See it: Dinosaur fossil found beneath natural history museum in Denver
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Diverging Reports Breakdown
See it: Dinosaur fossil found beneath natural history museum in Denver
Discovery occurred in the spring of 2024 when the museum was conducting a geothermal feasibility project. Officials drilled cores about 1,000 feet into the ground to learn about the geology beneath City Park and the larger Denver Basin. Scientists found a piece of vertebra from the backbone of a plant-eating dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period.
The discovery occurred in the spring of 2024 when the museum was conducting a geothermal feasibility project. As part of that project, officials drilled cores about 1,000 feet into the ground to learn about the geology beneath City Park and the larger Denver Basin, the DMNS said.
Inside one of those cores, scientists found a piece of vertebra from the backbone of a plant-eating dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period. Officials likened it to the two-legged Thescelosaurus.
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During that time, the land that is now Denver was a tropical and swampy ecosystem with tall palm trees and lush vegetation, according to museum officials.
This environment was rife for herbivorous dinosaurs, such as the species the partial vertebra came from, as they foraged amid the brush and even coexisted with the Tyrannosaurus rex.
“The partial dinosaur bone found in a core sample beneath the Museum provides a direct glimpse into this buried world, preserved for millions of years beneath the city,” the DMNS said in a statement.
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Analysis of the dinosaur bone was published in Rocky Mountain Geology in June.