12-year-old aspiring paleontologist discovers 69-million-year-old fossil

While exploring Horseshoe Canyon in Alberta this summer, Nathan Hrushkin, 12, made a discovery that thrilled the aspiring paleontologist: he found the bones of a 69-million-year-old dinosaur.

Nathan was hiking through the area with his dad, Dion, when he came across the bones. They took several photos and sent them to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, which dispatched a team to look for more fossils. Between 30 and 50 bones were found, including a partial skull, and the experts determined they all belonged to the same hadrosaur, which was about three or four years old.

Francois Therrien, curator of dinosaur paleoecology at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, said in a statement that this "young hadrosaur is a very important discovery because it comes from a time interval for which we know very little about what kind of dinosaurs or animals lived in Alberta. Nathan and Dion's find will help us fill this big gap in our knowledge of dinosaur evolution."

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Nathan says the hadrosaur is now his favorite dinosaur, and his discovery has made him even more curious about what could be hiding in the dirt. "I am fascinated about how bones from creatures that lived tens of millions of years ago became these fossil rocks, which are just sitting on the ground waiting to be found," he told People. Catherine Garcia