Montana dinosaur dig will post daily updates to Web

A company that digs up dinosaurs will use the Internet to give the public a look as it unearths a Tyrannosaurus rex from 65 million years ago.

The excavation is taking place on private property in eastern Montana at a location being kept secret for now.

By Wayne Ortman, Associated Press

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2004-05-07-trex-dig_x.htm

Excavation so far gives researchers hope that it’s a T. rex that may be mostly intact, said Peter Larson, president of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research at Hill City.

The Institute’s previous T. rex finds include Sue, which is about 80% complete, and Stan, which is about 70% complete. Sue is considered the most complete T. rex fossil found so far and is on display at a Chicago museum.

"I think there’s a good chance of having most of this dinosaur," Larson said Friday. "It’s laying on its right side. What we’ve seen of the left side is encouraging."

The Institute’s Unearthing T.rex site (http://www.unearthing trex.com) will be updated daily from the field. It will include video and photographs of what’s been found and offer participants a chance to ask questions or join in a discussion.

Larson said it’s the first interactive T. rex dig and gives students a chance to take part before summer vacation.

The excavation by a crew of about a dozen could take two to three weeks, a process that will go faster because the bones appear to be in close proximity and the soil is siltstone that should be relatively easy to move, Larson said.

"The last two rexes (excavations) took seven months, but it was spread in an area 60 feet by 300 feet and in some cases was buried almost 30 feet," he said.

"In this case we don’t have that kind of bore burden problem. What we’ve seen so far is as much articulation as we’ve seen with any dinosaur. In other words, the knee bone is connected to the ankle bone, and so on."

Finding the bones in siltstone raises the possibility that some skin has been preserved, something not found in any T. rex specimen before, he said.

The property owner and an amateur collector found the dinosaur, temporarily nicknamed Wyrex, Larson said.

"The rancher kicked lose a toe bone and had the other fellow come over and look at it. The other fellow brought it to me and I identified it as a T. rex bone."

The landowner owns the T. rex and the Institute has been asked to help find a museum to house it, Larson said.

The T. rex named Sue was dug up in 1990 in northwestern South Dakota. The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago paid more than $8 million for it at a public auction.

Wyrex is thought to be a sub-adult. Its large leg bone is 47 inches long. The same bone in Sue is 54 inches long, Larson said.

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