Brussels residents find dino bones in America: ‘Skeletons could fetch 44 million’

The Belgian paleontologists have been excavating in the United States since the end of July. They stay there until the end of August and have done so for several summers in a row. “We have to stop every time between September and May, because the winters are harsh in Wyoming. We can’t work in the rain or the sleet,” explains paleontologist Pascal Godefrot. He is supervising the research from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels and has not traveled to the United States this year.

A team of seven paleontologists from Brussels and Nantes, France, continues excavations on a private ranch in Wyoming.

How did you end up as a Belgian team in Wyoming?
Pascal Godefrot: We acquired an Allosaurus skeleton in 2018 from a private collector who had bought it at an auction in Paris. The Allosaurus is a carnivorous dinosaur from the Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago. It turned out that this skeleton came from a site in Wyoming, where it had been excavated by private paleontologists who sold it for a lot of money. Then we started negotiating with the owner of that site, a ranch, and we were able to start digging ourselves. We do that every summer now.

What did you actually find?
Godfruit: A lot, but many of the bones are still in plaster and we haven’t put them on display yet. We want to do that when we renovate our dinosaur hall in a few years. Our most important discovery is a diplodocus named Dan, a herbivorous sauropod dinosaur. We have now collected 70 percent of the skeleton. We want to complete the rest with our own constructions. In the meantime, we are digging more and finding bones that could belong to one or more animals. We need to know when to bring all the bones to Belgium.