A great find.
It was while walking his dog, like every morning before going to work, that Damien Boschetto, resident of Montouliers (Hérault) and archaeologist in his spare time, came across a bone.
A bone, which a recent landslide brought to light, and which will turn out to be connected to many others to constitute the skeleton of a dinosaur about ten meters long, which died nearly 70 million years ago years, in the Upper Cretaceous.
It must be said that this region, Saint-Chinianais, northwest of Béziers, is richly endowed with prehistoric bones and vestiges of the past.
The collection of the Cruzy museum, run since 1975 by Francis Page and volunteers from the Archaeological and Paleontological Cultural Association, bears witness to this.
“There, what is very rare is that it is a dinosaur in connection, that is to say without any missing piece from the back of the skull to the tail,” explains Damien Boschetto.
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So rare that the discovery was kept secret for two years to avoid looting until the skeleton could be repatriated a few weeks ago to the museum laboratory.
“For it to be in this connection, it means that the animal was covered quickly after its death, avoiding any dispersion by scavengers,” adds this 25-year-old discoverer who decided to make his passion his future. job.
He left his job in the energy sector to enroll in a master's degree in paleontology.
His dissertation subject has already been found: the Montouliers dinosaur.