Dinosaur Remains Found with Intact Skin and Tissue
Posted on December 3, 2007 Comments (4)
“Dinosaur Mummy” Found; Has Intact Skin, Tissue by John Roach, National Geographic News:
Scientists today announced the discovery of an extraordinarily preserved “dinosaur mummy” with much of its tissues and bones still encased in an uncollapsed envelope of skin. Preliminary studies of the 67-million-year-old hadrosaur, named Dakota, are already altering theories of what the ancient creatures’ skin looked like and how quickly they moved, project researchers say
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The hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur, was discovered in 1999 by then-teenage paleontologist Tyler Lyson on his family’s North Dakota property.
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Plant-eating hadrosaurs are often called the “cows of the Cretaceous”—the geologic period that spanned 145 million to 65 million years ago—Manning said. They had horny, toothless beaks but hundreds of teeth in their cheeks and a long, stiff tail that was likely used for balance. Preliminary studies are revealing a surprising side to these reptiles, suggesting that Dakota—even though roughly 35 feet (12 meters) long and weighing some 35 tons—was no slowpoke.
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The preliminary calculations suggest Dakota could run 28 miles (45 kilometers) an hour. Tyrannosaurus rex tops out at about 20 miles (32 kilometers) an hour, according to the model
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The hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur, was discovered in 1999 by then-teenage paleontologist Tyler Lyson on his family’s North Dakota property.
…
Plant-eating hadrosaurs are often called the “cows of the Cretaceous”—the geologic period that spanned 145 million to 65 million years ago—Manning said. They had horny, toothless beaks but hundreds of teeth in their cheeks and a long, stiff tail that was likely used for balance. Preliminary studies are revealing a surprising side to these reptiles, suggesting that Dakota—even though roughly 35 feet (12 meters) long and weighing some 35 tons—was no slowpoke.
…
The preliminary calculations suggest Dakota could run 28 miles (45 kilometers) an hour. Tyrannosaurus rex tops out at about 20 miles (32 kilometers) an hour, according to the model
The dig and subsequent scanning are the subjects of Dino Autopsy, a National Geographic Channel special airing on December 9th.
Amazing find of dinosaur ‘mummy’, BBC:
this hadrosaur came complete with fossilised skin, ligaments, tendons and possibly some internal organs, according to researchers. “It’s unbelievable when you look at it for the first time,” said palaeontologist Phillip Manning from the University of Manchester, UK. “There is depth and structure to the skin. The level of detail expressed in the skin is just breathtaking.”
Related: Nigersaurus – T-rex Treasure – Most Dinosaurs Remain Undiscovered
4 Responses to “Dinosaur Remains Found with Intact Skin and Tissue”
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December 4th, 2007 @ 3:37 pm
wow what an amazing find! i can’t believe i didn’t hear about it! will be interesting to see how it compares with what people thought dinosaurs skins looked like.
August 15th, 2008 @ 8:34 am
A great post, thank you. It still seems to me beyond comprehension how a dinosaur with a bodyshape like this could be running at speeds of 28 mph 🙂
Regarding the T-rex you may be right. I recently saw a study that suggested that Tyrannosaurus was actually a very slow dinosaur. According to the study, even 20 mph would be a bit of an exaggeration.
September 14th, 2008 @ 11:03 pm
I just watched the special on the Discovery Channel and I was not all that surprised to hear that it had been discovered since my university newspaper report on it last year. What took me by surprise was the discovery of the intact organs that were present in the hadrosaur. This question remains, and will probably never be answered, would viable DNA be preserved in the organ tissue so mysteriously preserved over the millions of years since it was mummified? This is the one question I’m sure paleontologists have asked themselves since it was discovered.
I am eager, however, to see the emergence of studies on other preserved dinosaurs as they are found and as our technology increases to make the studies possible.
July 19th, 2012 @ 2:58 am
Very cool. Actual science is so full of such interesting things. The Cambrian explosion of life, about 540-490 million years ago, marked the beginning of complex life on earth. Before Cambrian, the sea floor was covered by microbial mats…