{"id":55098,"date":"2025-07-10T21:15:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T21:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/55098\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T21:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T21:15:13","slug":"70-million-year-old-fossil-found-under-denver-museum-of-nature-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/55098\/","title":{"rendered":"70 million-year-old fossil found under Denver Museum of Nature & Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new dinosaur fossil at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science<\/a> was found buried hundreds of feet under the facility\u2019s parking lot in January, making the herbivorous animal\u2019s remains the oldest and deepest dinosaur fossil ever discovered in the city.<\/p>\n

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 Wednesday.<\/a><\/p>\n

A research team was working on a simultaneous project to better understand the Denver Basin\u2019s geology<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a scientifically and historically thrilling find for both the museum and the larger Denver community,\u201d Curator of Geology James Hagadorn said in a statement. \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Museum officials identified the fossils as the vertebrae of a plant-eating dinosaur similar to the thescelosaurus<\/a>, a 10- to 12-foot, two-legged animal that lived during the Cretaceous period, when Denver\u2019s landscape consisted of tropical swamps, forests and floodplains.<\/p>\n

The fossil is also similar to the herbivore edmontosaurus<\/a>, a larger four-legged dinosaur that roamed the region alongside fierce predators like the Tyrannosaurus rex.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my 35 years at the museum, we\u2019ve never had an opportunity quite like this \u2014 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,\u201d research associate Bob Raynolds said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Other dinosaur fossils found in metro Denver have been discovered through construction projects, including the partial skeleton of a triceratops<\/a> in Highlands Ranch in 2019 and bone fragments found during the construction of Coors Field in 1994, inspiring the Colorado Rockies\u2019 purple dino mascot, Dinger<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The fossil is now on display as part of the museum\u2019s \u201cDiscovering Teen Rex\u201d 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n

Originally Published: July 9, 2025 at 12:49 PM MDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new dinosaur fossil at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science was found buried hundreds of feet…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":55099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[40644,4439,9577,8605,40643,25052,4440,1370,50,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-55098","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-city-park","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-colorado-news","11":"tag-denver","12":"tag-denver-museum-of-nature-and-science","13":"tag-dinosaurs","14":"tag-front-range","15":"tag-latest-headlines","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-science","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114831015075847195","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}