Two young brothers and their cousin say they were “absolutely speechless” when they came across a Tyrannosaurus Rex bone poking out of the ground during a hike in the North Dakota wilderness.
In July 2022, Liam and Jessin Fisher, then 7 and 10 years old, and their cousin Kaiden Madsen, then 9, were hiking on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land around Marmarth, a small town of 101 people. Marmarth is also known as the dinosaur capital of North Dakota because of its wealth of Triceratops and T. rex fossils.
Led by the Fisher brothers’ father, Sam, the trio discovered the bones of a young dinosaur that was probably buried about 67 million years ago in the Hell Creek Formation, a popular paleontological playground that straddles Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas.
“You never know what you’re going to find there,” Sam Fisher said. Associated Press “You’ll see all kinds of amazing rocks and plants and wildlife,” he said Monday at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Denver, Colorado, where the find was unveiled.
Liam Fisher said he thought the bones protruding from the rock were something described as a “chunk-osaurus,” a term coined for fragments of fossils that are too small to identify. Tyler Lyson, the museum’s associate curator of vertebrate paleontology, said Fisher’s father showed the photos to a family friend.
Lyson initially thought it was a relatively common duck-billed dinosaur, also known as a hadrosaur, but when he excavated the sandstone the following year, instead of finding the expected duck-billed neck bone, he found something rather unexpected.
“Instead of a cervical vertebrae, we found a lower jaw with several teeth protruding from it,” Lyson said. “Seeing those giant T. rex teeth staring back at you couldn’t be more diagnostic.”
Based on the size of the tibia, experts estimate that the dinosaur was between 13 and 15 years old when it died and probably weighed about 3,500 pounds (1,587.57 kg) — roughly two-thirds the size of an adult.
The museum estimates it will take workers about a year to fully excavate the T. rex fossil, which has so far uncovered a leg, a hip, a pelvis, several tailbones and part of a skull, but it’s not yet clear how complete the remains are.
Lyson said more than 100 T. rex fossils have been unearthed, many of them fragmentary. At the museum, he said it was an “amazing feeling” to make the discovery and “share this fossil preparation with the public.”
The discovery was made 200 miles (322 km) from the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, where the most famous T. rex was discovered in 1990.
The nearly intact skeleton of the giant dinosaur became known as “Sue the Tyrannosaurus” and was at the center of a lengthy legal battle over its ownership. Measuring over 40 feet long, Sue is now on display at the Field Museum in Chicago.
Marmouth is also where Tyler Lyson discovered the skeleton of an Edmontosaurus duck-billed dinosaur, one of only three ever found with skin, tendons and bones intact.
After the kids discovered the newest T. rex, “Jurassic Park” fan and aspiring paleontologist Jaecine Fisher advised other kids to “put down your electronics and go for a hike.”
