A block of dinosaur fossils that weighs more than a ton arrived Friday at the Field Museum, where researchers will have a big job ahead of them.
The fossils come from a dinosaur that was 35 feet long, had a bill like a duck, and was discovered in Missouri.
Dr. Peter Makovicky, a former curator at the Field Museum and who is now with the University of Minnesota, leads the team that has been carefully digging out the fossils since 2017.
He said because the fossils were found in clay, digging them out was challenging.
“Rather than using jackhammers and rock saws and pickaxes like you might in other parts of the world, a lot of the work we have to do is done with small hand tools, some of these clay tools that we actually go to Michael’s to buy that you might see in a pottery studio,” Makovicky said.
The fossils then had to be wrapped in a plaster shell to be transported to the Field Museum. They arrived in a 25,000 block, nicknamed "The Beast."
It's now the job of researchers at the Field Museum to carefully remove the plaster shell and extract the fossils, before they can be studied. That's expected to take about a year to complete.
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