Armored Dinosaur Magnificently Preserved After Face, Skin, Spikes Survived Fossilization

A dinosaur discovered over a decade ago has been preserved well that years after its discovery, one can exactly see how it looked when it was walking on Earth approximately 100 million years ago.

Dinosaur Complete With a Face and Skin

The archaeologist uncovered the dinosaur fossil in 2011. The nearly whole ankylosaur was complete with its jagged spikes, most of its limbs, armor coating, and even some of the guts in its stomach. However, the most amazing part of the discovery was that its entire face and skin were preserved, too, Futurism reported.

Mark Mitchell, a technician at Royal Tyrell Museum, got his hands on the dinosaur fossil in 2017. He was tasked with separating the fossil from the stone.

He spent 7,000 hours and nearly six years piecing together the blocks like a puzzle. The painstaking process paid off because, according to him, the animal eventually started to take shape.

He told Ars Technica that before Christmas a year ago, he had already pieced together both sides of its neck and head. He was impressed knowing that it used to be a living creature due to its astounding preservation.

Michell added that it was the first dinosaur he worked on with skin covering the skull, so one can see how it looked when it was alive, and he found it really cool.

The ankylosaur was named after Michell - Borealopelta markmitchelli.

Donald Henderson, the curator of dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, described it as a one-in-a-billion find.

Almost the entirety of this dinosaur—the skin, the armor that coats its skin, most of its body and feet, even its face—survived fossilization, amounting to what's been called a one-in-a-billion find: https://t.co/2plvVTcCqa

[📸: Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology] pic.twitter.com/hSTXn5dLnE
— Ars Technica (@arstechnica) January 25, 2023

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Armor Dinosaur's Fossil So Well-Preserved

According to Henderson, one of the reasons the fossils were so well-preserved was because it was covered with very thick, super hard concretion - a solid mass that forms around the fossils. The concretion reportedly maintained the fossil in 3D, unlike the typically 2D-flattened fossils that occur after millions of years of pressure from overlying rock.

Henderson explained that the concretion helped preserve the skin and prevented the bacteria from breaking it down.

The significant part of the fossil - its well-preserved face - was positioned safely on the cliff.

The nodosaur was found in Suncor, a mine in northeast Alberta, Canada, an ancient marine environment. The researchers were surprised to find it there because the animal was terrestrial.

Borealopelta is a four-legged ankylosaur and a land-based megaherbivore. Scientists suspect that the carcass was carried from a river to the sea during a flooding event, and it may have bobbed at the surface before it sunk into the ocean depths.

They believed it went into the water deeper than 50 meters because it was preserved with a mineral called glauconite, a green phosphate mineral that only forms in cooler temperatures, in water deeper than 50 meters, Henderson explained.

He added that the environment probably discouraged scavenging, and it was an area where long-necked plesiosaurs and big fish didn't like to go. Henderson believed the region was too cold and dark, and there was nothing to eat there because there were only a few trace fossils in the sediments around it.

He added that there wasn't much for worms, crustaceans, and bivalves to digest in the area, making it a nice condition to preserve the fossils. Henderson added that the low biological activity in the area led to the preservation.