In the summer of 2022, two boys hiking with their father and a 9-year-old cousin in the North Dakota Badlands came across some large bones poking out of a rock. They had no idea what to make of them.
The father took some photos and sent them to a paleontologist friend. Later, the relatives learned they’d made a staggering discovery: They’d stumbled upon a rare juvenile skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex.
Part of the fossil, which measures about 32 inches, is believed to be the tibia, or shin bone, of a 10-foot-tall, 3,500-pound dinosaur that scientists are calling Teen Rex. Only a few such fossils have been discovered worldwide, according to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, which announced the findings on June 3 at a press conference.
The specimen is also the most complete T. rex the museum has ever collected, it said.
San Diego screening
A new documentary on the family’s unusual discovery opened Friday at the San Diego Natural History Museum, which is in the process of renovating its basement floor to serve as the new home of its extensive fossil collection and its paleontology prep lab. The new exhibition space is slated to open in 2025.
Dinosaur and other fossils are among the most popular attractions with San Diego visitors to The Nat. The museum’s collection features ancient creatures that roamed what is today Southern California and Baja California up to 75 million years ago. These include the Albertosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Ankylosaur and mastodons.
The discovery
The friend of the father who identified the fossil, Tyler Lyson, is the curator of paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. He said the boys had made an “incredible dinosaur discovery that advances science and deepens our understanding of the natural world.”
After identifying the fossil — found in the Hell Creek Formation, a rocky area south of Marmarth, North Dakota, that dates back more than 65 million years — Lyson led an 11-day excavation that involved removing the overlying rock with a 70-pound jackhammer, picks and shovels.
The bones were then carefully excavated, photographed and encased in protective plaster so that they could be safely transported back to the museum. Paleontologists plan to return to the site this year to keep looking for bones, the museum said.
The young brothers, Jessin and Liam Fisher, 9 and 12, and their cousin, Kaiden Madsen, now 11, were busy hiking and exploring when they first came across the bones and had no inkling they could be so special.
“I was walking on the grass with my dad and I spotted a white thing,” said Liam Fisher, in an interview for the film “T. REX.” “Kaiden and Jessin were over there, they ran up here and Jesse said it’s a dinosaur bone. Anyway, he’s a dinosaur expert. I kind of like dinosaurs. But when it comes to finding dinosaurs – a T. rex like we did today – it was actually pretty cool. I’m only 8 and I spotted a dinosaur out!”
Jesse Fisher said his dinosaur knowledge helped him realize the find was something special.
“I have a huge dinosaur encyclopedia that I read through almost every day. I know most of them. My class thinks I’m a dino nerd,” Jesse said. “I was brushing the sediment with Tyler, seeing if we could find anything. Tyler heard a thud with his screwdriver, and he quickly swept away where he was digging. He broke off this tooth and picked it up and we shared the same look at the same time staring at each other. And from that moment we knew it was a T. rex. I think (Tyler) was nine when he found his first fossil. Maybe I beat him by one year.”
The significance of the find
In an interview for the film, Lyson said that he would never forget the moment in the dig when researchers uncovered the lower jaw of the dinosaur, which had several large serrated teeth sticking out of it. He said he knew immediately that it was a T. rex.
“It still gives me goose bumps,” he said.
“To put it in perspective, usually when digging up a dinosaur, things don’t happen this quickly. Usually we find dinosaurs in much harder rock,” Lyson said. “You can’t see a lot and you can’t easily expose the bones. But at this location we can easily and very quickly see what you’re digging up. The kids found this skeleton right as it started to erode out of the hill. That’s really important because if you see a lot of bones washed down the hill, that means you had a good dinosaur skeleton once upon a time. But in this case, we had the bones just starting to peek out of the hill in this really soft sandstone rock.
“The most common dinosaur found in the Hell Creek formation is a Triceratops — they’re the cows of the Cretaceous. They are everywhere,” Lyson said. “When you’re in a national park, you see deer and elk and moose, but you don’t see the mountain lions or the wolves. You don’t see those apex predators because there just aren’t as many of them. So to find a T. rex at all and to find one this complete, is truly special. It’s also interesting because this new discovery of a teen rex could fill some critical knowledge gaps in the growth trajectory of T. rex. We think our specimen represents the moment of its fastest growth in T. rex.”
The film
The family’s initial discovery and the fossil’s recovery are the subject of “T. REX,” a documentary by Giant Screen Films that opens Friday, June 28, at the San Diego Natural History Museum.
Co-written by producer Andy Wood and director David Clark, the movie features scenes from the fossil dig mixed with computer-generated video of the T. rex, growing from hatchling to adult.
“We never could have planned the inspiring story that unfolded in front of the cameras,” Wood said. “Kids finding any large dinosaur is remarkable, but as the shoot progressed, the team realized that we were witnessing something even more rare — a truly historic T. rex discovery. This is the kind of story that documentary filmmakers dream of capturing.”
The film also features CGI versions of other creatures who were contemporaries of the T. rex from the Cretaceous period, including the Triceratops; Quetzalcoatlus, one the largest animals ever to take flight; and the 25-foot long Sinraptor, a species that likely fed on early tyrannosaurs.
The film is narrated by New Zealand-raised actor Sam Neill, who played paleontologist Alan Grant in the “Jurassic Park” movies.
“This is more than just a documentary — it’s a chance for families to experience the thrill of discovery through the eyes of these young explorers in a format that makes you feel like you’re right there with them,” Clark said.
The film is now screening six times a day Mondays-Thursdays and 10 times a day on Fridays until Labor Day. After that screenings will be reduced to five times a day and will continue screening daily until February of next year. The film is free with paid museum ission.
‘T. REX’
When: Now playing on the Giant Screen Theater six times daily Mondays-Thursdays; 10 times daily on Fridays
Where: San Diego Natural History Museum, 1788 El Prado, Balboa Park, San Diego
Tickets: (film is free with paid museum ission) $24, adults; $20, seniors (62 and up) and military with ID; $14, children 3 to 17; free ages 2 and under
Phone: (877) 946-7797
Online: sdnat.org
