When you think of Newcastle, Wyo., what do you picture? The last thing you might think of is a Tyrannosaurus rex feeding ground, but that's what it was in the late Cretaceious period. Now, victims of the T. Rex's bite have been unearthed in a recent excavation, including a rare, nearly perfectly-complete Triceratops skeleton.
Researchers announced that they had found a total of three Triceratops in a rolling rural field near Newcastle, Wyo. on Thursday of last week, according to the Rapid City Journal. The find is particularly rare, because despite the Triceratops being a very well known dinosaur, there are few Triceratops skeletons that have been found as complete as one of the three from the Wyoming dig.
"There's only three other skeletons that will match the completeness of one of the specimens we're excavating right now," according to what President of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research Peter Larson told Cnn.com.
Additionally, the three unfortunate Triceratops found together indicates another rare revelation—they were a family. "The fact that there are three of them together is very cool," said Larson to Cnn. "The dig indicates that there was some sort of parental pair and nowhere in the literature has that ever been noted before, and that's unprecedented," Larson elaborated to the Rapid City Journal. "We have the opportunity to really rewrite the book on Triceratops."
Larson works for the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, which, along with the Naturalis Biodiversity Center from the Netherlands, is carefully excavating the Triceratops bones. They were alerted to that particular area to dig by the rancher who owned the land, who found some exposed bones. The dig began on May 9 and should be complete in about a month, weather permitting.
Paleontologists believe the area used to be a Tyrannosaurus rex feeding ground more than 65 million years ago. Though the demise of a possible family of Triceratops to a ferocious meat-eating monster is frightening and sad to think about, Larson is, of course, nothing but happy about the find: "Apparently, the Triceratops was quite tasty and one of the favorite meals of the T. rex."