Sidor’s excavation of the new shuvosaurid promises to document a new species that will be the first of its kind in any museum collection in the world. To date, the team has collected parts of at least twenty individuals from a small bone concentration, with most of the animals' limbs and backbone represented. With luck, they will find a skull when they continue their excavations this summer.
The shuvosaurid is one fossil that is being prepared for display in the New Burke, opening in 2019. Another is Revueltosaurus, an herbivorous reptile that was long confused for North America’s first plant-eating dinosaur due to having the same type of teeth as plant-eating dinosaurs. But when a full skeleton of Revueltosaurus was found, it was clear the animal wasn’t a dinosaur at all.
This summer, Sidor’s team will be collecting large slabs from a bonebed containing Revueltosaurus for a special display outside of the New Burke’s fossil lab. Our new lab will show the visitor what a fossil looks like in the field and how Burke volunteers can make real contributions to research in paleontology!
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Christian Sidor is curator of vertebrate paleontology and associate director of research and collections at the Burke Museum. He is also a professor of biology at the University of Washington.
See more from vertebrate paleontology and learn more about the team!
