The Denver Museum of Nature & Science already homes an unlimited trove of dinosaur bones, however it lately obtained an sudden addition to the gathering. The newest fossil didn’t come from a beneficiant benefactor or nameless donor–it got here from beneath the museum’s personal parking lot.
“This may be the most unusual dinosaur discovery I have ever been a part of,” DMNS director of Earth and Space Sciences Patrick O’Connor stated in a press release.
The discover occurred in January, when the museum started a drilling venture to evaluate the potential for switchingfrom pure gasoline to geothermal power. The take a look at additionally provided a chance for researchers to concurrently oversee a scientific coring initiative to raised perceive the Denver Basin’s geology. To accomplish that, a pair of drill rigs every bored a one-foot-wide gap into the bottom that the staff then used to extract samples. But about 763 toes under the blacktop, geologists discovered extra than simply sediment deposited by the South Platte River—they found a pair of bone fragments.
A portion of the dinosaur bone recovered from the scientific core—drilled 763 toes under the floor of the Museum’s parking lot in City Park. It has been recognized by Museum paleontologists because the deepest and oldest dinosaur fossil ever discovered inside the metropolis limits. Specimen is housed on the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, courtesy of History Colorado, Office of the State Archaeologist. Credit: Rick Wicker Wicker; Richard M.
“It’s basically like winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning on the same day,” DMNS curator of geology James Hagadorn stated in an interview. “No one could have predicted that this little square foot of land where we started drilling would actually contain a dinosaur bone beneath it.”
The bigger of the 2 fossils sadly didn’t survive its encounter with diggers’ drill bit. But earlier than fragmenting, the bone measured about 1.9 inches lengthy, 2.3 inches large, and a pair of.3 inches tall. A subsequent evaluation printed within the journal Rocky Mountain Geology indicated the vertebra belonged to an herbivore just like a Thescelosaurus or Edmontosaurus.
At 67.5 million years outdated, it’s the oldest and deepest dinosaur fossil ever found in Denver, providing a window into the area proper earlier than the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction occasion. As the DMNS explains in its accompanying profile, Denver regarded vastly completely different throughout the Cretaceous than it does at the moment. Instead of snowy mountains, tropical rainforests and swampy lowland floodplains coated Colorado with dinosaurs just like the Tyrannosaurus rex roaming round.
“In my 35 years at the museum, we’ve never had an opportunity quite like this—to study the deep geologic layers beneath our feet with such precision,” DMNS Earth Sciences analysis affiliate Bob Raynolds stated. “That this fossil turned up here… is nothing short of magical.”
It stays to be seen if the museum will ultimately make the shift to geothermal power. In the meantime, guests can see the sudden discovery on show as a part of a brief exhibit.
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