The leg belonging to a dinosaur victim of the giant asteroid, which fell on Earth 66 million years ago, was unearthed in Tanis (North Dakota) in the United States.
According to paleontologists quoted by the BBC, the animal was a Thescelosaurus, a small herbivore.
"It's the most incredible object we could imagine here, the best-case scenario, the one thing we've always wanted to find on this site and now we have it," said Robert DePalma, head of research at from the University of Manchester.
WOW!!
This is a beautifully preserved dinosaur leg!!
It's Thescelosaurus, a small herbivore, and is so well preserved, even the skin is fossilized!
It's from Tanis, a site in North America close to, or at, the time when the asteroid hit!
(BBC Photo)https://t.co/1LNyrTq22w pic.twitter.com/9QCTYEkhb9
— Jan Freedman (@JanFreedman) April 7, 2022
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Very scaly skin
Until now, scientists had little information on the skin appearance of Thescelosaurus.
This discovery made it possible to realize that these small dinosaurs "were very scaly like lizards", according to Paul Barrett of the Museum of Natural History in London, who examined it.
The latter was able to confirm that the animal was dead on the spot and probably buried the day the devastating asteroid hit the Earth.
“There is no evidence of disease on the paw, there is no obvious pathology and no bite marks.
There are no pieces that have disappeared either, ”summarizes the specialist.
Other specimens were found at the Tanis site.
To document this, a BBC team shot footage there for three years.
The report "the cemetery of dinosaurs" will be broadcast on April 15.
In this one, we see a fossil turtle that has been skewered by a wooden stake, the remains of small mammals and the burrows they dug, the skin of a triceratops, the embryo of a flying pterosaur inside its egg: so many animals trapped by the cataclysmic event of 66 million years ago.
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Science
Dinosaur
Paleontology
Asteroid
UNITED STATES