Scientists recently claimed they discovered a fossil of a dinosaur that was killed during the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaur population.
Driving the news: Researchers said they found a preserved leg of a dinosaur that is “complete with skin” at the unique Tanis dig site in North Dakota, according to BBC News.
- “The claim is the Tanis creatures were killed and entombed on the actual day a giant asteroid struck Earth,” BBC News reports. “The day 66 million years ago when the reign of the dinosaurs ended and the rise of mammals began.”
Why this matters: This is potentially a huge find, as there have been few remains from the final thousands of years before the asteroid’s impact, per BBC News.
What they’re saying: “We’ve got so many details with this site that tell us what happened moment by moment, it’s almost like watching it play out in the movies. You look at the rock column, you look at the fossils there, and it brings you back to that day,” Robert DePalma, a graduate student at the University of Manchester who led the dig, told BBC News.
- Per The Telegraph, professor Paul Barrett, an expert on dinosaurs from London’s Natural History Museum, said the fossil “looks like an animal whose leg has simply been ripped off really quickly.”
- “There’s no evidence on the leg of disease, there are no obvious pathologies, there’s no trace of the leg being scavenged, such as bite marks or bits of it that are missing,” he said, per The Telegraph.
Worth noting: David Attenborough has been filming at the Tanis location for the upcoming feature program “Dinosaurs: The Final Day,” which airs on BBC later in April, per National World.