If you ever visited the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, then you walked over a scientific discovery even before entering the building.
The museum reports that it discovered a 67.5-million-year-old dinosaur fossil buried just over 760 feet underneath its own parking lot.
“This partial vertebra from a plant-eating dinosaur offers an extraordinary glimpse into prehistoric Denver and the animals that inhabited this area,” the museum writes in an Instagram post, adding that the find marks “the deepest and oldest fossil ever discovered within Denver city limits.”
It should be noted that workers were not looking for fossils when they made the discovery. The museum notes that the digging first began to “assess the viability of transitioning from natural gas to geothermal energy, and at the same time, carried out a scientific coring research initiative to better understand the geology of the Denver Basin.”
“The coring investigation led to the unexpected discovery of this dinosaur fossil,” the post reads.
The fossil will be on display inside the museum “Discovering Teen Rex” exhibition.