The excavated Dueling Dinosaurs. Photograph: Samuel Farar
The Guardian has an article about the so called "Dueling Dinosaurs". The "Dueling Dinosaurs" are a large fossil plate that consists of both a 28 foot long ceratoptian (probably Triceratops horridus) and a 22 foot long theropod (possibly Tyrannosaurus rex or the controversial Nanotyrannus lancensis). Both skeletons are fairly complete, with exceptional preservation, fully articulated, with envelops of mummified skin, and probably internal organs. These are among the best dinosaur fossils ever found. The article goes on to describe the discovery and the long court battle to decide who owns them.
he early June morning in Montana was already very hot and dry by 7.30, when Clayton Phipps and his friend, Mark Eatman, set out to search for fossils. Phipps, a rancher who calls himself the Dino Cowboy, was wearing his trademark black felt Stetson cattleman hat.
The two had gone bone collecting before, but they were joined on this day for the first time by Phipps’s cousin, Chad O’Connor. The trio fanned out to hike through the badlands of what they thought was the Judith River Formation; later, they would learn they had actually been in an area called Hell Creek, a division of gray and ochre sandstone, shale and clay deposited about 66m years ago during the Late Cretaceous, when the area was a swampy floodplain.
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Phipps and O’Connor returned to the site about a month later, this time with Lige and Mary Ann Murray, ranchers who owned the land where the bones had been found. In the US, fossils found on private land belong to the landowner; prospectors simply need their permission to dig. The Murrays signed off, and Phipps and O’Connor got to work. They built a road to the site. They began excavating the ceratopsian with penknives and brushes. Business partners were brought in; secret contracts were arranged. Eatman came to help when he could, along with a rotating cast of confidants.
After two weeks, the body of the plant-eater had been revealed. It was more than a pelvis and femur – it looked like a fairly complete skeleton of Triceratops horridus, which is the triceratops you’re thinking of. One day, Phipps was behind the wheel of his uncle’s backhoe, scooping out soil from around the fossil so it could be removed. Carefully watching each dump of the bucket, at one point he noticed dark fragments among the light-colored sandstone.
Bone chips.
Oh no, he thought. He jumped down, combed through the sand, found the claw of a theropod. Theropods, like Tyrannosaurus rex, are three-toed carnivores. That doesn’t match the plant-eater, Phipps thought. What is happening here?
