Amazingly Preserved Dinosaur Found

Scientists on Monday announced the discovery of what appears to be the world's most intact dinosaur mummy: a 67-million-year-old plant-eater that contains fossilized bones and skin tissue, and possibly muscle and organs.

Preserved by a natural fluke of time and chemistry, the four-ton mummified hadrosaur, a duck-billed herbivore common to North America, could reshape the understanding of dinosaurs and their habitat, its finders say.
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"The skin has been mineralized," said Manning. "It is an actual three-dimensional structure, backfilled with sediment."

The fidelity of the envelope, he said, raises the possibility that Dakota could contain other soft-tissue remnants, including muscles and organs.
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In North Dakota, the researchers used Light Detection and Ranging equipment (LiDAR) to develop a three-dimensional topographical map of the area where Dakota died. Manning speculated that the dinosaur collapsed in a riverbed during the late Cretaceous Period and was rapidly buried in mineral-rich wet sand, preventing bacteria from devouring all of its tissue. "There was active-enough chemistry in the sediments that the decay process didn't occur as quickly as the mineralization process," he said. "It was a perfect chemical soup."
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The first significant findings from the dinosaur, currently under review at a major scientific journal, will describe the unique chemical balance that preserved the fossil. The body, meanwhile, remains on the Boeing scanner, as Manning and his colleagues sift through terabytes of data. So far, they have determined that the hadrosaur's hindquarters are 25 percent larger than previously thought for the species, meaning that it could run up to 28 mph -- faster than previously estimated. They have also discovered that the specimen's vertebrae, which museums commonly stack together, are actually spaced 10 millimeters apart. The result, Manning said, implies that scientists may have been underestimating the size of hadrosaurs and other dinosaurs.

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