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According to U.S. paleontologist Dan Chure, one of the members of the discovery team, the four skulls found at Dinosaur National Monument are the only complete Cretaceous sauropod skulls ever discovered in the Western Hemisphere.
The Lower (Early) Cretaceous period, from which the young dinosaurs came, lasted from approximately 145 million to 100 million years ago.
In fact, according to Dr. Britt, only eight of the 120 known species of sauropods have been discovered with a complete skeletal system that includes the skull.
Because of this fact, such dinosaurs are often called "headless wonders" because of the infrequency of finding their fossilized skull bones.
Dr. Chure stated, "When we started digging there '¦ I don't think anyone believed we'd find such spectacular skull material. You always hope you're going to find something like this, but the reality is that so few of them have good skull material preserved that you could go your entire scientific career and never find anything like this." [Deseret News (2.23.2010): 'Utah's dino hotbed yields 4 skulls of new sauropod']
The bones of the Abydosaurus mcintoshi are currently on temporary display at the Brigham Young University's Museum of Paleontology.
Page four concludes with a video of the discovery from a Utah Television station.
