Researchers Discover Dinosaur in Montana

A team of palaeontologists excavated four Dinosaur in northeastern Montana this summer. The palaeontologists are from the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

All fossils will be brought back to the Burke Museum where the public can watch palaeontologists remove the surrounding rock in the fossil preparation laboratory. The hip bones of an ostrich-sized theropod, the group of meat-eating, two-legged Dinosaur that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and raptors; the hips and legs of a duck-billed Dinosaur. A pelvis, toe claw and limbs from another theropod that could be a rare ostrich-mimic Anzu, or possibly a new species; and a Triceratops specimen consisting of its skull and other fossilized bones.

Three of the four Dinosaur were all found in close proximity on Bureau of Land Management land that is currently leased to a rancher. Gregory Wilson Mantilla, a UW professor of biology and curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Burke Museum said that each fossil that they collected helps them sharpen their views of the last -dominated ecosystems and the first mammal-dominated ecosystems.

The team plans to finish excavation in the summer of 2022. Museum visitors can now see palaeontologists remove rock from the first of the four Dinosaur theropod hips in Burke’s palaeontology preparation laboratory. Additional fossils will be prepared in the upcoming weeks.