The Associated Press reports that the fossil of the young dinosaur, believed to have died at the age of five years old, was found in a chunk of sandstone they dug up in August 2006 in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. "We were so lucky to have found remains that turned out to be a complete set of all the important parts," Takuji Yokoyama, a spokesman for the Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences, a co-organizer of the joint research project, told AP. It has taken two years of careful preparatory work, but the team knows now that the fossil lacks only neck bones and the tip of the tail.
Since the dead bodies of young dinosaurs were often destroyed by weather decay or were torn apart by predators, such a find is extremely rare and could offer unique insight into the growth and development of dinosaurs.
This Tarbosaurus dinosaur measured 6.6 feet long. Adults grew to about 40 feet. Although they can't tell the gender, they do know the dinosaur came from a geological layer created about 70 million years ago in the late Cretaceous period.
