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First Dinosaur Bone Found in Washington State

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Dr. Christian Sidor (right), Burke Museum curator of vertebrate paleontology, and Brandon Peecook (left), University of Washington graduate student, show the size and placement of the fossil fragment compared to the cast of a Daspletosaurus femur.
Dr. Christian Sidor (right), Burke Museum curator of vertebrate paleontology, and Brandon Peecook (left), University of Washington graduate student, show the size and placement of the fossil fragment compared to the cast of a Daspletosaurus femur.Burke Museum
By Tessa Berenson Rogers

A piece of a massive thigh bone discovered underwater shows that dinosaurs walked in what is now Washington state.

The 80-million-year-old bone was found in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Seattle, Live Science reports, and it has just been identified as a 17-inch fragment of the femur bone of a theropod. Theropods were a two-legged, mostly carnivorous group of dinosaurs related to modern-day birds. And yes, T. Rex was one (although this bone did not come from a Tyrannosaurus).

It’s unknown what species of dinosaur the bone came from. “That’s it,” Christian Sidor, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington, told Live Science. “We’re lucky we got what we got.”

The bone was found in 2012, but it took scientists about a year and a half to prepare the fossil. This makes Washington the 37th U.S. state with known dinosaur fossils.

 

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Write to Tessa Berenson Rogers at tessa.Rogers@time.com