Rare dinosaur bones found by 12-year-old boy

Whilst hiking in Alberta, Canada, 12-year-old Nathan made a discovery of a lifetime.

He found a dinosaur skeleton dating back 69 million years.

He spotted the fossilised bones sticking out from a rock in July, and this week the skeleton will be dug up completely.

Nathan said he was "speechless" when he first saw the bones.

Nathan has been interested in dinosaurs since he was six and often goes hiking and looking for fossils with his dad.

When he found the fossilised bones he said "I wasn't even excited, even though I know I should have [been]".

"I was in so much shock that I had actually found a dinosaur discovery."

Knowing that any fossils are protected by the law, Nathan and his dad headed home to report their prehistoric find.

They contacted the Royal Tyrrell Museum, in Alberta, that's devoted to the study of prehistoric life. The museum told them to take send photos of the discovery and to tell them exactly where they found them, which they did.

This is a Parasaurolophus Hadrosaur - not the same one Nathan found but similar

On further investigation, the museum confirmed that Nathan had found the skeleton of a Hadrosaur, an extremely significant find because of it's age.

The fossil was about 69 million years old, and records from that time period are rare.

"This young Hadrosaur is a very important discovery because it comes from a time interval for which we know very little about what kind of dinosaurs or animals lived in Alberta. Nathan and Dion's find will help us fill this big gap in our knowledge of dinosaur evolution," the museum's palaeo-ecology curator, François Therrien, said in a statement.

Nathan said his favourite dinosaur used to be a T-rex but after his discovery it's a Hadrosaur.

He is looking forward to seeing the experts dig the skeleton out of the ground he said: "It's going to be great to see them, after months of work, finally take something out of the ground."

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