‘It is incredibly rare’: Kansas students dig up baby T-Rex in Montana

MONTANA ( KSNT ) – A group of researchers and students from the University of Kansas are hard at work digging up the skeleton of a juvenile tyrannosaurus rex in Montana this summer.

KSNT 27 News spoke with David Burnham, preparator of vertebrate paleontology with KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, about the dig site and its mission. The professor, with the help of five students and two staff from the university, are wrapping up work on T-Rex remains about 40 miles north of the town of Jordan.

Burnham said the excavation began in 2016 when a student came across the exciting find. A bone was recovered and sent back to KU for study, at which point it was found that it belonged to a T-Rex.

Burnham and his team returned to the area and quickly began finding more pieces.

“As soon as we started digging, we started finding jaws and teeth,” Burnham said.

Following the initial discovery, Burnham has led multiple other groups of paleontologists back to the site to continue the task of digging up all the remains.

Each trip yields a few more pieces to the overall puzzle.

“We’ve come around here every year to dig a little bit more and a little bit more,” Burnham said.

What makes this dig site so special is that it involves a young T-Rex. While many adults have been found around the world and pieced back together, very few juvenile specimens have been identified.

“It is incredibly rare,” Burnham said. “All the features are so much different.”

Burnham hopes to finish pulling the rest of the T-Rex remains from the ground soon so it can be brought back to Lawrence. However, much of this is dependent on how much funding is available and how much help he receives to record and reassemble the bones.

“It takes a village build a T-Rex,” Burnham said.

Excavation of the dig site is made possible with help from the Bureau of Land Management

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