Rare Ostrich-like Dinosaur arrives at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
RALEIGH, NC (WWAY) — A roughly 75-million-year-old specimen representing the first substantially complete skeleton of its kind in the region, will be on display in North Carolina.
Paleontologists from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences worked with the Natural History Museum of Utah for a dinosaur excavation from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.
Between 8 to 10 feet long in life, the beaked, toothless dinosaur belonged to a group of fast-running theropods known as ornithomimids.
Wrapped in a 5,000-pound plaster jacket for safe transport from the field, the museum’s researchers hope it could become the defining example, or holotype, of a dinosaur species new to science.
“This is exactly the kind of fossil paleontologists dream about,” said Lindsay Zanno, the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences’ head of paleontology and a 2026 recipient of the North Carolina Award.
The new specimen will be prepared and studied in the N.C. Museum’s SECU DinoLab in full view of the public and under the direction Zanno and her team.
“The SECU DinoLab was built around a powerful idea: the public shouldn’t have to wait until the science is finished to be part of discovery,” added N.C. Museum Director Denise Young.
“Bringing new specimens like this one into the lab means North Carolinians can continue to watch world-class science unfold right here in Raleigh.”
The N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences is located in downtown Raleigh at 11 and 121 W. Jones Street.
The Museum also supports Prairie Ridge Ecostation, a 45-acre outdoor education and research facility in west Raleigh, as well as a satellite facility in Whiteville.
