Not Sweating the Small Stuff

Hadrosaur or Duck-Billed Dinosaur SKIN

Hadrosaur, or Duck-Billed Dinosaur

As a little little kid I was crazed about dinosaurs ... almost as much as I am today about cute hairy muscular blond guys. Is this any sort of progress? Mmm ... .

Anyway, I had my vast herds of plastic models ... dinos of many species. Which used to fight ferociously and to the death on my bedroom floor. Against nature, herbivores joined in the fray, even my favorite, the huge long-necked tiny-brained brontosaurus.

Brontosaurus

I remembered all this recently, watching a doco on the discovery of the fossil of a 67 million year old hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur. It was found in 1999 by teenage paleontologist Tyler Lyson on his parents' property in North Dakota.

Dino Discoverer Tyler Lyson with his Find on his Parents North Dakota Property

Now what was so exciting about this discovery was that the dinosaur's reptilian skin had been recorded in the stone, which is incredibly incredibly rare. And preserved in a three dimensional way which suggested the underlying musculature. As a consequence, the hydrosaur is now seen as a much heftier animal. There were also indications the skin was striped, as shown in the first image.

The Hadrosaur's Skin

The fossil of the entire creature was extracted from the site and taken to a local university for deep scanning to determine if tendons and other soft tissues may have been recorded as had been the skin. The stone was too massive and dense for successful penetration. New technology is now awaited.

My plastic friends found their way into a gigantic old toy box in our garage and from there mysteriously vanished - no doubt another act of subterfuge by the Matriarch, fondly known as 'Empress Wu'.