Mummified Dinosaur Discovered

Volume 3: December Comments Off

by Javier Chavez

On December 3rd, 2007 scientists discovered 63 million year old hadrosaur named Dakota with most of it’s tissue on most of it’s bones with most of it’s skin on. The dinosaur is already changing scientist’s theories on how ancient dinosaurs skin looked like and how fast they moved.

Most dinosaurs are known only from their bones, which are hardly ever found with the bones joined together as they would have been when they were still alive.

This fossil, on the other hand, is a three-dimensional skin envelope. In parts of the dinosaur, arms and legs are complete and intact.

The duck-billed dinosaur, otherwise known as the Hadrosaur, was discovered in North Dakota by Tylor Lyson. The chances of finding a mummified dinosaur are very slim. The dinosaur body had to escape predators, scavengers, and degradation by weather and water. Then, a chemical process must have mineralized the tissue before bacteria ate it. Finally, the remains had to survive millions of years undamaged.

Hadrosaurs are often called the “cows of the Cretaceous”—the geologic period that spanned 145 million to 65 million years ago Dakota. Even though it was roughly 35 feet (12 meters) long and weighing some 3.5 tons, it was definitely not slow. Since Hadrosaurs are believed to have been T. rex prey, evolution would have favored a faster running speed.

The skin has lost its color, but it still has its texture which is allowing scientists to view a 3-D view of its skin. So far that’s all scientist have discovered on the Hadrosaur for now.

Information for this article was gathered from the following source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/images/071203-dino-mummy_big.jpg

admin @ December 19, 2007