PRESQUE ISLE (AP) – After years without the one must have for a science museum, the Northern Maine Museum of Science is getting some dinosaurs.

The museum recently acquired two large dinosaur bones from the Museum of the Rockies in Montana, said Kevin McCartney, a geology professor at the University of Maine in Presque Isle. The bones – a tibia from a hadrosaur “duck-billed” dinosaur and a partial triceratops skull – weigh in at about 200 pounds each.

The Montana museum gave the tibia bone as a gift and offered the other on a 10-year loan. The species of the hadrosaur bone is unknown, though officials suspect it is from the Cretaceous Period about 75 million years ago.

The bone was found in 1985 in the Judith River formation in Montana. The triceratops bone came from the Cretaceous Period and was found in Wyoming.

The artifacts have been a long time coming for Maine, where no dinosaur remains have been found, McCartney said. The sediment in which bones would have been preserved has eroded away in the state.

McCartney hopes the university can work with students from the Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone to restore the artifcats. Right now, though, McCartney said he was just grateful to have the specimens in hand.

“I’m still just tingling with having a complete dinosaur bone here at the museum,” McCartney said.

With the new specimens, the Northern Maine Museum of Science may be the only museum in Maine that has sizable dinosaur bones, McCartney said.

Just as important, McCartney said, the bones will help to get children interested in science.

“Nothing does that better than a dinosaur bone,” he said.

Copy the Story Link