"You might not think a paleontologist looking for 66-million-year-old fossils would need to ask a rancher about his great-grandmother's job in the Wyoming badlands. But that's what Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago, did when he was trying to track down a historic site where a famous dinosaur mummy was found in 1908. Sereno's work, published in the journal Science, brings new clarity about the appearance of the duck-billed Edmontosaurus annectens, a massive herbivore from the Cretaceous period."
""It involved sleuthing archives and finding photographs from these original excavations that no one knew of, and then also talking to ranchers," Sereno says of the research. Looking for a post office Sereno was hunting for the spot where the famed collector Charles Sternberg discovered a dinosaur mummy in the rough terrain of eastern Wyoming. He managed to find historical photos and a note from Sternberg recounting his path to the site, back in the era of horse-drawn carriages."
A team relocated a 1908 Edmontosaurus annectens mummy site in eastern Wyoming by combining archival sleuthing, historic photographs, a collector's field notes, and interviews with local ranchers. The area, dubbed the 'mummy zone,' contains a thick river-sand layer that captured and preserved dinosaur body outlines. Technicians carefully removed sand grains from specimens, revealing exquisite details such as hooves and a spiky tail. The findings show that fragile clay templates or masks can form the preserved integument and body impressions seen in dinosaur mummies, clarifying the animal's external appearance and preservation processes.
Read at www.npr.org
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