With all the paperwork in order, paleontologist crews recently excavated and transported part of a long-neck dinosaur from a cliffside near Dinosaur National Monument. According to the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum, the 500-pound vertebra, along with its encasing rock and plaster, had to be flown out with a helicopter because of the dangerously steep cliff on which it was located in the Late Jurassic-age Morrison Formation. “The vertebra, from the middle of the back of a large sauropod dinosaur similar to Diplodocus or Brontosaurus, had been reported to the museum several years ago,” shares the Museum’s announcement. “After securing permits from the Bureau of Land Management, Museum personnel excavated the fossil from the precarious site over about a week and a half last summer. The team that extracted the fossil included pilots, specialists from the Museum, the Bureau of Land Management, and other paleontologist colleagues. Once on the trailer, the bone was strapped down and driven to the Utah Field House in Vernal.” It is now being prepared in the lab to get the remaining rock off so that the team can find out what type of sauropod dinosaur it belongs to.
Photo Credit Utah Field House of Natural Hustory Museum
