Surprises From a Dinosaur Mummy

A partially mummified hadrosaur discovered by a teenager in North Dakota may be the most complete dinosaur ever found, with intact skin that shows evidence of stripes and perhaps soft tissue, researchers said on Monday.

Enough of the animal remains to show it ran quickly and was far more muscular than scientists believed such dinosaurs were.

"It's sort of King Tut meets T. Rex," paleontologist Phil Manning of the University of Manchester in Britain said in a telephone interview.

The creature is fossilized, with the skin and bone turned to stone. But unlike most dinosaur fossils, tissues are preserved as well.

This includes large expanses of the animal's skin, with clear remains of scales.

"This is not a skin impression. This is fossilized skin," Manning said. "When you run your hands over this dinosaur's skin, this is the closest you are going to get to touching a real dinosaur, ever."

The remains of the hadrosaur, dubbed Dakota, were found in 2000 by Tyler Lyson, then 17, on his uncle's ranch in North Dakota.

The hadrosaur, a plant-eating dinosaur that walked on two legs, lived 67 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous Period.

Lyson contacted Manning. The National Geographic Society, which helped pay for the expedition, will air a television program about the team's work on Sunday.

Manning had the team remove the monstrous specimen almost intact, with just the tail in a separate block.

It weighed close to 10,000 pounds (4,500 kilograms).

They persuaded the Boeing Company and NASA to use a huge computed tomography, or CT, scanner in Canoga Park, California, that is usually used to scan space shuttle parts.