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The Dinosaur Mummy

The hot and dry sandstones of Hell Creek in North Dakota
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In 1999, on the hot and dry sandstones of Hell Creek in North Dakota, 16-year-old Tyler Lyson discovered the protruding spinal bones of a hadrosaur dinosaur. Hadrosaur fossils are not uncommon though and Tyler didn't return to excavate the bones until 2004. This particular hadrosaur, however, turned out to be a precious rarity. Not only was the whole skeleton fossilised, so was some of the soft tissue as well.

The hot and dry sandstones of Hell Creek in North DakotaHadrosaurs were large, duck-billed, vegetarian dinosaurs, up to 12 metres longOn returning to the site in 2004, Tyler didn't realise what a gem he had discovered until he found a piece of sandstone with an unusual pattern on itIn the case of the hadrosaur mummy, sedimentary bacteria mineralised the soft tissues with their waste product, iron carbonate, perfectly preserving the shape and texture for a staggering 67 million years
Hell Creek is one of the best sites in the world for dinosaur bonesIt takes months to free the dinosaur mummy from the surrounding rockOnce in the lab, the hadrosaur, now known as Dakota, has to be uncovered and painstakingly cleaned of all loose materialClose inspection of the hadrosaur skin shows that the scales vary in size on different parts of the body
Back in Manchester, a few grains of dinosaur have been chemically analysedThe tail-piece shows a clear three-dimensional picture of the animal inside the rockThe vertebrae in the tail are set about 1 centimetre apartThis hadrosaur simulation shows that the huge tail muscle would have facilitated much greater speed than initially thought - up to 45 kilometres per hour
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