Dinosaur fossils dug up in Utah reveal new species

Welcome back. Paleontologists are making new scientific discoveries as they unearth dinosaur fossils in southeastern Utah. Fox's Ben Winslow gets an up-close look at the work they're doing. Behind me is something scientifically significant. In fact, it may be like nothing else in the entire world. They're big, nice, chunky pieces. Paleontologists are very carefully excavating dinosaur fossils. You know, that guy goes on there. I think it's a scapula, so it's probably broken because it should go. much longer. They're finding a lot. I think we've added up to probably four different kinds of dinosaur in here right now. This site is important because it could help our understanding of what happened to dinosaurs at the end of the Jurassic period. I wandered over here and found an ankylosaur humerus and a scapula eroding out of these green rocks here. Scientists theorize this may be the scene of a mass extinction event. Just near the base of this hill right behind us and the lower slope over there is the Jurassic Cretaceous boundary and at that end of the Jurassic, all of our famous Morrison Jurassic dinosaurs went extinct, all that great diversity of long-necked dinosaurs, Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus the big meat eaters that fed on them they all went extinct and here we're looking at the first good evidence of what the recovery was like and what they're finding is brand new, we know that just about everything we find here is going to be brand new to science and maybe unique to the entire planet, this is amazingly important stuff and it's only in Grand County, they found new species, I think it's a bone with both of Utah state paleontologists nearing retirement one new find is being named for a member of their team renaming Crossopelta the Blue Eye after Don the Blue because Don has put up with me for 25 years he's earned a dinosaur, I don't really do it for the credit like that or even the money necessarily it's just it's really great way of life to come out here, what they discover out here near Moab can also help inform our world today, there's just there's so many that we have here miles and miles of rock and the fossils I think bring bring the rock a little closer to home because you can think about the animals that were here i mean to think that this was a completely different environment and that there was these massive dinosaurs and little dinosaurs and birds flying around. It's just a really neat story. I mean, I think it's important, scientifically important, to tell us where we came from and maybe where we're going, you know, about climates of the past, climate change, those things. But I think just people are interested in it. A lot of the findings from sites like this in the area are still under scientific review, so look for announcements coming soon. Near Moab, Ben Winslow, Fox News.