Museum Crews & Volunteers Make Headway On Highlands Ranch Dino
HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. (CBS4) - Dig crews spent a sunny Saturday and Sunday learning more about the bones found at a construction site in Highlands Ranch. The bones were discovered a week ago.
A construction worker at the site, near Santa Fe Drive and C-470, found one fossil and alerted his supervisors, who then alerted the museum.
Paleontologists at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science found even more bones over the weekend. They jacketed (covered in plaster) the exposed bones.
Live from the horned dinosaur dig site in Highlands Ranch. Photojournalist Mark Neitro is out this morning with Denver Museum of Nature & Science paleontologists & volunteers as they carefully remove this 66-million-year-old fossil:
Posted by CBS Denver on Sunday, May 26, 2019
"So the new bones that are coming out looks like one of them is a potential piece of frill from the dinosaur which will be nice to help diagnosis which kind of ceratopian it is or horned dinosaur it is. The other two bones are smaller and they're pretty muddy so they are hard to identify right now," said Natalie Toth, chief fossil preparator on Sunday.
While crews have not determined which dinosaur it is, they say it is a horned animal.
"We've uncovered a number of ribs. We found a lower leg bone, tibia, upper leg bone, humerus. We think we have parts of the dinosaur's skull," Toth said on Thursday.
Crews tell CBS4 it's likely something similar to a triceratops or a torosaurus, discovered in Thornton two years ago.
The site is not open to the public.