Most kids love to dig in the backyard and look for hidden treasures. Although most of them only manage to find rocks and pieces of glass (and a mess in the backyard), some luckier kids discover precious artifacts.
That is the case of Wylie Brys, a four year old boy who, with the help of his father, discovered the fossilized remains of a 100 year old dinosaur from the Creteacean period.
Wylie discovered the dinosaur bones last year in September, while he and his father were looking for marine animal bones.
A team of paleontologists from the Southern Methodist University managed to excavate all the dinosaur remains last week and identified them as belonging to a nodosaur.
According to the experts, this species of heavily-armored dinosaur walked the Earth more than 100 million years ago.
Wylie said that at first he though he came across the remains of a turtle, at least that’s what his father told him when they discovered the bones. And now Wylie was told that he discovered a very precious piece of fossil.
This is not the first time Wylie and his father, Tim Brys, who works as a zookeeper in Dallas, went fossil hunting. Actually, according to both of them, this is their favorite hobby.
They said that they usually look for fish bones and other marine species, and finding a dinosaur was a huge, pleasant surprise for both of them.
Wylie and his father were digging behind a supermarket when they discovered the 100 million year old dinosaur fossils.
The paleontologists have taken the bones to the Southern Methodist University for further analysis.
The recently discovered bones belong to a nodosaur dinosaur. These prehistoric creatures belong to a group of dinosaurs known as Nodosauridae, from the ankylosaur family.
The experts believe that the nodosaurs lived in Europe, North America, Antarctica and Asia from the late Jurassic to the end of the Cretaceous period.
According to the researchers, the specimen discovered by Wylie and his father lived approximately 94 to 100 million years ago.
Dale Winkler, a professor of paleontology at Southern Methodist University, said that this kind of dinosaur is actually a rare find. Usually, in Texas the researchers discover mainly marine prehistoric creatures.
According to Winkler, the dinosaur bones will be completely clean in a few months, which means that it could take a few years before the experts know all there is about this dinosaur.
Image Source: bbc
