The newly discovered Alaska dinosaur, Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum, on what was Alaska’s North Slope about 70 million years ago.
16 nov 2011
There’s a new kind of dinosaur out there, and it lived in Alaska.
Its bones, long turned to stone, are part of a cliff in northern Alaska. That’s where dinosaur-hunter Tony Fiorillo brushed dirt away from a portion of its massive skull, something that most of us would mistake for a rock.
The year was 2006. It was August and summer had fled the Colville River, if it had been there at all. Fiorillo, who visits Alaska each summer from Dallas, where he works at the Museum of Nature & Science, remembers climbing from his tent with a heavy head every morning. He later learned he was working with pneumonia.
On one wet, miserable day, Fiorillo was clinging to a hillside above the river, spading the soil gently with a trowel. Noticing an unusual lump, he picked up a brush to gently whisk the dirt away. Suddenly, an entire skull came into focus, and he felt a warm flush of discovery. “When I had that moment of recognition, only (a large nasal bone) was exposed,” Fiorillo said. “But in my mind I could see the rest of the skull.”
Its bones, long turned to stone, are part of a cliff in northern Alaska. That’s where dinosaur-hunter Tony Fiorillo brushed dirt away from a portion of its massive skull, something that most of us would mistake for a rock.
The year was 2006. It was August and summer had fled the Colville River, if it had been there at all. Fiorillo, who visits Alaska each summer from Dallas, where he works at the Museum of Nature & Science, remembers climbing from his tent with a heavy head every morning. He later learned he was working with pneumonia.
On one wet, miserable day, Fiorillo was clinging to a hillside above the river, spading the soil gently with a trowel. Noticing an unusual lump, he picked up a brush to gently whisk the dirt away. Suddenly, an entire skull came into focus, and he felt a warm flush of discovery. “When I had that moment of recognition, only (a large nasal bone) was exposed,” Fiorillo said. “But in my mind I could see the rest of the skull.”
