An arm bone belonging to a massive 150-million-odd-year Brachiosaurus, has been hauled out of a desert gully in Utah by two Clydesdale horses.
But before they moved the bone the team had to make sure it didn't fall apart.So the team encased the fossil and the surrounding rock with a"jacket" of plaster and hessian, splinted lengthwise with two pieces of wood.
Australian dinosaur expert Stephen Poropat of Swinburne University agreed the discovery was very rare.He said the fossil hunters would have used the unique shape of a Brachiosaurus humerus to identify it, as well as its size.Dr Poropat said all Brachiosaurus skeletons were incomplete."Often in the media what is presented as Brachiosaurus is based a lot on Giraffatitan [a closely related African genus of dinosaur]," Dr Poropat said.
Palaeontologist Matt Herne from Flinders University agreed the rare find would help fill gaps in our understanding.He said the modern technique of biomechanics, which relies on CT scanning and reconstruction of muscles, was helping scientists put together what the dinosaur looked like in the absence of complete skeletons.
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