Huge dinosaur skeleton unearthed in Wyoming makes it to museum in Europe

A huge dinosaur skeleton has made a transatlantic journey from the United States to the Museum of Evolution in Denmark for visitors to get an up-close look.

"It was discovered in Wyoming by a rancher and some professional dinosaur hunters," Christoffer Knuth, the museum's director, told CBS News on Monday.

That was in 2017, and it took a team about five years and about 15,000 hours of work to get the Camarasaurus grandis skeleton out of the ground and into the Danish museum.

"It's an amazing specimen, first of all because it's articulated — it was lying in the same position as it died in 150 million years ago. Secondly, it's 97% intact, so we have almost every single bone of the dinosaur," Knuth said. "That means it's a world-class specimen."

The 42-foot skeleton was flown from the U.S. to Europe, but it wasn't an entirely smooth trip to its final destination.

"We had a little bit of a problem with it, because it actually sort of disappeared between Zurich and Copenhagen, but eventually it showed up about a week late," Knuth told CBS News.

He said the museum tracked the dinosaur as it made its way to Denmark, but as it was so large, it required multiple trackers, and at one point, one tracker showed the ancient bones in Zurich, Switzerland, another said Utah, and a third showed it in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. Eventually, the transport company used by the museum to move its purchase from Wyoming found the missing bones in Zurich and got them to their final destination.

Once the skeleton arrived, it took a team at the museum about 24 hours just to reassemble the dinosaur's long neck.

"We know that it died most likely in a stream or in shallow water, and then it was covered with some sort of sediment, mud, sand. That prevented predators from eating it," Knuth said.

The museum has said it is open to lending the specimen to other museums or universities.