill simply
because the evidence we’re getting from
our creature is so complete compared to
the disjointed sort of skeletons that
we’re usually having to draw conclusions
from scientists experiment on Dakota’s
home turf in order to establish the
environment in which it died after
reviewing this data along with the
sediments that comprised the mummy
scientists think that the animal died in
or near a body of water submerged
quickly enough to escape scavengers in
the nastiest of microbes and was covered
over and compressed by a continuous
supply of sediment it’s probably a very
rare event but by understanding that
event keying into the position in the
environmental conditions which would
have created such a creature if we can
nail that down but this could be a key
to unlocking a box full of dinosaur
mummies
Please follow and like us: