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More About Leonardo
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Leonardo Facts
- Leonardo was discovered on July 27, 2000 during the Judith River Foundation’s
expedition in Malta, Montana. He was dubbed Leonardo after a piece of graffiti on a
nearby rock: “Leonard Webb loves Geneva Jordan 1916.”
- The excavation of Leonardo didn’t begin until a year after his discovery, due to the
complexity of the dig site—it was located in a very difficult spot. The team had to
remove more than 18 feet of the canyon wall with a bulldozer and dynamite,
including several sandstone boulders the size of Volkswagens. In addition, it took a
team of 20 experienced diggers more than nine weeks to remove the cliff face above
Leonardo.
- Leonardo is a young Brachylophosaurus, a two-legged, plant-eating duckbilled
dinosaur, and is the first juvenile of this species ever discovered. He was
approximately three or four years old when he died and would have been 20 feet
long, weighing about 2,000 pounds.
- Scientists suspect Leonardo died when he was trapped on a sandbar, and his body
dried out before it was covered in sand. Over the centuries and millennia, his body
fossilized and transformed from 2,000 pounds of organic matter into a 6.5 ton piece
of sandstone.
- The stomach contents of carnivores fossilize easily, since their food contains bones.
However, much less is known about the diet of herbivores, as plant matter requires
very special conditions to be preserved.
- For the first time ever, scientists have positively identified what a plant-eating
dinosaur ate, from scans and analysis of Leonardo’s remains. Leonardo is the first
herbivorous dinosaur with clear proof of diet. Since most dinosaurs were herbivorous,
this data is very important for discovering more about their lives.
- Leonardo’s stomach is filled with his last meal, a salad of ferns, magnolias and
conifers. Additional analysis has confirmed at least 40 different types of prehistoric
plant pollen preserved in his gut.
- Leonardo has a very unique feature on his neck called a crop. Modern plant-eating
birds also have crops, which aid in the digestion process; however, until Leonardo
was unearthed, there was no evidence that dinosaurs had them. This startling
discovery has led to new theories of how these creatures lived.
- Leonardo’s skin textures differ throughout 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 they took 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.
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