Apatosaurus Find Has Most Of Skull

["Richard W. Travsky" <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5593782,00.html

Head-to-tail dino find an 'extreme rarity'

TEN SLEEP - Down three miles of dirt road, on a farm outside Ten Sleep, is 
the final resting place of several dinosaurs that met their end in a mud 
hole 140 million years ago.

Paleontologists are scratching away at the dinosaur graveyard and recently 
have unearthed the fossilized remains of an apatosaurus, better known as 
brontosaurus.

The specimen has been nicknamed "Einstein, the brontosaurus with a brain" 
because of its complete and intact braincase.

Henry Galiano, founder and owner of Maxilla & Mandible International, the 
company responsible for the dig site, said this is a rare and exciting 
find. The Ten Sleep specimen, which is 80 percent complete, is 70 feet 
long. Its many pieces have been gathered over the past two years by 
paleontologists from around the world.

Apatosaurus skeletons more than 50 percent complete are rare, Galiano 
said. There are only 10 unearthed adult skeletons and two other 
fragmentary skulls, making this an "extreme rarity."

Robert Bakker, curator at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, said: 
"What's particularly frustrating to paleontologists who study these beasts 
is that we haven't had a clue what a complete associated apatosaurus skull 
and skeleton looks like.

"Einstein gives us our first view of an apatosaurus from head to tail."

At the site, Galiano enthusiastically remarked on the remnants of an 
allosaurus and pointed at the barren ground where Einstein had slept for 
the past 140 million years.
...
Galiano said that the multi- species quarry from which Einstein was 
recovered was most likely a muddy watering hole. He speculates that 
Einstein came upon the dried- up lake in search of water and became stuck.

This may have attracted other carnosaurs, or meat-eating dinosaurs, to the 
site. One factor that confirms the watering-hole theory is Einstein's 
position. Galiano said that it was very vertical, almost standing.
...