The broken bone was found inside a rock pillar that was 2.5 inches thick. This is the oldest and deepest dinosaur fossil that has ever been found in Denver. For many years, people have been visiting the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to see the fossilised bones of huge prehistoric animals like Diplodocus and Stegosaurus on display.
As it happens, there was another dinosaur hiding under the ground the whole time.
This week, the 125-year-old museum announced that scientists studying dinosaurs had found a 67.5-million-year-old dinosaur bone that had been dug up under the car park. They describe their amazing discovery in a new paper called “Denver’s deepest dinosaur,” which was published on June 1 in the journal Rocky Mountain Geology.
The discovery was made in January when the museum tested a new heating, air conditioning and hot water system that uses geothermal energy instead of natural gas. While this work was happening, the scientists took the chance to drill down and extract a core sample to learn more about the region’s geology.
I need to know: What is a core sample?
Scientists collect samples of rock, ice or sediment that are long cylinders. These samples are called cores. They use the samples to find out about the environment or the Earth’s geology over time. They can teach researchers about the conditions of the ground, ocean or atmosphere from millions of years ago.
They dug up a bit of a dinosaur’s backbone that was 230 metres deep under the car park on the north side of the museum. (There are also two dinosaur sculptures by the car park.)
What are the chances of finding a dinosaur bone in a 2.5-inch-wide core sample? “It’s like winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning at the same time,” says James Hagadorn, the museum’s geology curator.
A man is looking at a fossil.
Earth scientist Bob Raynolds (shown here) says the find is “like magic”. Rick Wicker, from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Bob Raynolds, a scientist who studies the Earth, has worked at the museum for 35 years. He agreed, saying that the discovery was “like magic”.
We don’t know what kind of animal the bone came from. But experts think the creature may have been similar to Thescelosaurus or Edmontosaurus, two dinosaurs that are known to have lived in the same area at the same time.
This is a picture of a tropical area.
During the Late Cretaceous, Denver had a warm, tropical climate. Gary Stabb, Johnson and Raynolds
The bone, which the museum says is the deepest and oldest dinosaur fossil found in Denver, is now on display as part of the “Discovering Teen Rex” exhibition. “As far as I know, this is the only dinosaur bone from a core in the world that you can go and see,” Hagadorn tells KUSA’s Bobbi Sheldon and Bryan Wendland.
The vertebra was found in a layer of rock that was formed during the Late Cretaceous, just before the dinosaurs died out. Today, Denver has a semi-arid climate, but at that time, the region was a “sub-tropical ever-wet setting,” the researchers write in the paper. The region had a warm, rainy climate, with lots of lush green plants, such as palm trees and vines.
The core sample—and the dinosaur bone found inside it—shows us what Denver was like millions of years ago.
“The layers of this core change from the areas outside of a river to a swamp, and then to a pond, and the dinosaur bone is right on the edge of that pond,” Hagadorn tells KUSA. “Was that dinosaur drinking water from the pond or eating plants nearby? It’s just something cool to imagine.”
Boxes of core samples are on the ground.
The fossil was found 763 feet beneath the car park. It was in a core sample that geologists had dug up. Rick Wicker, from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Colorado is on top of a layer of rock called the Morrison Formation, which is found across much of the Western U.S. and is from the Late Jurassic Period. So, the museum’s discovery of a vertebra wasn’t a complete surprise. Many fossils and footprints have been found in and around the capital city and in other places throughout the state.
For example, in 1993, while building the stadium for the Colorado Rockies, a team playing in the US baseball league, workers found a four-inch rib and some bone fragments. This led to the team’s mascot, Dinger the dinosaur. In 2017, teams working in the suburb of Thornton found the most complete Torosaurus ever found. Two years later, in Highlands Ranch, the remains of a triceratops were found during construction work near a retirement home.
And about 20 minutes west of Denver, Dinosaur Ridge—a museum in the open air—has more than 250 dinosaur tracks. The area is part of the Dakota Hogback, and it has also been the site of numerous important discoveries, including fossils found in the late 19th century that led to the naming of creatures like Apatosaurus, Stegosaurus and Allosaurus.
So, will more dinosaur bones be found far beneath the Mile High City in the future? Hagadorn almost certainly told Westword’s Kristen Fiore.
“This area has lots of fossils and there are probably lots more underground,” he says. “More discoveries await.”
