A unique long-neck dinosaur skeleton, consisting of 97 percent genuinely articulated whole bones, has been set up in Denmark’s Museum of Evolution in Knuthenborg Safari Park, 1.5 hours outside Copenhagen.
The skeleton is a Camarasaurus Grandis from the Sauropod dinosaur species, known for its 13-metre long neck, tail, and small head in relation to body size. The plant-eating dinosaur, with robust, spoon-shaped teeth for crushing tougher plants, was among the largest animals to have ever walked the Earth.
When paleontologists refer to a set of dinosaur bones being “articulated” it means that the bones are still connected together in the right order, as they would have been when the animal was alive 150 million years ago.
Owner Count Christoffer Knuth has been part of the process since the finding in 2017. He had the pleasure of putting on the head himself and said:
“This dinosaur lived about 150 million years ago in what is today Wyoming”.
When the specimen lived, between 155 and 145 million years ago, it weighed up to 10 tons. When it died, it is thought to have sunk to the bottom of a calm river.
It was excavated in a quarry in a cattle ranch in Ten Sleep, Wyoming, in May 2023 in exactly the same position, all in one piece.
After excavation and restoration, the long-necked skeleton was transported to Denmark.
It took over 12,000 working hours of meticulously restoration and scientific research to achieve the display state that it can be seen in today.
Though there have been other significant Sauropod discoveries in the past, the degree of completeness of this particular specimen is unusual.
The museum itself has not heard of others. It says that the skeleton is certainly among the top three most intact long-necked skeletons in the world.
Such a high level of completeness is rare in dinosaur fossils and provides researchers with an exceptional opportunity to study the anatomy and behavior of this particular species in more detail.
The museum already houses an impressive collection of genuine fossils, including the world’s best-preserved Allosaurus, the only Lokiceratops, the world’s largest horned dinosaur, the world’s largest skull of any land-dwelling animal, Torosaurus, and the 8th specimen of the first bird, Archaeopteryx.
The Safari Park is only open in the Danish summer, but the Museum of Evolution, which opened in the summer of 2022, is now open to the public all year.
