Fossils Found in the Parking Lot of a Museum
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science has a wide collection of dinosaur fossils. Scientists have discovered new fossils deep underground. Researchers of the museum did not need to look far for new fossils, as it was right under their noses—literally.
In January, the museum started a drilling project to see if they could use geothermal systems in the museum. Two drilling rigs dug holes, only five inches wide, almost 1,000 feet below the surface. One of the museum’s geologists was sifting through the rocks and recognized a fossil.
“He said, ‘That’s bone,’” James Hagadorn, the museum’ curator of geology, recalls. “‘That could be a dinosaur.’ All of us practically ran out of the museum. I’d never even heard of that happening.”
“There are never fossil emergencies,” Dr. Hagadorn said in an interview. “But that was a fossil emergency.”
The fossil, buried 763 feet below the surface, was in terrible condition. Hagadorn said, “When you drill a core, things that are brittle get twisted apart because it’s spinning.” Carefully, a perpetrator was able to remove all the crushed pieces and fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle. The researchers were able to identify the fossil as a vertebra from the shoulder of a dinosaur.
The fossils were too small to pinpoint the species of dinosaur, but museum scientists were able to deduce two possibilities. One was that the fossil belonged to a plant-eating dinosaur, Edmontosaurus, a common “duck-billed” dinosaur that was one of the most widespread herbivores. Another is a smaller reptile, the Thescelosaurus, a beaked, fleet-footed plant-eater. The museum said in the press release that the fossil was the “deepest and oldest dinosaur fossil ever found within the city’s limits.”
Dinosaur discoveries in the Denver area are quite common. Around 100-70 million years ago in the late Cretaceous period, Colorado commonly experienced erosion. The formation of the Rocky Mountains led particles of sediment to the current-day Denver area, allowing for the preservation of dinosaur fossils.
However, before the discovery of the fossil in January, there were only two other instances of fossils being found in construction. First, in 1993, dinosaur bones were discovered during the construction of Coors Field, a Major League Baseball Park. Then, in 2017, in Thornton, Colorado, construction workers found the skull of a Torosaurus. Finding a fossil in this type of situation is very improbable. Hagadorn says that finding a fossil in a parking lot is like hitting a hole-in-one from the moon.
“The layers of Earth underneath us tell us stuff that’s useful, whether that information is from a fossil or a mineral or some water that’s flowing underfoot,” Hagadorn said. This discovery allows us to understand that history can be buried right under our feet, literally! While most fossils are typically found in dig sites, this discovery demonstrates that fossils can be discovered anywhere. As researchers continue to uncover more ancient remains, each discovery allows us to learn more about our prehistoric past.
Sources:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/jurassic-park-ing-lot-dino-fossil-turns-denver/story?id=123675460
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/12/science/denver-museum-nature-science-dinosaur-fossil.html
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/13/nx-s1-5465583/a-denver-science-museum-found-its-newest-fossil-by-accident-in-its-own-parking-lot