It isn’t very often that you find fossils that are in full and complete condition. For this reason, finding a well preserved baby animal would be incredibly difficult because they will have most likely been trampled on or eaten after they died. Scientists however have found a baby Chasmosaurus Belli, and people are saying that it is so well preserved and complete that they actually been able to find out how it died.
Chasmosaurus Belli is normally found in British Columbia and it is a close relation to the triceratops family. It has the frill and until now, all the skeletons that have been found have been adults. Random bones of some of the smaller dinosaurs have been uncovered but until now they have always been incomplete. This baby however is over 70 million years old but it was only 3 years old when it died. The skeleton has revealed important information about its death and how the dinosaur lived, so it is a very exciting discovery.
The dinosaur measures around 5.1 feet at the time it died but adults can measure up to 15 feet. The fossil was found in a riverbed and this has lead scientists to believe that it didn’t die at the hands of a larger dinosaur. Scientists believe that it wandered out and got caught up in a current. Unable to save itself, it drowned at the bottom of the river. The body was so perfect in condition that scientists were actually able to see the texture of the skin in the rock and scientists have hopes to use this very fossil to gain a deeper understanding of how this dinosaur existed in the ecosystem.
