Huge 'Mission Jurassic' dinosaur dig to start
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The reading
This year will see one of the world's biggest ever dinosaur digs. Paleontologists from across the globe will go to a special site in the U.S. state of Wyoming to join the dig. A paleontologist is someone who studies fossils. The dig is called Mission Jurassic. Researchers from the USA, England and Holland will join the Mission Jurassic team. They will try to find bones from dinosaurs that lived in the area 150 million years ago, in the Jurassic Era. The site of the dig is known as the Jurassic Mile. It is roughly 2.6 square kilometers in size. Scientists have already uncovered many interesting things over the past two years. These include dinosaur footprints, plant fossils and the bones of a 30-metre-long Diplodocus.
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The bones found at the dig will go on display in Indianapolis - at the world's largest children's museum. Professor Paul Barrett, a researcher at the museum and a co-leader of the dig, said: "This is an area that hasn't been...extensively studied....The hope is to find new material of previously described species and, if we're lucky, new species of dinosaurs and the animals and plants that lived around them." Another museum professor, Richard Herrington, said: "This site offers a rare opportunity to build a picture of what the real Jurassic ecosystem would have looked like 150 million years ago." He hopes to find fossils, "from plants and invertebrates to ancient crocodiles, mammals, lizards and marine life".
Sources:
- http://www.nhm.ac.uk
- https://www.thetimes.co.uk
- https://www.bbc.com
