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 What is a dinosaur mummy?
First of all, while some of the original tissue of the living animal is likely present, Leonardo is mostly stone. More accurate would be to say that Leonardo is a fossilized mummy, a dead dinosaur that dried out and mummified, then slowly became fossilized. Becoming a fossil means that the spaces between the cells of an animal are replaced with molecules of different minerals. In many cases, the actual cells are replaced by minerals.
 In life, Leonardo was a plant eating dinosaur named Brachylophosaurus canadensis. His name means short crested reptile from Canada. Leo was a sub-adult when he died, probably four or five years old. He was about 23 feet (7.5 m) long, with thin and graceful front legs and very sturdy back legs. He had a sharp beak at the front of his large head so that he could easily tear tough leaves from plants and trees.
Brachylophosaurus was a herd animal and was very common during the late Cretaceous period about 76 million years ago. The adult males in the herd could grow to nearly 40 feet (13 m) long and would have been a formidable opponent for even the big tyrannosaurs of that time. Albertosaurus and Daspletosaurus were the largest predators of that time, just a little smaller than the largest member of their family, T. rex.
 Leonardo's World
Brachylophosaurus like Leonardo lived in that area that we now know as Montana and the southern part of western Canada. At that time, 77 million years ago, there was a great sea that split North America in two parts. So, as odd as it may seem to us today, Montana had a seashore. The sea was filled with many creatures that are now extinct, such as huge sea reptiles, giant turtles and giant ammonites. The skys of late Cretaceous Montana had many birds, but also huge flying reptiles called pterosaurs. And the rivers had many types of turtles and some early types of crocodiles. The weather was almost always warm - in fact, there was probably no snow anywhere on the Earth during most of the Cretaceous period of time.
 Leonardo is so well preserved, that for the first time in history we have the remains of a dinosaur's meal in its stomach. Scientists have analyzed this material and have been able to identify the exact plants that he ate. This has allowed us to reconstruct what kind of world he lived in - a flat floodplain extending more that a hundred miles west of the great inland sea, filled with conifer trees, spiky cycad plants, magnolia trees, lots of ferns and, of course, dinosaurs.
 Leonardo Fossil Facts
Leonardo is one of a kind - the world's first dinosaur in the flesh! He is destined to become the most studied, famous, and important dinosaur fossil ever discovered. Following are just a few reasons why Leonardo is so important and this fossil is unlike any ever discovered.
For the first time ever, scientists have positively identified what a dinosaur ate. Leonardo's stomach is filled with his last meal, a salad of ferns, magnolias and conifers. Additional analysis has confirmed at least 40 different kinds of prehistoric plant pollen preserved in his gut.
Leonardo has a very unique feature on his neck called a crop. Modern plant-eating birds have crops to aid in the digestion process, but there was no evidence of the possibility that dinosaurs may have also had crops until Leonardo was unearthed. This startling discovery has caused quite a stir in the scientific community and has led to new theories of how these creatures lived.
 Leonardo's skin texture differs over his body, providing distinct clues about his environment and behavior. For example, the presence of large textured skin patterns, or tubercules, on his forelegs indicate that his legs took a quite a beating as he walked through the tough undergrowth of his ancient forest home. They also indicate that he often walked on all four legs, as opposed to being exclusively bipedal. Although not a new theory, it is undeniable proof that some dinosaurs walked on both two and four legs.
 Julius Csotonyi, the artist for this illustration, used information gathered from the Leonardo fossil to accurately recreate Leonardo and his world. The plants depicted reflect the contents of Leonardoís stomach. The predator is a Daspletosaurus.
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