ONE of the most complete dinosaur mummies ever found is bringing researchers as close as they will ever get to touching a live dinosaur.
The fossilised duckbilled hadrosaur is so well preserved scientists have been able to calculate its muscle mass and learn that it was more muscular than thought, probably giving it the ability to outrun predators. It is thought to be between 65 and 6
7 million years old.
While they call it a mummy, the dinosaur is not preserved in the same way as Egyptian pharaohs. The dinosaur body has been fossilised into stone. Unlike the collections of bones found in museums, this hadrosaur came complete with skin, ligaments, tendons and possibly some internal organs, according to researchers.
The study is not yet complete, but scientists have concluded that hadrosaurs were bigger and stronger than had been thought, were quick and flexible and had skin with scales that may have been striped.
Paleontologist Phillip Manning of Manchester University said: "It's unbelievable when you look at it for the first time. The level of detail expressed in the skin is just breathtaking."
There is a pattern of banding to the larger and smaller scales on the skin, he added.
The fossil was found in 1999 in the US state of North Dakota and is nicknamed "Dakota". It is being analysed in the world's largest CT scanner, operated by Boeing and normally used for space shuttle engines and other large objects.
