Missouri Institute of Natural Science in Springfield unveils new dinosaur find

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - The Missouri Institute of Natural Science in Springfield unpacked a new dinosaur find.

The geologists worked on a dig in Wyoming for a 66 million-year-old Nodasour. And they brought it back to Springfield. This is a rare find. There are more T-Rex skeletons than nodosaur skeletons. There are hundreds of pieces of the armored dino waiting to be unpacked and cleaned up before it can be put on display.

“That’s the fun part when you’re walking these ravines, and you see this trickle of bone, you see these little fragments of bone coming out,” said Missouri Institute of Natural Science Matt Forir. “There’s that moment of excitement. Is it just a few bone fragments? Or is it something bigger? You know, could it be just the tail? Could it be the entire thing you don’t know? Most of the time, it’s just a few fragments, and you move along. But when you start to find these scutes and when you start to see that take shape, you know it’s something special.”

The group was working on a dig to find more pieces of the triceratops on display at the museum when they found the nodosaur. Getting the dino here to Springfield has been two years in the making. Once the dino is all together, it will be a pretty big display.

“Roughly 500 scutes from the back and these guys are mainly this big shells, and then little bones and underneath like the ribs, and vertebrae. We don’t have a good calculation on the size yet, but an average nodosaur is going to be around 16 feet in length,” said Forir.

While on this dig, they also found a piece from Henry the Triceratops that is already on display here at the museum.

“Boy was I shocked you know a 41-inch long Ischium that you know we’ve been kind of looking for,” said Forir. “We were kind of surprised that we haven’t found it yet, and now we get to go back and now we’ve got more to dig.”

There is work to do on the new dinosaur. It will not be on display for a while.

The Missouri Institute of Natural Science is having a 5k on Friday at 6 p.m. to raise money for more discoveries like these. For more info CLICK HERE.

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