MANSFIELD, Texas — One hundred million-year-old dinosaur bones are being studied in Texas, but you’ll never guess who found them.
Five-year-old Wylie Brys loves to play in the dirt and sometimes looks for fossils with is dad, who happens to be a zookeeper.
But last year, the preschooler came across something truly unusual.
“I thought I found a turtle,” Wylie said.
Wylie and his dad were looking around when he ran ahead and came back with a piece of bone.
It turns out Wylie dug up a 100 million-year-old dinosaur bone in an area of Mansfield, Texas, that is under construction.
“Originally this was slated for a restaurant parking lot,” Tim Brys, Wylie’s father, said.
A team of experts from SMU and the Dallas Zoo then began working quickly to unearth and identify the creature.
“We’re looking at an armored dinosaur called a nodosaur,” Louis Jacobs, a SMU Professor said. “This particular one would have been the size of a horse.”
Now SMU scientists are taking the bones to a lab to be studied. They consider the five year old’s find to be very special.
“It is completely amazing and if you think about it just look around at where we are? This is a shopping mall,” Jacobs said.
Tim Brys said he doesn’t think his son really understands the importance of what he found that day.
“He thinks it’s neat that he’s found a dinosaur. I don’t think he understand it’s kind of overwhelming for me,” Tim Brys said. “I don’t think he understands this may never happen again for us. This is probably a once in a lifetime find.”
