Scientists used a helicopter Thursday to get the fossil remains of a large 74 million-year-old duck-billed dinosaur from a quarry in northwestern Colorado to a community college in Craig.
The dinosaur, which has been dubbed “Walter,” was found just outside Rangely in 2014, according to a Colorado Northwestern Community College news release.
On Thursday, the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control’s Montrose helicopter crew, aided by Bureau of Land Management workers, assisted Colorado Northwestern Community College (CNCC) paleontologists to relocate fossil remains, including the chest, large pelvis bones, and many vertebra. The skull and limbs already had been removed.
The Bell Huey helicopter used a 100-foot-long line, remote hook and cargo nets to lift two plaster-covered jackets each weighing about 1,000 pounds. The fossil remains were lifted from a cliff terrace quarry onto flatbed trailers and were taken to a federal repository on the college’s Craig campus.
Earlier Thursday the helicopter crew had deployed to the nearby Dry Women Fire in Dinosaur National Monument, the release said.
“This was a great opportunity to not only support CNCC but simultaneously conduct wildland firefighter-helicopter training,” said Vince Welbaum, Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control aviation unit chief.
The dinosaur, from the hadrosaur family, was found by science instructor Ellis Thompson-Ellis and her husband, Josh. It was named Walter after the couple’s Great Dane, who had rested beside a piece of exposed leg bone.
Earlier removal of fossil “jackets,” weighing 400 to 650 pounds, were carried out with the help of athletes from the college, who traversed cliffs and remote terrain. Once back at the school, science students will free the fossils from jackets, clean and study them.
“There are no other community colleges in the nation that we know of that are a paleontology repository,” said Elizabeth Johnson, curator of paleontology and science faculty at the school.
Colorado Northwestern Community College, with campuses in Rangely and Craig, is in the heart of “Dinosaur Diamond” — some of the richest fossil beds in northwest Colorado and a short distance from Dinosaur National Monument.
