About 66 million years ago, a herd of duck-billed dinosaurs died waiting for rain during a drought. Their bodies baked in the heat, then vanished under a wave of mud and debris once the rain came, leaving behind some of the best-preserved “dinosaur mummies” ever found. We’re talking skin, spikes, and, somehow, even the hooves.

The discovery comes from Wyoming’s so-called “mummy zone,” a ten-kilometer stretch of badlands known for exceptional fossil preservation. Paleontologists from the University of Chicago examined several Edmontosaurus annectens specimens found there, publishing their results in Science. These gentle, buffalo-sized herbivores are among the most common dinosaurs in North America, but these new finds reveal details that haven’t appeared in the fossil record before.

The

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