SEATTLE — Paleontologists with Seattle’s Burke Museum have unearthed the bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex that lived more than 66 million years ago.
The remarkable discovery includes a fairly complete 4-foot long skull, vertebrae, ribs, hips and lower jaw bones, and represents about 20 percent of the meat-eating dinosaur.
Scientists worked over the summer to excavate the bones, which were uncovered in the Hell Creek Formation in northern Montana.
The skull was encased in a protective plaster cast, loaded onto a flatbed truck and driven to Seattle, where it was unloaded at the Burke Museum Thursday morning.
Scientists estimate the dinosaur is about 85 percent the size of the largest T. rex discovered so far and lived about 15 years.
The museum says there are only 14 other nearly complete T. rex skulls that have been found.
Burke paleontologists plan to return to the site next summer to search for additional dinosaur parts.
