LONDON: The fossilized remains of a dinosaur believed to have been killed on the day a massive asteroid destroyed much of life on Earth 66 million years ago has been discovered.
Palaeontologists unearthed the fossil of a Thescelosaurus leg — a small herbivorous dinosaur — near a fragment of the plummeting asteroid, known as the Chicxulub Event, which killed it.
Experts believe the limb, complete with skin, was “ripped off” when the asteroid hit and caused a catastrophic, global flash flood and the creature is thought to have been “buried on the day of impact,” Daily Mail reported.
The leg was found alongside a series of discoveries at the Tanis fossil site in North Dakota, and a new BBC documentary fronted by Sir David Attenborough will reveal the findings.
“This is the most incredible thing that we could possibly imagine here, the best case scenario, the one thing that we always wanted to find in this site and here we've got it,” University of Manchester palaeontologist Robert DePalma, who made the discoveries, told the BBC.
“Here we've got a creature that was buried on the day of impact – we didn't know at that point yet if it had died during the impact but now it looks like it probably did,” he added.
The findings were reported by the BBC after it was granted exclusive access, along with Attenborough, to the site for the documentary.
