by The expression “not up to date” for paleontologists in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science has adopted a new meaning that is a special fossil that is hidden directly under the noses – under the museum parking lot.
The dinosaur bone was lighted in January during a drilling project to examine the rock layers under the site.
With a diameter of approximately 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters)-the width of the extracted rock core is the disc-shaped specimen of the vertebrae of a vegetable dinosaurs, which roams the region more than 67 million years ago. At a depth of about 230 meters below the surface, it is the oldest and deepest fossil that has ever been found in Denver after the museum was released.
There is not enough fossil to determine its species, but this rare find helps to fill a picture of the ecosystem during the Cretaceous period in today’s Denver, said Dr. James Hagadorn, the curator of the museum’s geology. Scientists were able to restrict the fossil to a herbivorous group of two -now dinosaurs, which are known as ornithopods, and it is the first ornithy shopod to find city borders.
“We knew that these dinosaurs (near other parts of Colorado) or Wyoming were, but we didn’t know that they were also in Denver … but we suspected it directly at this period,” said Hagadorn. “Now we have another herbivore that drove through Denver 67 million years ago, who knows, who knows, ginger and palm leaves and other ferns and plants.”
Core for dinosaur fossils
Dr. James Hagadorn (left), the curator of the museum’s geology, and the research assistant Dr. Bob Raynolds examine scientific nuclei. – Richard M. Wicker/Denver Museum of Nature and Science
The unexpected addition can now be seen in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, which, according to its website, contains around 115,000 dinosaur, plant and mammalian fossils. Since there are only two more cases in the world of a dinosaur bone in a core test, said Hagadorn, he believes that the newly found vertebra is the first to be exhibited.
More of the Ornithopod fossil remains underground, but there are no plans to dig up the deeply buried specimen, said Hagadorn. “Unfortunately we cannot dig out our entire parking lot. Parking is really important in the museum and in all cultural (centers),” he said. “But the bonus here is that people can now park directly on a dinosaurs.”
The original purpose of the drilling project was to investigate whether the museum could switch from natural gas to a geothermal energy system. Researchers still have about 1,000 feet of extracted rock core to analyze – the fossils, minerals or other structures that were not visible on the outer of the core, said Hagadorn. Further examinations of the sample will also help experts in the museum to better understand the geology of the region and other environmental factors such as drinking water.
While studying the rock core has many purposes, Hagadorn did not expect to find a dinosaur fossil that the team expected. “It’s like the happy strike. I mean who would have thought?
Even without the complete fossil fossil, it enables the small bone to better understand the diversity of the dinosaurs, who once roamed the Denver basin at the end of the chalk, said Hagadorn. He compared it with a diorama that added another confirmed character to the picture.
Colorado chalk
A picture of Thescelosaurus, an ornithopod dinosaurs with vertebrae, similar to what was found in the rock core. – Andrey Atuchin/Denver Museum of Nature & Science
The result is a “nice example of how dinosaur fossils are distributed in our environment, even in … places that appear unlikely, as in the middle of the city,” said Dr. Paul Olsen, a paleontologist and Arthur D. Storke Memorial Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Columbia. Olsen was not involved in the discovery.
“It is illustrated how dinosaur bones and other fossils are really not particularly rare, and if you have a really good way to look at the rock, you will come across fossils,” he added. “And quite often, when (the rock) is the right age, they will come across dinosaur bones.”
Most of the time, the Rock Coring is carried out after a fossil has been discovered because scientists have a better view of the stratification in the rock and the environment millions of years ago, said Olsen.
Colorado is the Sweet Spot for chalk fossils due to the number of stones from this time near the surface that volcanoes did not violate, or mistakes have not separated, said Hagadorn.
In view of the discovery of the parking lot, paleontologists were inspired to travel back and to look at the available satellite and height data until all other fossils that were previously found in the U -Bahn area, including a Tyrannosaurus -Rex, Triceratops and other important fossil resolutions. Before this analysis, the team only knew that the Ornithopod vertebrae came from the late chalk. With the new data published in June in June Rocky Mountain Geology, the researchers were able to give a more precise age to the newly discovered Fossil and others who were included in the study.
“Nobody ever arranged with these things,” said Hagadorn. “It was not very feasible in the past, but today we were able to use some specialized cards, geological cards, GIS (geographical information systems) and really precise surveys that you can now get from satellites to place all of these things in space and then in good time.”
While most fossils were found in more rural areas within the study, the Ornithopod vertebra emphasizes the remaining fossils that were still discovered in undeveloped urban areas. The discovery of the bone in the core and the use of more detailed dating techniques to understand its place in time enables a better understanding of the changing world, said Olsen of Columbia.
“These types of studies give people a context where they fit into the history of the universe and the history of the world,” said Olsen, who also did not take part in the new analysis.
“It documents the changes during the time that have taken place, and sometimes we really learn astonishing things … and on a much more detailed level, we have ways to understand how the world actually works, which develops the development of hypotheses of climate change (or) hypotheses of the mass extinguishing,” he added. “So all of this gives us a context for understanding and a kind of library of reality to compare our theories.”
Tayioli is a freelance journalist in New York.
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