Now here's an interesting bit of news for all of us dinosaur buffs -- a mummified dinosaur!

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.

Think about the possibilities here -- we can learn much more about the anatomy and physiology of these long-extinct beasts.

Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota—a duckbilled dinosaur found in southwestern North Dakota in 1999 and announced to the public last December — 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 and a National Geographic Expeditions Council grantee.

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

Frankly, the possibilities are intriguing. This is probably the best preserved fossil of its type, and so we are getting the opportunity to learn about the soft-tissue structures that most fossils do not preserve. We've got lots of fossilized bones, but few fossilized hearts, as an example.

And what's more, there is talk of a world tour for this fossil. That means that Dakota could be coming to a town near you one day, and you might actually get to see what a real dinosaur looked like.

Eat your heart out, Steven Spielberg!

Posted by: Greg at 09:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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