In the badlands of Wyoming lies the “mummy zone.” This section of rocks dating back to the Cretaceous Period has produced several strikingly well-preserved dinosaur specimens over the last century, and now, scientists have used two of them to definitively determine what one long-lost species looked like.

In the early 2000s, researchers found two specimens of Edmontosaurus annectens , a large duck-billed dinosaur, in the mummy zone. The fossils were remarkably preserved, still showing fine details of scales and hooves 66 million years after these animals walked the Earth. In a study published Thursday in the journal Science , the team used these fossils to reveal exactly how this happened and reconstruct the species’ living appearance.

“It’s the first time we’ve had a complete, fles

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