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Skin-Deep Dinosaur Secrets

Every dinosaur discovery is pretty exciting, but this is one whopper of a find. A hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur, was discovered in 1999 by 16-year-old Tyler Lyson on his family's ranch in North Dakota. What is extraordinary about the 67-million-year-old fossil is that its skin and other soft tissues were preserved along with its bones.

The fossil, nicknamed Dakota, is so detailed that it can tell us more about the dinosaur than bones alone ever could, according to scientists who announced the find last week. Dakota's rear end, for example, is larger than scientists expected. More rump muscles could mean that it was able to outrun predators like T. rex.

The fossil is being analyzed by the world's largest CT scanner. Doctors use CT scanners to look inside bodies. Say aaah, Dakota!

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