A University of California biology student Merced was instrumental in finding Alice, a 65-million-year-old dinosaur skull, a Triceratops to be exact. The remains awaited him in North Dakota, a US state, where a paleontology excavation is underway
A University of California biology student Merced was instrumental in finding Alice, a 65-million-year-old dinosaur skull, a Triceratops to be exact. The remains were located in North Dakota, a US state, where a paleontology excavation is underway.
In the fifth year of his undergraduate studies with a particular interest in ecology and evolutionary biology, Harrison Duran had attended a course in the history of dinosaurs in his first year and had thus come into contact with the professor and a graduate student, Michael Kjelland, who carries out currently his own research in the North Dakota excavation.
For two weeks the student worked in the world famous Hell Creek Formation site without any financial return, only for passion, that for dinosaurs and evolutionary biology. The "bone diggers", as the two were now known to the locals, however, did not imagine making such a discovery.
In fact, a triceratops skull had already been found in the excavation the previous year, so Kjelland expected the most plant fossils. But she still wanted to leave an open mind and a good dose of optimism. And she was right. Because, together, Kjelland and Duran found Alice, the remains of a skull 65 million year old triceratops.
"I just can't express my excitement when we discovered the skull - Duran exclaimed gleefully - I have been fond of dinosaurs since I was a child, so this was for me a gold deal".
A huge job. In fact, it took an entire week just to excavate the dinosaur, whose fragile skull was meticulously stabilized with specialized glue to solidify the fractured bones and mineralize them.
Later, with the help of a local cattle farmer and his family, Alice was lined with aluminum foil and plaster, “embedded” in a makeshift box and lifted onto a truck. Wrapped in some sort of Styrofoam for protection, she was eventually taken to Kjelland's laboratory.
The idea now is to make the skull a training tool. "The goal is to use this discovery as a 'educational opportunity, not to reserve Alice for a private collection somewhere in the world where only a few people can see her ”explains the graduate student.
In the meantime, the University of California Merced will put on display a reconstruction of the skull, waiting to be able one day, perhaps, to expose the real one.
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Cover: University of California Merced
