‘The Nation’s T. rex’: How a Montana family’s hike led to an incredible discovery – Two thousand miles through millions of years — Montana’s Dinosaur Trail

FORT PECK RESERVOIR, Mont. — A long time ago, in a part of this state that is now arid desert but was then humid swampland, an egg hatched. It was the beginning of an epoch-spanning life story that continues still, beginning a new chapter this week in the nation’s capital.

The egg is long gone. The skin and muscle of the animal that climbed out of it — 38 feet long and six tons once it grew — are history (or prehistory). But when it died on the banks of a creek after 18 good years at the top of the food chain, its bones settled into the enveloping mud. The current teased away the flesh, pushed its skull a few feet downstream, shifted a shoulder blade.

Two thousand miles through millions of years — Montana’s Dinosaur Trail