It might be easier for dinosaurs to “mummify” than scientists thought.
Unhealed bite marks on fossilized dinosaur skin suggest that the animal’s carcass was scavenged before being covered in sediment, researchers report October 12 in PLOS ONE. The finding challenges the traditional view that burial very soon after death is required for dinosaur “mummies” to naturally form.
The new research centers on Dakota, an Edmontosaurus fossil unearthed in North Dakota in 1999. About 67 million years ago, Dakota was a roughly 12-meter-long, duck-billed dinosaur that ate plants. Today, Dakota’s fossilized limbs and tail still contain large areas of well-preserved, fossilized scaly skin, a striking example of dinosaur “mummification.”
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