Face to face with a perfectly preserved dinosaur that looks like it was alive yesterday

[Spazito]

In March 2011, Shawn Funk, a shovel operator at Suncor Energy’s Millennium oilsands mine north of Fort McMurray, Alta., was digging away at a large bank when he inadvertently stumbled upon Alberta’s oldest dinosaur fossil and one of the most well-preserved dinosaur fossils ever found.

“Right away, we knew it was going to be something good,” says Don Henderson, curator of dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alta. “But we had no idea how good it was going to be.”

After getting the fossil back to the museum, Don and his team set to work solving the 110-million-year-old mystery.

snip

The approximately five-and-a-half-metre-long specimen was so perfectly preserved that researchers were able to stare into the face of a real dinosaur that lived during a time when North America was a very different place.

more

https://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/face-to-face-with-a-perfectly-preserved-dinosaur-that-looks-like-it-was-ali

[FoxNewsSucks]

1. From the thread title, I was expecting an article about Schmuck Assley (R-IA)

[Spazito]

2. ...

[FoxNewsSucks]

3. Now that I've read it, the dinosaur article is much more interesting than the Senator

I've never heard of any animal getting swept up in a flood, drowning, turning upside-down and then sinking to the bottom. It's amazing that they could figure that all out.

[Spazito]

5. It is fascinating for sure!

The Royal Tyrrell Museum is world renowned and is located in what is known as the Canadian Badlands in Drumheller, Alberta. I have visited it and the area and it is amazing, many dinosaur skeletons in various degrees of preservation have been found in Alberta and they go to the Museum for research, preservation and education.

[brer cat]

4. That is an amazing find!

[calimary]

6. I LOVE this stuff!

What a remarkable find! A surprise package from the distant past.

I was a dinosaur freak way back! When my age was in single digits.

[louis-t]

7. Wow, that was fun.

[Yonnie3]

8. Incredible n/t

[Paladin]

9. Good stuff. Thanks for posting. (nt)

[eppur_se_muova]

10. Oh, how I wish "The Nature of Things" was available on our cable package! nt

[Ligyron]

11. Well. we sure don't have to guess what this dino looked like from just a few bones.

Heck, it's a dinosaur death mask.

[Bo Zarts]

12. Meanwhile, the desert spiny lizard terrorizes the earth (as does the spiny fence lizard)

I used to love to catch these wonderful little lizards. Little did I know what their (possible) prehistoric lineage was!

[TomSlick]

13. Amazing find.

From the artistic rendition in the article of what it would have looked like in life, it was not a critter to be snuggled up to at night.

[70sEraVet]

14. Scientists of the future trying to puzzle out the meaning of red hats.

Because I was reading about MAGA people just before reading this post, I started to wonder what scientists millions of years from now will surmise when they dig human skeletons out of rock, and see that a large portion of the males wore bright red hats. They may think that it was some form of ancient mating ritual -- a visible cue, to let females know that they were available for sex.
And, of course, they would be right.

[Tanuki]

15. Cool...thanks for posting!

[wnylib]

16. Makes me think of a giant armadillo.

I wonder if legends of dragons came from the discovery of dinosaur bones and scales, plus an occasional well preserved dinosaur like this. I could imagine people of the past finding these fossils and developing stories about what the creatures were like when alive.

[Qutzupalotl]

17. photo

[Xoan]

18. Perfectly?