A Dinosaur Bone Hid in a Drawer for 40 Years!
Quick Summary
Way back in 1985, a scientist picked up a bone in Antarctica and put it in a museum collection. It sat in a drawer for about 40 years. Now scientists have figured out what it really is: a tail bone from a long-necked dinosaur called a titanosaur!
What Happened?
In 1985, a geologist named Mike Thomson was exploring James Ross Island in Antarctica. He was studying rock layers and collecting fossils. He found a bone and wrote it down as a “large reptile.” Then the bone went into the collections of the British Antarctic Survey and stayed there for decades.
Recently, a paleontologist named Mark Evans was looking through those old drawers. He saw the bone and thought, “Hmm, this looks interesting. Could it be a dinosaur?” His team compared its shape to bones from other dinosaurs, and the answer was yes! It comes from the tail of a titanosaur, a plant-eating dinosaur with a long neck.
This titanosaur was about 23 feet long. That sounds big, but it was actually small for its family, so it may have been a youngster. Scientists think its body floated out to sea long ago and sank to the sea floor, where it slowly turned into a fossil. The discovery was published this week in a science journal.
Why Does It Matter?
Dinosaur fossils from Antarctica are extremely rare because the continent is buried under thick ice. Every single bone teaches scientists something new about what lived there.
Here is the mind-blowing part: about 80 million years ago, when this dinosaur was alive, Antarctica was not a frozen desert. It was covered in lush green forests! This bone is more proof that our planet has changed in huge ways over time.
It also shows that discoveries do not only happen outside in the field. Sometimes they happen inside a museum, in a dusty drawer, when a curious person takes a second look.
Big Words
- Fossil — the remains or traces of an ancient living thing preserved in rock.
- Paleontologist — a scientist who studies fossils and ancient life.
- Geologist — a scientist who studies rocks and how the Earth changes.
- Titanosaur — a group of huge, long-necked, plant-eating dinosaurs.
- Continent — one of Earth’s seven biggest pieces of land, like Antarctica.
Fun Fact
Some titanosaurs were among the largest animals to ever walk the Earth. A few grew longer than three school buses parked end to end!
Think About It
If you could look through a museum’s storage drawers, what would you hope to find?
Sources
- Associated Press (via ABC News and CBS News): “A rare dinosaur fossil from Antarctica is found tucked away in a drawer”
- ScienceAlert: “Two Scientists Found a Bone in Antarctica in 1985…”
- Study published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica