By: Melissa Zhao

In July 2022, three young explorers, Liam Fisher, age 7, his brother Jessin, age 10, and their cousin Kaiden Madsen, age 9, discovered a Tyrannosaurus rex bone. It was a young teenage dinosaur’s bone, found while hiking in the Badlands in North Dakota with their father, Sam Fisher.

The young dinosaur’s bones will extremely help the scientists discover how the tyrannosaurus rex grew up and survived when they were young. It will also help them understand T. Rex behavior and transition from childhood to adulthood. Only a handful of juvenile tyrannosaurus rex bones have been found, so it was a shocking discovery when the three kids found the fossils.

The three boys were really interested in fossils and had been hunting for them for years with hopes of discovering an important one. When they finally found the fossils, their feelings were a mix of excitement and surprise that they had made such a large discovery.

These rare fossils were a huge contribution to the scientific community and the study of tyrannosaurus rexes. Scientists are particularly interested in learning how these creatures grew up. Researchers estimate that at the time of its death, the dinosaur was 25 feet long, 10 feet tall, and weighed around 3,500 pounds. They will continue to study the fossils to discover more about the dinosaur and the natural world as it was in the age of the dinosaurs.