Details of the discovery of 67-million-year-old remains have emerged
Three boys were “speechless” after finding a Tyrannosaurus rex bone in North Dakota. In July 2022, on a plot of land near Marmarth, the trio came across a dinosaur bone that was likely buried in the depths about 67 million years ago.
Two young siblings and their cousin say they were “speechless” when they came across a Tyrannosaurus rex bone sticking out of the ground while hiking in the badlands of North Dakota.
The Guardian reports that in In July 2022, Liam and Jessine Fisher, then ages seven and 10, and their cousin Kaiden Madsen, then nine, were hiking on a piece of land owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management outside Marmart, a small town of 101 people. which is also known as the dinosaur capital of North Dakota. These are rich deposits of fossils of triceratops and tyrannosaurs.
The trio, led by the Fisher boys' father, Sam, stumbled upon the bone of a teenage dinosaur that was likely buried about 67 million years ago in the Hell Creek Formation, a popular paleontology site that spans Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas.
< p>“You just never know what you're going to find,” Sam Fisher told The Associated Press as the find was unveiled at the Museum of Nature and Science in Denver, Colorado, on Monday. “You'll see all sorts of interesting rocks, plants and wildlife.”
Liam Fisher said he thought the bone sticking out of the rock was something he called a “kuskosaurus,” a fictitious name for fossil fragments too small to be identified. According to Tyler Lyson, associate curator of vertebrate paleontology who works at the museum, his father shared the photo with a family friend.
Tyler Lyson initially thought it was a relatively common platypus dinosaur, also known as a hadrosaur. But when they dug into the sandstone the following year, they didn't find a platypus neck bone as expected, but rather something more unexpected.
“Instead of a neck vertebra, we found a lower jaw with a few teeth sticking out of it,” Lyson says. . “And that’s not all there is to diagnostics when you see those giant Tyrannosaurus rex teeth staring at you.”
Based on the size of the tibia, experts estimate that the dinosaur was between 13 and 15 years old when it died and likely weighed about 3,500 pounds.
The museum estimates , it will take about a year to fully study the T. rex fossil. So far, a leg, thigh, pelvis, a pair of coffin bones and part of a skull have been found, but it is not yet clear how complete the sample is.
Lyson said more than 100 individual T. rex fossils had been found, but many were fragmentary. He told the museum it was a “wonderful feeling” to make the discovery and “share the results of this fossil with the public.”
The area where the find was made is 200 miles (322 km) from the Cheyenne River National Park in South Dakota, where one of the most famous T. rex finds was made in 1990, The Guardian notes.
The massive, largely intact dinosaur skeleton has been dubbed “T. rex Sue” and has been the subject of a lengthy legal battle over ownership. Sue's skeleton, which is over 40 feet long, is currently housed at Chicago's Field Museum.
At Marmat, Tyler Lyson also found the skeleton of an Edmontosaurus, a type of duck-billed platypus, complete with skin, tendons, and bones – one of only three ever found in such condition.
After the kids met the newest Tyrannosaurus rex, Jessine Fisher – a Jurassic Park fan and budding paleontologist – offered some advice to the other kids, telling them to “just put down your electronics and go camping.”
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