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Professors name dinosaur after digging up thousands of bones

Published 1:30 am Friday, April 14, 2017

By Associated Press

Professors name dinosaur after digging up thousands of bones
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Professors name dinosaur after digging up thousands of bones
Brigham Young University paleontologist Brooks Britt (left) and Dinosaur National Monument paleontologist Daniel Chure hold up a sauropod humerus they excavated from a hillside on the Fossil Discovery Trail at Dinosaur National Monument in Utah in 2014. The fossil was vandalized, making it necessary to remove it for safekeeping. In a paper published Tuesday, April 11, 2017, BYU officials say they’ve identified the fossil as that of a new dinosaur, named Moabosaurus, since it was found near Moab, Utah. (Geoff Liesik / Deseret News via AP, file)

Associated Press

MOAB, Utah — University officials say they’ve named a dinosaur that they found hidden in Utah.

Brigham Young University professors have created a full picture of the sauropod from thousands of fossilized bones and published a paper Tuesday in the University of Michigan’s Contributions from the Museum of Paleontology.

The creature has been named Moabosaurus because it was found near Moab. Like other sauropods, researchers say it was an herbivore with a long neck and tail and a small brain but it was much smaller, at 32 feet.

The paper says the Moabosaurus is 125 million years old and its skeleton was found in a quarry. Geologist Brooks Britt and his team have been excavating the bones since the late 1970s.

The skeleton is on display at BYU’s Museum of Paleontology.

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