Overview

• The partial vertebra was discovered in January during a geothermal heating study funded by a $250,000 state grant to explore subsurface heating and cooling solutions.
• At 763 feet below the museum’s parking lot, it represents Denver’s deepest and oldest dinosaur fossil to date.
• Researchers identified the fragment as belonging to an ornithopod dinosaur from the late Cretaceous, though its exact species and cause of death remain unknown.
• Officials note that only two similar borehole fossil discoveries have been recorded worldwide, underscoring the find’s scientific rarity.
• The bone is now on display in the museum’s Discovering Teen Rex exhibit, and no further drilling is planned beneath the parking lot.