The discovery of a mummified hadrosaur was recently made public. The dinosaur, named Dakota, was found in North Dakota in 1999 by a then-16-year-old boy, Tyler Lyson. The hadrosaur is not a mummy in the King Tut sense of the word. It has been fossilized, complete with uncollapsed skin enveloping the arm, legs and tail indicating the preservation of muscular tissues. The chest cavity was not preserved presumably due to scavenging before mummification.
Initial study of this specimen indicates that hadrosaurs were bigger and faster than first imagined . . . 3.5 tons and up to 40 feet long. The preserved ligaments and tendons has provided researchers with enough information to estimate muscle mass of the hadrosaur, and therefore allowing them to estimate the top speed of this animal at 45 km per hour (about 15 kph faster than the T. rex -- a predator of the hadrosaur).
A pattern of banding on the larger and smaller scales of Dakota indicate stripes, which is often associated with color change, like a chameleon.
