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smithsonianThe National Museum of Natural History says it will display a rare and “remarkable” dinosaur the skull that was excavated South Dakota,
A well-preserved Pachycephalosaurus skull was found in rocks of the Hell Creek Formation in 2024. Dinosaurs, known for their dome-shaped heads, arrived on Earth about 67 million years ago.
“This skull is the most spectacular specimen of this type of dinosaur ever found in our museum,” paleontologist Matthew Carrano, the museum’s curator of Dinosauria, said in a statement. “We almost never see the animal’s face or teeth or other parts of the head because they are usually broken off.”
The fossil includes 32 individual cranial bones and several teeth of the dinosaur, including some teeth that were still growing in its jaws. The dinosaur’s scientific name means “thick-headed lizard.”
“This animal blinks its eyes and makes nasal noises,” Carano said. Washington PostThe paleontologist said the dinosaur’s brain may have evolved “somewhere between a crocodile and an emu”,
Pachycephalosaurus fossils are rare to find at Hell Creek because its bones make up less than 1 percent of the fossils found in the formation.
This amazing fossil was purchased at a Sotheby’s natural history auction earlier this year by philanthropists Wendy Schmidt and Eric Schmidt, who was CEO of Google in the early 2000s. After this Schmidts gifted the fossil Washington DC-based Smithsonian, with a donation to support the digitization efforts of the National Fossil Collection.
Wendy Schmidt said, “When we look at an ancient fossil like this, we are faced with the story of our planet’s past and we can consider how humans fit into Earth’s geological history.”
She added: “Eric and I hope that the digitization project and this rare Pachycephalosaurus skull will provide access to these fossils to anyone, anywhere in the world, and provide insight into our brief role in the story of life on our planet.”
The dinosaur skull will be on temporary display in an exhibit titled “David H. Koch Hall of Fossils-Deep Time” in the museum’s FossilLab from December 22 to 28. The museum will be closed on Christmas Day. The Smithsonian will permanently house the fossil in the coming years.