Mummysaur
The Washington Post has an interesting piece on a very unusual dinosaur fossil that appears to be amazingly intact, including fossilized remains of muscle tissue and skin, not just the bare bones, so to speak. It was found by a high school student with a passion for dinosaurs. That student, Tyler Lyson, first marked the spot of the find in 1999 when he was in high school. Now a graduate student in paleontology at Yale, may have discovered a career-making find once all the research papers are written.
A lifelong dinosaur enthusiast, Lyson has been strapping on a backpack and hunting (and finding) dinosaur bones in the arid outback of his home state ever since elementary school. He even started an organization, the Marmarth Research Foundation ( http://www.mrfdigs.com/), in his home town of Marmarth, N.D., to support education and research on dinosaur fossils.
On an expedition in 1999, Lyson noticed some bone fragments at the base of a hill and traced their origin to a point farther up. There he spotted three vertebrae from the tail of a hadrosaur, a common plant eater that traveled in herds and is sometimes described as the cow of the Cretaceous Period. A pretty good find, Lyson thought, but not outstanding. He marked the location in his notes and moved on.
But in 2004, after leading a team of amateur researchers in an excavation that did not pan out, a disappointed Lyson turned his attention again to the vertebrae he had left behind five years before.
"I didn't have very high hopes for the animal," Lyson said. "I figured the excavation would take two or three weeks, I'd have a hadrosaur tail, it would make a nice museum piece, but scientifically it would not be that impressive."
After finding a small piece of fossilized skin, however, Lyson knew he was onto something special. A friend at the dig knew Manning, and within months, Lyson and he had agreed to pursue the project.
Some scientists interviewed for the article are criticizing Lyson and the National Geographic for putting out a documentary of the find before peer reviewed papers have been published. (The critics sound like they are indulging in more than a little helping of sour grapes, though.) Lyson says papers have or are being submitted. They have a slide show over at the Post that is quite interesting.
By curtis kreutzberg, Monday, 3 December , 2007 @ 9:23 pm
Some Indian will claim it as an ancestor and want it reburied.