Workers Uncovering Mummified Dinosaur

AP via brietbart ^ | Mar 18, 2008 | BLAKE NICHOLSON

[Jet Jaguar]

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - Using tiny brushes and chisels, workers picking at a big greenish- black rock in the basement of North Dakota's state museum are meticulously uncovering something amazing: a nearly complete dinosaur, skin and all.

Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota, a duckbilled dinosaur unearthed in southwestern North Dakota in 2004, is covered by fossilized skin that is hard as iron. It's among just a few mummified dinosaurs in the world, say the researchers who are slowly freeing it from a 65- million-year-old rock tomb.

"This is the closest many people will ever get to seeing what large parts of a dinosaur actually looked like, in the flesh," said Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Manchester University in England, a member of the international team researching Dakota.

"This is not the usual disjointed sentence or fragment of a word that the fossil records offer up as evidence of past life. This is a full chapter."

Animal tissue typically decomposes quickly after death. Researchers say Dakota must have been buried rapidly and in just the right environment for the skin to be preserved.

"The process of decay was overtaken by that of fossilization, preserving many of the soft-tissue structures," Manning said.

Tyler Lyson, a 25-year-old doctoral paleontology student at Yale University, discovered the dinosaur on his uncle's ranch in the Badlands in 1999. Weeks after he started to unearth the fossil in he knew he had found something special.

"Usually all we have is bones," Lyson said in a telephone interview. "In this special case, we're not just after the bones; we're after the whole carcass."

Researchers have used the world's largest CT scanner, operated by the Boeing Co. in California and used to examine space shuttle parts, to get a better look at what is encased in the rumpled mass of sandstone.

"This is the fourth dinosaur mummy that's ever been found in the world of any significance," said Stephen Begin, a Michigan consultant on the project. "It may turn out to be one of the best mummies, because of the quality of the skin that we're finding and the extent of the skin that's on the specimen."

Dakota was moved to the museum early last month and is currently surrounded by precariously perched desk lamps and a machine to suck up dust. State paleontologist John Hoganson, of the North Dakota Geological Survey, said it will take a year, maybe more, to uncover it.

Amy Sakariassen, part of the team working on the project, was toiling away with a brush whose bristles had been ground down to nubs.

"It really is wonderful to work on it," she said, as Begin used a sharp instrument to pick away tiny bits of rock and unveil a scale. "Nobody's seen that particular scale in 67 million years. It's quite thrilling."

Manning said his involvement has meant 18-hour days, seven-day weeks and "more work than I could have ever imagined. But I would not change a single second of the past few years."

Hoganson said the main part of the fossil is in two parts, weighing a total of nearly 5 tons.

"The skeleton itself is kind of curled up," he said. "The actual length would be about 30 feet, from about the tip of its tail to the tip of its nose."

The fossil has spawned both a children's book and an adult book, as well as National Geographic television programs. The National Geographic Society is funding much of the research.

"We are looking forward to seeing what emerges from the huge dinosaur body block now housed in North Dakota," said John Francis, a society vice president.

Many prehistoric fossils have been found in the western North Dakota Badlands where terrain has been heavily eroded over time by weather. Hoganson said other treasures likely are waiting to be unearthed.

"It's one of the few places in the world where you can actually see the boundary line where the dinosaurs became extinct, the time boundary," he said. "In the Badlands, this layer is exposed in certain places."

Lyson, who found the fossil, eventually hopes to send it on a worldwide tour and then bring it back to his hometown of Marmarth, where he is creating a museum. For now, workers at the North Dakota Heritage Center on the state Capitol grounds are getting part of it ready for display this summer.

[MaxMax]

Hmm, soaked for a couple weeks in some mink oil might make the skin pliable
enough to make me a pair of Dinosaur two-steppin boots. Sweet.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks.

[ASA Vet]

Wasn't there a similar thread a few months ago, which devolved into deliberate ignorance?

[fabian]

yeah, 65 million years old and the skin hasn’t rotted off...umm, somethings fishy with their carbon dating methods.

[bert]

“Imagine hunting those things with spears”..... Man next to me in the Royal Tyrell dinosaur museum

[GregoTX]

I wonder if once they unearth it, if they are able to see any skin design patterns on the Edmontosaurus? It would be very interesting to see if a skin pattern resembling a holstein cow, bengal tiger or any other familiar pattern emerges. I doubt the fossilized skin is able show any specific color (a guess), but maybe a skin pattern can be detected.

[null and void]

Wasn't there a similar thread a few months ago, which devolved into deliberate ignorance?

Yes. The deliberately ignorant will be by shortly to put their lack of any objective education or powers of observation on full display.

They seem to be proud of it.

[null and void]

Very quickly. Here’s one who thinks dinosaurs are carbon dated!!!

LOL!

[null and void]

I doubt the fossilized skin is able show any specific color (a guess),

Hmmmmm. Pigments, probably not, but if they were structural (like the interference color patterns in feathers and butterfly wings) maybe?

[SunkenCiv]

A quick scan of a sample of the million and a half threads on FR will turn up plenty which devolved into ignorance, deliberate or no. The larger share involve the same handful of wangdoodles who like to fight each other on the same ground over and over. Most of the rest are dipsh!ts visiting Mac or iPod topics to dump on Apple and Apple customers in the same tired ways. :')

Relevant to GGG threads, there's the BC vs BCE, AD vs CE folks, who get this:

Then there's the mindless drones who insist on asking the template question "was this topic moved to Chat?" Chat is the place for science, astronomy, etc, as a quick perusal of the topic lists during posting will reveal. Anyway, they get this:

The absurdly stupid try to start fights, mostly in GGG topics, with YEC folks, by making a snarky comment about how the world is only 6012 years old or whatever. They get this:

For more general troll activity, I really need a GIF movie consisting of a group shot of hundreds of troll dolls, advancing in an endless procession toward the viewer. :'D

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, and WOW, great new tagline!!!

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1987962/posts?page=25#25

[bmwcyle]

Recoverable DNA?

[aristotleman]

On the thread about the methane molecule discovered 63m light years away, someone posted a gem that went something like “how can they tell by looking at the light through a prism in a lab so far away that it's a methane molecule? -just another ploy to prove the bible wrong and claim that evolution is true.”

Speechless. I don't post to people like that any more. Got my comments deleted a couple of times cause of things like this.

I like your indirect approach.

[MichiganMan]

Very quickly. Here’s one who thinks dinosaurs are carbon dated!!!

LOL!

A simple correction pointing out the temporal limits of carbon dating accompanied by mention of dating methods more appropriate for 60K+ year old subjects might actually be appreciated by the "one" and also contribute toward keeping this thread from devolving into a snarky sniping-fest.

Just a thought.

[null and void]

True, and if it hadn't been done a couple hundred times, to no avail, I'd try it yet again.

You cannot educate someone who has decided that not only are you the personal representative of the most evil entity the universe has ever known, but that everything you know is wrong and/or a deliberate lie.

Deliberate willful ignorance trumps all.

All I can do now is point and laugh.

[null and void]

For further clarification go here...

[SunkenCiv]

Oh, I’m direct, when I bother. I regard everyone on both sides of that so-called argument (it reminds me of a description of Chinese imperial civilization, “wheels turning in the same ruts over and over”) as trolls, or when I’m in a very bad mood, as pinheads. No one on either side has any regard for me, for blam, for the GGG list, for FR, or for other FReepers.

[shibumi]

"Workers Uncovering Mummified Dinosaur"




Must have taken a long time and lots and lots of gauze to wrap that thing.

[SunkenCiv]

People who study mummies aren’t wrapped too, uh, never mind.