Three boys in North Dakota were out on a family hike when they came across something many adventurous kids only dream of finding: dinosaur bones.
The T. rex skeleton was discovered in 2022, when brothers Jessin and Liam Fisher, their dad, and their cousin Kaiden Madsen, were hiking in the Badlands near Marmarth and looking for fossils, according to a statement issued Monday by the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, which is set to display the skeleton this summer.
The boys, who were aged 10, 9, and 7 at the time of the discovery, said in a press conference they had been going out to look for fossils for years. This time they were exploring the Hell Creek Formation, a rocky area that dates back 65.5 million years and is known for fossil formations, when they found some large bones sticking out of a rock.
Sam Fisher, the father of Cession and Liam, took photos of the bones and contacted an old high school classmate, Tyler Lyson, the curator of paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, to identify them.
In the summer of 2023, the fossil finders and Lyson returned to the site to excavate the skeleton, which was located on federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. About 30% of the skeleton was preserved, the museum said. The initial dig lasted 11 days, and the paleontologists plan to return this summer to look for any additional segments of the skeleton.
The museum said the finding was significant because very few juvenile T. rex skeletons have ever been discovered.
“By going outside and embracing their passions and the thrill of discovery, these boys have made an incredible dinosaur discovery that advances science and deepens our understanding of the natural world,” Lyson said in a statement.
Teen Rex, as scientists are calling the fossil, would have been 10 feet tall and 25 feet long, and weighed in at an estimated 3,500 pounds, according to the museum. By comparison, a fully grown T. rex could be 40 feet long and up to 8,000 pounds.
The museum said the discovery of Teen Rex gives scientists an opportunity to study the growth and development of the species and how the animals matured.
The fossil and a documentary that recounts the story are set to be temporarily displayed at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science starting June 21.
