[Rockhounds] Mission Jurassic

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

The stench was unbearable. The hulking mass of dead dinosaur had lain on
the sandbar now for over a week in stifling heat, half-buried among the
decaying vegetation and sediment.

Some scavengers had tried to rip the putrid flesh from its bones, but the
floodwaters kept washing over the site, dumping yet more mud and debris.

The open carcass of this 40-tonne giant was filling with all kinds of muck
and beginning to disappear from view. The Earth itself was consuming the
animal for geologic preservation.

Fast-forward 150 million years and Phil Manning is on his knees in a tennis
court-sized quarry in the "Badlands" of North Wyoming. He's narrating this
Jurassic death story as he points to the tangle of fossil bones in front of
us.

Remnants of leg, shoulder and spine have been worked proud of the
sandstone. There's no doubting even to our untrained eyes that this is a
sauropod - one of those huge plant-eating dinos that had a long neck and a
long tail.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/nxVbFidDbs/mission-jurassic