Three Boys Discovered a T. Rex Fossil on a Hike. Soon, It Will Be on Display.
Three young boys on a hike in the North Dakota Badlands stumbled upon the fossilized bones of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex.
The boys were able to help scientists identify and excavate the fossil.
The juvenile T. rex is now on display at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
Jessin Fisher may have been only 10 years old at the time of a family hike in the Hell Creek Badlands of North Dakota, but he was already a bona fide dinosaur aficionado. So when he saw his brother, Liam Fisher, 8, checking out what appeared to be fossilized bones, he knew they were on to something.
They wouldn’t know just how special the find was for another year, but it turns out that the boys had located a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex in the hills of North Dakota. The discovery is now on display—with a documentary about the find to go along with it—at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
In the summer of 2022, Sam Fisher took his sons, Jessin and Liam, and their cousin, Kaiden, on a hike. Liam was the first to spot a “white thing” in the grass, and the group was soon astonished by what appeared to be a dinosaur fossil. Sam contacted his high school friend, Tyler Lyson—now at the Denver Museum—to help identify the find, and the following summer, Lyson’s team of paleontologists returned to excavate the fossil (the junior explorers helped with the process).
“We knew these kids had found a great skeleton,” Lyson, expedition leader and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, said in a statement, adding that he fully expected it to be a duckbill dinosaur. He was soon proven wrong, especially when only 30 minutes of investigation uncovered the tip of a tooth, and just a bit more digging revealed a lower jaw with big, serrated teeth.
“He broke off this tooth,” Jessin said about Lyson digging around the fossil, “and picked it up and we shared the same look at the same time staring at each other. And from that moment we knew it was a T. rex.”
In that moment, Lyson said that they were the only people that knew they had a T. rex “right underneath us.”
“When we told everyone, the euphoria was amazing,” he said. “Just a remarkable, remarkable moment. I mean, it’s not every day that you find such an amazing dinosaur.”
And according to Lyson, that excitement never wavered. Based on the length of the tibia and size of the teeth and jaw, they knew they had a small specimen—likely a juvenile T. rex, estimated between 12 to 14 years old.
“It would have weighed about half as much as some of the most famous Tyrannosaurus rex specimens,” Lyson said, “which is really exciting because there just aren’t that many small specimens known, which will allow us to do histology to really determine how old our specimen is, as well as plot these data with other T. rex data to help determine overall rates of growth.”
Things moved quickly in North Dakota after that. Typically, dinosaur fossil finds happen in hard rock, so it can take time to carefully chisel away the fossil. “The kids found this skeleton right as it started to erode out of the hill,” Lyson said. “That’s really important because if you see a lot of bones washed down the hill, that means you had a good dinosaur skeleton once upon a time. But in this case, we had the bones just starting to peek out of the hill in this really soft sandstone rock.”
The team needed to wrap the T. rex fossil in plaster to help preserve it, especially while using a helicopter to move the bones onto a trailer. Overall, the excavation captured roughly 30 percent of the skeleton.
The Hell Creek formation is known for its fossil ecosystem, and has offered up a diverse range of specimens ranging from Triceratops to more modern animals. Adding a T. rex to the mix really shows how this apex predator once dominated what was a lush, flower-filled landscape full of rivers.
The story of the excavation of this T. rex was captured on film, and will be part of a new 40-minute documentary the museum will show on its Infinity Theater screen. It will be played in tandem with the temporary “Discovering Teen Rex” exhibit, meant to highlight the T. rex find and inspire junior explorers.
“I have a huge dinosaur encyclopedia that I read through almost every day,” Jessin said. “I know most of them. My class thinks I’m a dino nerd.” Now Jessin is a dino nerd with a significant scientific discovery under his belt.
You Might Also Like
