In 2000, a small dinosaur skeleton was discovered about 10 cm above the Jimbo Quarry near Douglas, Wyoming by Bill Wahl. The bones of this specimen were extremely small and were first thought to be from a pterosaur. Upon further examination in the lab, it was determined to not be a pterosaur, but a theropod. After months of preparation, it appeared that this specimen was unlike anything ever found before. There were serrations on the teeth, and the tibia was longer than the femur. There was also a groove on the dentary which is an indicator this may be a troodontid. It was determined that this was a new species of dinosaur, a maniraptarian, one that had never been found before. What was also very interesting was that this dinosaur turned out to be the smallest dinosaur ever found in Wyoming. What was even more astonishing was that it was found with the largest dinosaur ever found in Wyoming!

Bill decided to name the specimen "Lori" after a volunteer who would help dig at the Jimbo Quarry. He also wrote his masters thesis on the description of this new dinosaur while he was earning his masters degree at Ft. Hays State University in Hays, Kansas.

Over the years, the Big Horn Basin Foundation has kept the Lori Specimen in their collections, and talk of formally describing the specimen was of topic, but no one had done it.

In February of 2016, a project was launched on Experiment.com to help raise the money that was needed to help with the process of the formal description of this specimen. Over $4,000.00 was raised in 30 days from 64 people who were able to funding for the project. This money was used to pay for travel expenses of two paleontologists, Dean Lomax from England, and Bill Wahl of Thermopolis, Wyoming, who both traveled to Madison, Wisconsin where they joined two additional paleontologists, Scott Hartman and Dave Lovelace. All four scientists were able to examine the specimen in detail, run tests for coding and scans for the formal description.

There is more work to be done, but the Big Horn Basin Foundation is hopeful that this specimen will be formally described in a scientific journal sometime later this year.

Here is an update from Dean Lomax:

Describing a Jurassic maniraptoran dinosaur from the Morrison Formation of North America – Update

Dean R. Lomax

That escalated quickly! Our project was successfully funded by so many incredibly generous individuals in mid-March, and on behalf of the team we say a huge thank you. Just over a month later and the entire team have met, studied the new dinosaur and have already begun writing-up the detailed scientific description.

The specimen, from here on out referred to as ‘Lori’, was transferred (and placed on loan) from the Big Horn Basin Foundation, Wyoming, to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, so that it could be studied in more detail and so that parts of the specimen could be micro CT-scanned. This required that Bill Wahl (Wyoming Dinosaur Center, USA) and I (the University of Manchester, UK) travel to the University of Wisconsin to spend a week studying Lori alongside Scott Hartman and Dr Dave Lovelace.

On April 24, I flew out to Madison to meet with the rest of the team and study Lori. This entailed detailed discussions and a thorough reanalysis of the bones of Lori. We carefully reviewed every single (visible) bone of Lori and assessed previous identifications of each element. We were able to identify new bones (and features) that had previously been misidentified or missed, which provided additional information on the skeleton of Lori. Bill Wahl, who originally found Lori in 2001, pieced together the entire skeleton. This was very important as each member of the team could see and understand how Lori was found, how all of the pieces fit together and also provide us with an insight into the taphonomy (what happened to Lori between the time it died and when it became fossilised) and original position that Lori was found in.

Much of Lori’s bones are still embedded in matrix, although many are complete and their important features can be assessed, some of these elements are only partially or minimally exposed. As Lori had previously been CT-scanned, we had the opportunity to delve through scan data and see the full extent of such elements, and thus allow for their positive identification. Some of these elements were still difficult to identify and we plan to have some of these blocks micro CT-scanned to uncover even finer details.

In addition to carefully examining the bones and discussing their identification, we also took countless photographs (probably over a thousand!) to ensure we captured every single detail that we could – hey, we needed to take advantage of our time together, right!

With all of this in mind, we have albeit nearly completed the phylogenetic analysis (to see how Lori relates to other maniraptoran dinosaurs) and have begun to write the scientific paper. We plan to have the paper submitted later this year and have the research made open access. I guess the last thing to say is, “can we all science faster please?”

 

Dr. Dave Lovelace would also like to add:

We have scanned the specimen in our regular CT (which is a very high-end machine) and we are trying several novel resolution techniques.  Micro-CT is planned for later this May.  Good data so far!

 

**Please come back to check the progress on this important specimen!!!**