The only dinosaur yet found in Minnesota is represented by this little tail bone. It is from the base of the tail of a small duckbilled dinosaur, otherwise known as a hadrosaur. That much we can tell from the shape and proportions of the bone. The specimen was brought to the museum a number of years ago without precise locality information, but it’s weathered appearance makes us think it may have been exhumed and rolled around during the last period of glaciation.

One of the most common questions that kids ask me is “Could I find a dinosaur in my yard?” The answer is ... maybe. There are two tricky things about finding dinos in Minnesota. First, many of the potentially dinosaur-bearing sediments lie deep under glacial till. Second, the environment here in Minnesota in the Mesozoic (when the big dinosaurs roamed the earth) wasn’t great for getting preserved, so a dinosaur’s chance of making it into the fossil record just wasn’t as good as in the western US. That said, this bone tells us that dinos did roam in Minnesota, just as they did in other parts of North America. Keep looking, kids!
– Kristi Curry Rogers, Curator of Paleontology