North Dakota: Workers uncovering mummified dinosaur

[laststeamtrain]

Workers uncovering mummified dinosaur

By BLAKE NICHOLSON, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 40 minutes ago

BISMARCK, N.D. - Using tiny brushes and chisels, workers picking at a big greenish-black rock in the basement of North Dakota's state museum are meticulously uncovering something amazing: a nearly complete dinosaur, skin and all.

Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota, a duckbilled dinosaur unearthed in southwestern North Dakota in 2004, is covered by fossilized skin that is hard as iron. It's among just a few mummified dinosaurs in the world, say the researchers who are slowly freeing it from a 65-million-year-old rock tomb.

"This is the closest many people will ever get to seeing what large parts of a dinosaur actually looked like, in the flesh," said Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Manchester University in England, a member of the international team researching Dakota.

"This is not the usual disjointed sentence or fragment of a word that the fossil records offer up as evidence of past life. This is a full chapter."...http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080318/ap_on_sc/dinosaur_mummy

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. This gives a hint at the skin texture,

but is there also a hint of its original color? The article wasn't clear.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. no way to tell, unfortunately. They do think it had stripes though.

tidbit found in this article...
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2007/december/news_12930.html

[whistler162]

3. Shockingly some experts believe....

the dinosaur was purple! ;)

[unpossibles]

4. that is amazing!

I wonder what the Creation Museum will have to say about it...

[FiveGoodMen]

6. Well, I don't know the specifics, but I'm quite sure they're going to lie.

[unpossibles]

7. a safe bet, I'm sure

I often wonder: are they liars or just plain willfully ignorant?

I'm going to say a lot of both.

[acmavm]

5. Beat ya to it this morning

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=228&topic_id=38965&mesg_id=38965