Friday 12 August 2011

Gob-smackingly gorgeous dinosaur!

Forgive this short post, but it's late in deepest South Dakota....Today, the remainder of our field team drove 'just around the corner' to northern Montana...a mere 800+ mile round trip, to see a VERY special fossil.

Some of you may be familiar with the 'fighting pair' that consists a greyhound sized Velociraptor locked in 'immortal' combat with Protoceratops....the fossil we saw today was even more impressive than this pair!

I shall try and find time to upload some pictures of the 'dueling dino's' in the next day or so. This unique pair of fossils, one a Hell Creek theropod and the other a ceratopsian dinosaur, appear to have exchanged blows some 65 million years ago and come to rest in sediments that are now in northern Montana.

Their fatal embrace seems to be one of the most impressive dinosaur fossils on the planet....I promise you that this is no exaggeration from a travel-worn paleontologist. The last time I was gob-smacked by a dinosaur, was the hadrosaur mummy that we excavated with Tyler Lyson nearly five years ago....today, once again, I was totally and utterly...gob-smacked!


2 comments: