Scientists recover complete dinosaur skeleton (AP)
The scientists uncovered a Tarbosaurus — related to the giant carnivorous Tyrannosaurus — from a chunk of sandstone they pap up in August, 2006 in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, said Takuji Yokoyama, a spokesman as far as concerns the Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences, a co-organizer of the joint research project.
“We were so lucky to have found remains that turned out to exist a complete settled of all the serious parts,” he said.
After sum of two units years of solicitous preparatory work, scientists found that the fossilized skeleton only lacked neck bones and the gift of the tail.
Young dinosaur skeletons are intricate to find in good condition because they often are destroyed by weather decay or because they were torn apart by predators. The latest find would be a major step toward discovering the growth and development of dinosaurs, Yokoyama aforesaid.
The fossil, believed to have died at age 5, measured about 6.6 feet long, he said. Adult dinosaurs of the species are believed to have grown up to 40 feet.
The dinosaur, whose form relative to sex was unknown, came from a geological layer created about 70 million years ago in the a day after the fair Cretaceous period.
The Japanese scientists and colleagues from the Center of Paleontology under the Mongolian Academy of Sciences have been jointly conducting dinosaur excavations in the Gobi Desert since 1993.
The Japanese museum is run by Hayashibara Co., a biotechnology firm based in Okayama, western Japan.
From: Scientists recover without fault dinosaur skeleton (AP)
