DENVER – Several weeks ago, construction workers digging near a Denver, Colorado, retirement home made an exciting discovery: dinosaur bones.
Paleontologists from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science quickly got to work identifying the partial skeleton found in Highlands Ranch, a short drive south of Denver.
Now, they say it was an adult triceratops buried in the bedrock — and the fossils were 68 million years old.
“It’s always exciting to get a call about possible fossils, and I can’t wait to share more details as we continue to dig,” Tyler Lyson said, according to the museum’s press release.
“Finds like this, while relatively rare, are a great reminder of how dynamic our planet is and how much more there is out there to discover.”
Believe it or not, Denver is a fossil hotspot, especially when it comes to triceratops.
In 2017, horned dinosaur fossils were uncovered at Thornton, a Denver construction site, and were revealed to belong to a triceratops relative, the torosaurus.
Ever wonder why the Colorado Rockies sport a Barney lookalike as their mascot? Back when Coors’ Field was under construction, an unidentified fossil was discovered there, too.
Scientists say the possibility of unearthing more fossils runs very high.
Now, the construction crews are working with scientists to further explore the site in search of more fossil finds.
