Archaeologists Unearth Dinosaur Fossil in Incredibly Ironic Location
Dinosaur discoveries are nothing new in Colorado, but this one took scientists by surprise because it was found beneath a dinosaur museum’s own parking lot.
While drilling 763 feet into the ground as part of a geothermal energy study, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science unearthed a fossilized vertebra belonging to a small, plant-eating dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period.
The bone, roughly hockey puck-sized, was buried for an estimated 67 million years, NBC News reported.
“Finding a dinosaur bone in a core is like hitting a hole in one from the moon,” said James Hagadorn, curator of geology at the museum. “It’s like winning the Willy Wonka factory. It’s incredible, it’s super rare.”
The odds truly were astronomical.
Bore samples that are narrow, just a couple of inches wide, rarely yield fossils, let alone a dinosaur vertebra beneath the museum’s own lot. According to museum officials, there have been only two other similar finds from bore holes anywhere in the world.
The fossil’s characteristics suggest it came from an ornithopod—likely a duck-billed dinosaur or thescelosaurus. Nearby fossilized vegetation points to a lush, swampy environment once covering the area.
The irony of the discovery isn’t lost on museum staff. The DMNS is a popular destination for dinosaur enthusiasts, featuring full-size skeletons of species like the T. rex. Now, one of the museum’s most recent fossil additions was sitting directly beneath the cars of visiting guests.
While the find is generating buzz, not everyone is calling it a scientific game-changer.
“It’s a surprise, I guess. Scientifically, it’s not that exciting,” said Thomas Williamson, curator of paleontology at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science.
Still, local paleontologists celebrated the moment. “It’s absolutely legit and VERY COOL!” said Erin LaCount of Dinosaur Ridge.
As for excavating deeper? That’s unlikely.
“I would love to dig a 763-foot hole in the parking lot to excavate that dinosaur, the rest of it,” Hagadorn joked. “But I don’t think that’s going to fly because we really need parking.”
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