4-Year-Old Boy Finds Rare 100-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Bones In Texas

A 4-year-old and his dad were looking for fossils in Mansfield, Texas, when the boy made an incredible discovery. There, buried in the dirt, the child reportedly found rare, 100-million-year-old dinosaur bones.

Last September, Tim Brys, a keeper at the Dallas Zoo, brought his son, Wiley, to the site of a future shopping center to conduct a fossil hunt, NBC News reported. The earth had been dug up to make way for the development, and Brys said he had hoped to find some fish fossils buried there.

"We commonly go collect fossils as something we can do together to be outside. Wiley enjoys coming with me on my trips," Brys told the news outlet.

That day, the father and son reportedly did find some fish vertebrae at the site. But Wiley went on to make a far more astonishing discovery.

“[Wiley] walked up ahead of me and found a piece of bone,” Brys told the Dallas Morning News. “It was a pretty good size and I knew I had something interesting.”

He was right.

According to scientists at Southern Methodist University, Wiley had stumbled upon some rare dinosaur bones, estimated to date back 100 million years.

The SMU scientists started excavating the dinosaur bones on Friday. They speculate the bones belong to a group of dinosaurs called Nodosaurs -- herbivorous creatures that lived in the late Jurassic to early Cretaceous periods.

Brys told NBC News that Nodosaur fossils are “really rare.”

“It’s possible it could even be a new species,” he said.

The bones are being transported to SMU for further study, the Dallas Morning News reported.

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