Amazing and inspiring discoveries really can happen on field trips. Once you leave the classroom, well, the possibilities are endless. One high-schooler, Kevin Terris, learned just that during a school trip to Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
The eagle-eyed teen found a baby dinosaur skull during the trip, according to thewire.com. The dinosaur, discovered in 2009, is known as “Joe” and is on display in the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, Calif.
Recently, the museum explained the dinosaur’s importance. “Detailed study of the skeleton of ‘Joe’ identified it as the most complete specimen yet known for Parasaurolophus (pronounced PAIR-uh-SORE-AH-luf-us), a duck-billed dinosaur that lived throughout western North America around 75 million years ago.”
The museum went on to explain that adult specimens have been found, but scientists knew little about how the dinosaurs grew up until Kevin’s discovery. “Joe” was less than a year old when he died and already measured about 6 feet from nose to tail. Expert paleontologists had passed by the bones just a few days before Kevin spotted them. The scientists admitted they were a bit red-faced about not initially understanding what the strange-looking rock actually was.
“It’s a little embarrassing to walk by something like that,” said Andrew Farke, curator of the Alf Museum of Paleontology at The Webb Schools, “but he was just in the right place at the right time, looking in the right direction.”
See? Never underestimate the possibilities of a field trip.