Two young brothers and their cousin were wandering a fossil-rich stretch of the North Dakota Badlands when they made a discovery that left them "completely speechless": a T. rex bone poking out of the ground. As the AP reports, the trio announced their discovery publicly Monday as workers at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science begin chipping the fossil out of its rock cast at a special exhibit called "Discovering Teen Rex." The exhibit's opening on June 21 will coincide with the debut of the film T.REX, about the July 2022 find.
It all started when Kaiden Madsen, then 9, joined his cousins, Liam and Jessin Fisher, then 7 and 10, on a hike around Marmarth. "You just never know what you are going to find out there. You see all kinds of cool rocks and plants and wildlife," says the brothers' father, Sam Fisher. Liam Fisher says he and his dad, who accompanied the trio, first spotted the bone. After the dinosaur's death around 67 million years ago, it was entombed in the Hell Creek Formation, a popular paleontology playground that spans Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Sam Fisher snapped a picture and shared it with a family friend, Tyler Lyson of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
Lyson organized an excavation that began last summer, adding the boys and a sister, Emalynn Fisher, now 14, to the team. Lyson recalled that he started digging with Jessin where he thought he might find a neck bone. "Instead of finding ... cervical vertebrae, we found the lower jaw with several teeth sticking out of it," Lyson says. "And it doesn't get any more diagnostic than that, seeing these giant tyrannosaurus teeth starring back at you." A documentary crew was there to capture the discovery.
story continues below
"It was electric. You got goose bumps," recalled Dave Clark, who was part of the crew filming the documentary that was narrated by Jurassic Park actor Sam Neill. Experts estimate the T. rex was 13 to 15 years old when it died and likely weighed around 3,500 pounds—about two-thirds of the size of a full-grown adult version. Lyson says it's unclear yet how complete this fossil is. So far, they know they've found a leg, hip, pelvis, a couple of tailbones, and a good chunk of the skull. The public will get to watch crews chip away at the rock, which the museum estimates will take about a year. Jessin, a fan of the Jurassic Park movies and an aspiring paleontologist, continues looking for fossils. For other kids, he has this advice: "Put down their electronics and go out hiking." (More T. rex stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
