Scarred Dinosaur 'Mummy' Suggests Such Fossils Aren't Quite So Rare - The Wall Street Journal

An illustration of a benignant of dinosaur known arsenic an Edmontosaurus, above, and its mummified close hand, below. Photo: Top: Natee Puttapip, below: Daan Meens

Most dinosaur specimens are conscionable fossilized bones, but a fistful besides have fossilized brushed tissues—and a caller look astatine a duck-billed dinosaur specimen nicknamed Dakota suggests that these dinosaur “mummies” are much communal than antecedently believed.

Dakota’s fossilized tegument bears unhealed coiled and wound marks apt made by scavengers aft the animal’s death, according to a survey published Wednesday successful the peer-reviewed diary PLOS One. That suggests the Edmontosaurus—a multi-ton herbivore that died astir 70 cardinal years ago, earlier its fossilized remains were recovered successful southwestern North Dakota successful 1999—had been exposed to the aerial agelong capable to go desiccated earlier being buried by sediment and aboriginal fossilized.