70 million-year-old dinosaur fossil discovered under Denver Museum of Nature and Science
Sadie Harley
scientific editor
Robert Egan
associate editor
A new dinosaur fossil at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science was found buried hundreds of feet under the facility's parking lot in January, making the herbivorous animal's remains the oldest and deepest dinosaur fossil ever discovered in the city.
Museum crews came across the partial-bone fossil while conducting a geothermal drilling test to look at switching from natural gas to geothermal energy, officials said on July 9.
A research team was working on a simultaneous project to better understand the Denver Basin's geology by drilling into the bedrock when they found a partial-bone fossil belonging to a 67.5 million-year-old dinosaur among the rocks taken from 763 feet below the surface.
"This is a scientifically and historically thrilling find for both the museum and the larger Denver community," Curator of Geology James Hagadorn said in a statement.
"This fossil comes from an era just before the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs, and it offers a rare window into the ecosystem that once existed right beneath modern-day Denver."
Museum officials identified the fossils as the vertebrae of a plant-eating dinosaur similar to the thescelosaurus, a 10- to 12-foot, two-legged animal that lived during the Cretaceous period, when Denver's landscape consisted of tropical swamps, forests and floodplains.
The fossil is also similar to the herbivore edmontosaurus, a larger four-legged dinosaur that roamed the region alongside fierce predators like the Tyrannosaurus rex.
"In my 35 years at the museum, we've never had an opportunity quite like this—to study the deep geologic layers beneath our feet with such precision. That this fossil turned up here, in City Park, is nothing short of magical," research associate Bob Raynolds said in a statement.
Other dinosaur fossils found in metro Denver have been discovered through construction projects, including the partial skeleton of a triceratops in Highlands Ranch in 2019 and bone fragments found during the construction of Coors Field in 1994, inspiring the Colorado Rockies' purple dino mascot, Dinger.
The fossil is now on display as part of the museum's "Discovering Teen Rex" exhibit, which shows scientists working to prepare a juvenile T. rex fossil for public display after it was discovered by three boys in North Dakota.
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