Scientists to dig Jurassic site in Wyoming this summer

Scientists from the U.S. and Europe hope to learn more about a promising new dinosaur site in northern Wyoming this summer.

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is leading a project that will bring over 100 scientists to a dig on ranchland in the Bighorn Basin. Coordinators aren’t saying exactly where the site is to discourage looters and curiosity-seekers.

But professor Phil Manning from the University of Manchester in Great Britain says the site already has yielded fossils from some of the bigger dinosaurs from 150 million years ago, in the Jurassic Period. Among them are long-necked plant-eaters that may be diplodocus- and brachiosaurus-type dinosaurs.

There are also preserved tracks from both predatory and prey dinosaurs.

The site used to be a tropical flood plain. Now it’s called the “Jurassic Mile.”