Archaeologists Unearth Dinosaur Fossil in Incredibly Ironic Location
While drilling 763 feet into the ground as part of a geothermal energy study, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science unearthed a fossilized vertebra belonging to a small, plant-eating dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period.
The bone, roughly hockey puck-sized, was buried for an estimated 67 million years, NBC News reported.
'Finding a dinosaur bone in a core is like hitting a hole in one from the moon,' said James Hagadorn, curator of geology at the museum. 'It's like winning the Willy Wonka factory. It's incredible, it's super rare.'
The odds truly were astronomical.
Bore samples that are narrow, just a couple of inches wide, rarely yield fossils, let alone a dinosaur vertebra beneath the museum's own lot. According to museum officials, there have been only two other similar finds from bore holes anywhere in the world.
The fossil's characteristics suggest it came from an ornithopod—likely a duck-billed dinosaur or thescelosaurus. Nearby fossilized vegetation points to a lush, swampy environment once covering the area.
The irony of the discovery isn't lost on museum staff. The DMNS is a popular destination for dinosaur enthusiasts, featuring full-size skeletons of species like the T. rex. Now, one of the museum's most recent fossil additions was sitting directly beneath the cars of visiting guests.
While the find is generating buzz, not everyone is calling it a scientific game-changer.
'It's a surprise, I guess. Scientifically, it's not that exciting,' said Thomas Williamson, curator of paleontology at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science.
Still, local paleontologists celebrated the moment. 'It's absolutely legit and VERY COOL!' said Erin LaCount of Dinosaur Ridge.
As for excavating deeper? That's unlikely.
'I would love to dig a 763-foot hole in the parking lot to excavate that dinosaur, the rest of it,' Hagadorn joked. 'But I don't think that's going to fly because we really need parking.'Archaeologists Unearth Dinosaur Fossil in Incredibly Ironic Location first appeared on Men's Journal on Jul 13, 2025
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Medscape
26 minutes ago
- Medscape
Diverticular Disease Demystified: Myths, Risks & Modern Care
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Hello. I'm Dr David Johnson, professor of medicine and chief of gastroenterology at Eastern Virginia Medical School and Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Welcome back to GI Common Concerns . Diverticulosis and diverticulitis are both incredibly common conditions. It's estimated that over 70% of people aged 80 or older who undergo colonoscopy will have diverticulosis. Approximately 4% of those will develop diverticulitis in their lifetime, and roughly 15% of those cases will be complicated disease. Patients frequently ask what they can do to prevent diverticulitis or its recurrence, and the evidence to inform such conversations has evolved in recent years. This video provides an update on where we are presently. Rethinking Dietary Causes We've long emphasized diet in the management of diverticulosis and diverticulitis, and we considered it axiomatic that patients need to avoid corn, nuts, and seeds. However, a 2008 prospective cohort study in men challenged that approach, observing no association between consuming those dietary components and the risk of developing diverticulosis or diverticular complications. Although that study was performed exclusively in men, the lifetime risk for diverticulitis is actually higher in women, at approximately 5% vs 3.1%, respectively. A recent prospective analysis published in Annals of Internal Medicine from researchers at University of North Carolina adds important insights. It used validated dietary questionnaires in a large cohort of women [who had a sister with breast cancer but did not have breast cancer themselves at enrollment]. This allowed investigators to determine incident cases of diverticulitis over time, without the risk of recall bias. Researchers identified more than 1500 incident cases of diverticulitis for nearly 415,000 patient years of follow-up. They reported no association between a primary diagnosis of diverticulitis and consumption of corn, nuts, or seeds, including fresh fruits with seeds. Similarly, there was no link between those foods and the development of complicated diverticulitis resulting in abscess surgery or fistula. Collectively, these findings indicate that our patients do not necessarily need to avoid these foods. Instead, we can advise them to adopt an anti-inflammatory diet, such as the Mediterranean diet, which this recent study in women indicated had risk-reduction benefits. My own patients find these diets very easy to follow and quite practical. Modifiable Risk Factors for Recurrence The recurrence rate for diverticulitis is notably high. Within the first year after complete recovery, 8% of patients have an episode of recurrence, and approximately 20% within 10 years. The risk increases with subsequent episodes. After a second episode, it rises to 18% at 1 year and 50% at 10 years. After a third episode, the risk for recurrence is 40% at 3 years. Therefore, it's important to identify for our patients anything they can prospectively and proactively do to prevent a recurrent episode. There are several commonsense risk factors our patients should avoid. Smoking reduction or abstinence has proven benefits. Alcoholism, but not alcohol in and of itself, is associated with a higher risk. Chronic nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) use is a known risk factor. Guidelines recommend the avoidance of regular NSAID use, although aspirin should be continued when justified for cardiac indications. Weight reduction, particularly among those with truncal obesity, seems to reduce the risk for diverticulitis. Vigorous physical activity also has an inverse, beneficial relationship for diverticulitis. Identifying all these approaches is a good, simple way to help patients going forward. Symptoms, Scans, and Supplementation The guidelines are shifting around the rush to use antibiotics for episodes of recurrence. For uncomplicated diverticulitis, antibiotics don't seem to do better than not using antibiotics. In general, we have shifted toward advising that patients adopt a clear liquid diet, avoid antibiotics, and inform us if they experience any alarm features, particularly fever or worsening pain. Exceptions to the recommendations to avoid antibiotics are made for patients who are frail, have multiple comorbidities, are immunocompromised, or have laboratory findings of severe inflammation, including C-reactive protein > 140 mg/L or a white