Fossil will return for display in park’s visitor’s center
This is a revised version of an earlier release, corrected to reflect that the original fossil, and not a cast, will be returned to Makoshika State Park
MILES CITY – The good news is that a very popular dinosaur fossil that was a fixture alongside one of Makoshika State Park’s hiking trails has not been stolen, vandalized or damaged; rather, it has been excavated by Museum of the Rockies.
It’s a bit of a shock to visitors who have become accustomed to seeing the hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur, vertebrae along the Diane Gabriel Trail. But its connection to the park will live on.
The plan is for Museum of the Rockies to transport the fossil back to its facilities and do preservation work to get it ready for display. Once the fossil is prepared, it will be returned to the park to be put on display in the visitor’s center for the public to view. The museum also has offered to help the park create interpretive signage to be placed near where the fossil was taken from along the trail.
MOR has conducted field work at Makoshika every summer since 2016, according to John Scannella, the John R. Horner Curator of Paleontology there. Removal of the hadrosaur fossil was part of this season’s work.
“I was contacted by the park with the concern that, because it was positioned over a sinkhole – kind of precariously – if erosion continues it might be lost down into the sinkhole,” Scannella explained.
The fossil consists of several vertebrae in a line in a sandstone concretion, part of the articulated backbone of a duckbill. Scannella estimates it to be just under three feet wide and about 300 pounds.
Scannella and his crew of mostly students wrapped the fossil in a field jacket of burlap and plaster and prepared it for the trip to MOR. Along the way they unearthed a surprise.
“Part of the hipbone was behind it, which had never been seen before because it was in the rock,” he said.
