The vertebra was found almost 233 meters deep during an ordinary drilling in the museum’s basement. It comes from a small herbivore that lived at the end of the Cretaceous, about 67.5 million years ago.
The coincidence is astounding. The Denver Museum of Nature and Sciences (Colorado) has revealed an unexpected discovery: a fossilized fragment of dinosaur bones buried 233 meters deep under its own parking lot. A find occurred during a drilling as part of a geothermal study in the basement of the cultural building. “It’s a bit like achieving a hole in one from the moon”imagined James Hagadorn, curator in geology of the museum, after the discovery, as the probability of falling on a dinosaur bone in a drilling of only five centimeters in diameter was thin.
The fragment – a vertebra the size of a coin – comes from a small herbivore that lived at the end of the Cretaceous, about 67.5 million years ago, a million years before the extinction of dinosaurs. Scientists evoke the possible belonging to an ornithopod, a group including the Hadrosauridae and Thescelosaurus. This is the oldest fossil ever discovered in the Denver basin. Close to the bone, geologists have also identified fossilized vegetation fragments – petrified leaves and wood – indicating that a swampy environment once extended to this place, long before dinosaurs disappear.
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A symbolic discovery
The fossil is now exposed in the gallery «Discovering Teen Rex»within the museum. This luck should remain an exception: the gallery officials exclude any larger excavation. “Of course I would like to continue to dig there, but we need parking spaces”replied James Hagadorn with humor. According to paleontologists, this type of discovery in borehole is extremely rare: only two occurrences known in the world are documented under similar conditions.
“Most of our fossils come from layers close to the surface, in the rocky formations exposed. There, it was 233 meters underground, in an entirely urbanized area ”underlined Patrick O’Connor, conservative in paleontology, with the Associated Press. Some voices across the Atlantic wanted to alleviate the character of the find. Paleontologists greet the discovery, while nuancing its scientific importance. “It’s a surprise, but it is not very exciting scientifically”judge Thomas Williamson, paleontology curator at the Natural History Museum of New Mexico. In the absence of more precise elements, it is impossible to precisely identify the species of dinosaur.
