Dinosaur bone found under CO museum parking lot. See 67.5-million-year-old fossil
It all started with a 'geothermal feasibility project in the spring of 2024,' the Denver Museum of Nature and Science said in a July 9 News release.
The team had goals of drilling hundreds of feet below the surface with hopes to use 'the Earth's internal energy to heat and cool the museum,' researchers said.
But, what the museum didn't take into account during the project was it being led by scientists, making 'the urge to survey and study what's down there' 'irresistible,' researchers said.
The team began drilling over 763 feet below the museum's parking lot when they came across a 'major dinosaur discovery,' the museum said on Facebook.
Researchers found an 'ancient bedrock from the Late Cretaceous Period,' which didn't shock scientists – until they learned it contained a 67.5-million-year-old partial dinosaur bone, officials said.
'It's basically like winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning on the same day,' James Hagadorn, curator of geology at the museum said in the release. '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 rock contained partial vertebrae of a 'plant-eating dinosaur, similar to a Thescelosaurus or Edmontosaurus,' researchers said.
This marks the 'deepest and oldest dinosaur fossil ever found within' the city's limits, officials said.
Smaller dinosaurs, like that of the Thescelosaurus, were 'agile and alert' hiding from their Tyrannosaurus rex predator and when the animals died, their remains would get buried into sediment that turned to rock after being carried through bodies of water, researchers said.
'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. That this fossil turned up here, in City Park, is nothing short of magical,' Earth sciences research associate Bob Raynolds said in the release.
For those who want to see the fossil, the museum has curated a display.
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