The fossil that looked like a statue
Wow. Just wow:
At first glance the reassembled gray blocks look like a nine-foot-long sculpture of a dinosaur. A bony mosaic of armor coats its neck and back, and gray circles outline individual scales. Its neck gracefully curves to the left, as if reaching toward some tasty plant. But this is no lifelike sculpture. It’s an actual dinosaur, petrified from the snout to the hips.
This is truly amazing. What a wonderful find.
That was fascinating. Thank you. I wonder if the people who designed the dragons for “The Game of Thrones” saw pictures of this fossil. The spiky head and neck look very similar.
Great find, Neo! [Pun intended ;)]
Good thing the excavator operator who discovered it had a gentle touch, not to mention good situational awareness.
Wow…. With all the rains in recent days, all I could think of was what the weather guys say – “turn around, don’t drown” when I read that the reason for the excellent condition was that it probably got swept out to a deeper body of water.
Kudos to the construction guys, though it sounds like they had plenty of other finds.
When I was in high school, one of our teachers arranged to have the class go out at a site and assist in some digging.
It was kind of fun. Methodical and relaxing, as long as you can get in comfortable position.
Not sure my back would do so well these days.
This is what you get with Global Warming:
“The western Canada that this dinosaur knew was a very different world from the brutally cold, windswept plains I encountered this past autumn. In the nodosaur’s time, the area resembled today’s South Florida, with warm, humid breezes wafting through conifer forests and fern-filled meadows. It’s even possible that the nodosaur gazed out on an ocean. In the early Cretaceous, rising waters carved an inland seaway that blanketed much of what’s now Alberta, its western shore lapping against eastern British Columbia, where the nodosaur may have lived. Today those ancient seabeds lie buried under forests and rolling fields of wheat.”
Perhaps overlooked is the conduct of the big, eeevil corporation, Suncor, after the dino was discovered on its property by its heavy equipment and employed operator. I shall remedy that:
“After word of the discovery raced up the ladder at Suncor, the company quickly notified the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Henderson and Darren Tanke, one of the museum’s veteran technicians, scrambled aboard a Suncor jet and flew to Fort McMurray. Suncor excavators and museum staff chipped away at the rock in 12-hour shifts, shrouded in dust and diesel fumes.”
A Suncor jet flew them out as if they were Clintons. Not to overlook Suncor’s excavators. All on Suncor’s dime.
I’ve been doing my own research on this these fossils for few years now this is the best one I’ve seen by far. Most fossils like this were burned and crushed and smashed down to a rock which have been overlooked by most science. This dinosaur was in theory trapped in a cave when Armageddon came. I think the process of fossilization was a very rapid phenomenon we do not understand correctly. I have a process to partially restore them any questions email me.