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Exciting time to be a fan of dinosaurs

Whether you have been following the discovery of ancient fossils in North Dakota all your life or only recently heard of the latest finds, it is an exciting time to be a fan of dinosaurs.

Minot Daily News recently ran an article on what is happening in southwestern North Dakota and southeastern Montana and particularly about the Badlands Dinosaur Museum in Dickinson. The article, by Regional Editor Eloise Ogden, was an eye-opener.

Generations of North Dakotans have learned in school or on field trips to the state museum that woolly mammoths once roamed North Dakota, and perhaps some marveled at the fossils of sea creatures that also inhabited these lands millions of years ago.

But what has even the experts excited now is the possibility that a complete tyrannosaur skeleton could be reclaimed from the earth near Malta, Mont., and eventually be put on display in the Dickinson museum. That dig site is one of three tyrannosaur digs that could yield real “buried treasure.”

Ogden quoted fieldwork co-leaders Drs. Denver Fowler and Elizabeth Freedman Fowler, who also described the discovery of a new armored dinosaur.

The armored dinosaur, a nodosaur related to the tail-clubbed Ankylosaurus, is expected to be a new species because its fossils were recovered from a rock layer – 3 million years older than other known species of its family, Ogden wrote.

“We have a good proportion of the skeleton already, a lot of the leg bones, many ribs, vertebrae, parts of the pelvis, and six or seven of the large armor spikes,” said Fowler. “The real prize is the beautiful complete skull; this is the most important part of the skeleton if you want to tell what species you have.”

“Nodosaurs are not very common compared to the other plant-eating dinosaurs, so we are thrilled to find such a great skeleton”, said Freedman Fowler.

Their excitement is contagious, and that is a good thing.

The finds are expected to keep the team busy for years, but the fun doesn’t end there. There is surely more buried treasure waiting to be found by both amateurs and experts in the years to come. Stayed tuned for future updates.

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