Museum unveils new fossil finds



Museum unveils new fossil finds


A small town has again yielded big scientific finds as historians this
week announced a new collection of dinosaur fossils and footprints.

Matt Mossbrucker, dinosaur researcher and director of the Morrison
Natural History Museum, said two years of work in an old fossil mine in
an area dubbed Dinosaur Ridge uncovered important finds overlooked for
decades.

Among the discoveries were a rare combination of fossils and footprints
sharing the same sandstone formations, and fossilized footprints that
could have been made by previously unidentified dinosaurs.

"We couldn't believe what we were seeing," Mossbrucker said.
The new evidence includes the first stegosaurus footprints found in
Colorado, where the extinct beast is the state's official fossil.

"When I see these tracks, I half expect to look up and see a
stegosaurus walking away from me," he said. "That's how good they are."

Morrison, about 15 miles west of Denver, is the site of the first
dinosaur fossil and footprint discoveries in the West. Prints and bones
dating back 150 million years, before the Rocky Mountains formed.

The Dinosaur Ridge mines were opened by Arthur Lakes, a part-time
professor at what became the Colorado School of Mines. They were
busiest from 1877-1879 but then were largely untouched until volunteers
revisited the sites in 1993.

A grant in 2003 funded a new wave of exploration, and Mossbrucker said
a team of scientists and volunteers quietly assembled new discoveries
over the past two years, sharing them with loyal regular museum
visitors while members tried to determine what they had.

"We continue to find new things as recently as last week," Mossbrucker
said.
Discoveries include evidence of up to seven species of dinosaurs,
ranging from sparrow-sized to something as heavy as eight elephants,
all pressed into wet sand around an ancient river.

Mossbrucker said researchers were looking for fossils, flipping over
boulders when the tracks were uncovered. "You don't need to travel to
find important fossils. We just need to look in our own backyard,"
Mossbrucker said.

Associated Press

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060526/ap_on_sc/stegosaur_tracks_1&printer=1;_ylt=Arl1QCZB_Er_l69KO2BrwjNxieAA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

Oil up them muskets, boys. Now the pinkos are even showin' up in
Colorado. :)

-- Mike

.

Relevant Pages

  • [CNN.Com] [Germany] A New Dinosaur Fossil And The Error Of Bird Evolution
    ... A NEW DINOSAUR FOSSIL AND THE ERROR OF BIRD EVOLUTION ... Research conducted in 1997 showed that the Sinosauropteryx fossil that was the subject of intense media propaganda in 1996 did not actually possess a structure resembling bird feathers. ...
    (alt.religion.islam)
  • Dinosaurs were Mammals
    ... dinosaurs' red blood cells, fossilized or not. ... A dinosaur vertebra fossil was cut by a technician of the geology ... resemble the red blood cells of modern mammals. ...
    (sci.skeptic)
  • Scientists Get Rare Look at Dinosaur Soft Tissue - Fossil May Shed New Light on the Creatures
    ... Scientists Get Rare Look at Dinosaur Soft Tissue ... "It's a dinosaur that was turned into stone, essentially," said Lyson, ... "It's a fossil within a fossil," Manning said. ...
    (soc.culture.china)
  • So how deep were the flood waters?
    ... The first dinosaur fossil discovered in Norway is also the deepest one ... identified the fossil as the knucklebone of a plateosaur. ... "It's the first time a dinosaur bone has ever been found in such a deep ... core," Dr Hurum told the BBC News website. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: HUMAN FOOTPRINTS
    ... but human footprints have also been found. ... I've looked at thousands of fossil footprints (they are called ... the subject of fossil trackways. ...
    (talk.origins)