blood count > 15,000. In such patients, antibiotics are still indicated right away. The extent of diverticulitis involvement on a CT scan would also be an indication for antibiotics. However, we don't want to rush to recommend a CT scan in all patients. This reflects our increasing awareness of the radiogenic risk of CT scans and abdominal CT scans, which I discussed in a recent video. CT scans are really overutilized, and we potentially need to take a step back in when we use them. Vitamin D status is another important factor, which I touched on in a recent article. Low vitamin D levels are associated with a higher risk for diverticulitis. I routinely check the vitamin D levels in my patients and generally recommend vitamin D supplementation, given its very low risk and potential prophylactic value in patients with a history of diverticulitis. Genetic Predisposition There's a strong genetic predisposition for diverticulitis, which we often overlook in our discussions with patients. Over 30 genetic loci have been associated with diverticulosis, and at least four seem to be associated with diverticulitis. This is key when considering patients with a family history of diverticulitis, including their siblings. In monozygotic twins, the risk is higher than in dizygotic twins, accounting for about 50% of the recurrence risk for diverticulitis. We need to be proactive when asking about family history in order to identify patients who are at greater risk for disease development or recurrence. Lastly, I always tell my patients that intermittent, lingering symptoms, such as cramping, are quite common. About 45% of patients experience intermittent symptoms after recovery, which is mostly attributable to visceral hypersensitivity. There may also be a microbiome-related explanation for motility-related muscular changes related to diverticular disease. We can assure patients that they don't need to be alarmed by such symptoms, nor must they seek out immediate help from their healthcare provider. These symptoms are different from the acute and persistent worsening pain typified for diverticulitis. Instead, we can consider treating them with antispasmodics or low-dose antidepressants to manage their symptoms. I hope this overview gives you practical, evidence-based tools for discussing the management of diverticular disease with your patients. These conversations can be a lot more meaningful when supported by the latest data, allowing us all to do a better job. I'm Dr David Johnson. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to chatting with you again soon.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Free AI-powered summer camp helps Arizona kids catch up in class—and have fun doing it
A group of Arizona educators is trying something different to help Arizona students become more confident learners with the use of artificial intelligence and teachers in the classroom.
Gizmodo
an hour ago
- Gizmodo
A Meteor Impact May Have Caused a Giant Landslide in the Grand Canyon
Researchers have long puzzled over the presence of driftwood and lake sediments in Stanton's Cave in the eastern Grand Canyon, whose mouth sits 150 feet (45.7 meters) above the river. How could the material possibly have reached that height? According to Karl Karlstrom, a geologist from the University of New Mexico, it would have had to be carried by flood levels ten times bigger than any seen in the past several thousand years. An international team of researchers proposes a surprising chain of events as the culprit behind this mystery. They suggest that around 56,000 years ago, the meteorite impact that created Arizona's Meteor Crater triggered a landslide large enough to dam the Colorado River and create a (now bygone) lake almost 300 feet (91.4 m) deep, which would have allowed the driftwood and lake sediments to float into the cave. 'Two iconic features of southwestern USA geology are linked by our hypothesis that the Barringer Meteorite Crater (Meteor Crater) impact in northern Arizona triggered cliff collapse in Grand Canyon 56,000 years ago that dammed the Colorado River,' the researchers, co-led by Karlstrom, wrote in a study published Tuesday in the journal Geology. Scientists first came upon the mysterious driftwood in Stanton's Cave in 1970, when yet unrefined radiocarbon dating techniques indicated it was over 35,000 years old. In the 1980s, one of the recent paper's co-authors suggested the landslide theory—minus the meteorite impact—when he shared evidence of an ancient rockslide 22 river miles (35 km) downstream of the cave. In 2019, Jonathan Palmer, another co-author of the study and a tree-ring specialist from the University of New South Wales, dated the driftwood to around 55,000 years old. When Palmer later visited Meteor Crater, he realized that the age of the formation—around 50,000 years—was oddly similar to that of the wood. 'Now there was this question, completely out of the blue, that nobody had asked before,' Chris Baisan, co-lead author of the study and senior research specialist at the University of Arizona's Tree-Ring Lab, said in the university statement. The researchers then recovered and dated additional sediment and wood samples from a site downstream from Stanton's Cave, located at a similar height above the river, both of which turned out to be 55,600 years old. 'The mean of radiocarbon dates from driftwood, IRSL dates from cave sediment, and dates on the Meteor Crater impact converge into a narrow window of time at 55.60 ± 1.30 ka [55,600 years ago, +/- 1,300 years], which gives credence to the hypothesis that they were causally related,' the researchers explained in the study. What's more, the team also found two places where river cobbles cover dam material, likely deposited when the river overflowed the dam and began to erode it. As for the meteor impact, David Kring, co-author and Meteor Crater science coordinator, estimated that it would have caused an earthquake 100 miles (160.9 kilometers) away at the Grand Canyon with a magnitude of between 3.5 and 4.1. The event's shock wave, blast wave, and impact could have triggered the landslide, Baisan explained in the statement. 'We put together these arguments without claiming we have final proof,' Karlstrom admitted. 'There are other possibilities, such as a random rockfall or local earthquake within a thousand years of the Meteor Crater impact that could have happened independently. Nevertheless, the meteorite impact, the massive landslide, the lake deposits and the driftwood high above river level are all rare and unusual occurrences.' As if meteorites weren't scary enough, it seems like we might have one more thing to worry about if scientists' projections for asteroid 2024 YR4 turn out to be wrong—giant landslides.
