Researchers in Canada have discovered parts of what they believe is an entire “dinosaur mummy” perched on a hill, the University of Reading in the United Kingdom announced last week.
The two exposed fossils, a foot and part of a tail lined with fossilized skin, are believed to belong to a young duckbill Hadrosaur dinosaur that died sometime between 77 million to 75 million years ago, about 10 million years before dinosaurs went extinct, according to the report. researchers. Scientists began excavating the site to remove the entire remains of the mound.
“It’s so well preserved that you can see the individual scales. We can see some tendons, and it looks like there’s going to be skin all over the animal,” Brian Pickles, a paleontologist and ecology professor at the University of Reading, told me. USA TODAY. “Which means, if we’re really lucky, some of the other internal organs might have been preserved as well.”
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If the remains are in as good a condition as Pickles hopes, it would be one of the best-preserved dinosaur fossils ever discovered and give scientists a clearer picture of what the dinosaur looked like as it roamed the Earth.
At best, the creature’s stomach contents can be preserved, allowing scientists to determine the animal’s last meal, Pickles said.
‘Perfectly preserved’
A member of a field team led by Pickles, paleontologist Caleb Brown of the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Canada and scientists from the University of New England in Australia first spotted the fossil sticking out of a cliff last year during an exploratory trip for an international field school on the Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada.
“It’s hard to imagine. This animal died 76 million years ago. It’s been perfectly preserved ever since and it just started eroding out of this cliff as we walked past it,” Pickles said.
“This animal probably died and then was immediately covered with sand and silt in the river,” Pickles said. “Or it was killed because a riverbank fell on it.”
Hadrosaur fossils are common in North America, but finding juveniles is rare.
“Dinosaurs actually grew quite quickly, so finding juveniles in the fossil record is important because it can tell us a lot about how their lives have progressed,” Pickles said.
Pickles estimates that the dinosaur is about 3 meters long, about the length of a car. Adult Hadrosaurs were about 32 feet long, Pickles said.
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It is still too early to identify the exact species. Scientists will have to analyze the skull, Pickles said. Even then, the skull may look different from anything in the file, since the animal was still in the developmental stage.
Other discoveries
Other dinosaurs have been found before with pieces or large amounts of skin intact. A small Psittacosaurus in Germany was found with much of its skin and tissue, including its cloaca (functional, an anus) preserved.
And a few years ago, a Borealopelta, on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, was found in Canada with much of its skin intact, the Atlantic reported.
But the dinosaur in Germany was quite small and some remains of the Borealopelta were missing. The Hadrosaur Being Excavated in Canada Might Be the Largest and most complete.
Pickles said the team expects to have a block with the skeleton carved out of the mound by the end of next summer.
It will then be transported to a lab where a team will use finer tools to surface the animal before finally putting it on display at the Royal Tyrrell dinosaur museum.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Researchers believe they have found a preserved dinosaur with intact skin
