Dinosaur Bones Found by 4-Year-Old Boy; 100 Million Year Old Fossil is a Nodosaur

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A four-year-old named Wylie Brys from Southeast Arlington discovered a 100 million year old dinosaur fossil.

The young kindergartener discovered the dinosaur bone which is believed to be from a nodosaur, according to The West Side Story. Wylie was with his father, Tim, when they were digging for fish fossils in a construction site in Mansfield near the Sprouts Farmers Market last September 2014. The bones were located about 100 yards from Matlock Road.

A team of paleontologists from the Southern Methodist University rushed to the location where the bones were discovered. More bones were surprisingly scattered around the area and this prompted the team of paleontologists, along with a volunteer group from the Dallas Paleontological Society, to find more.

The bones they managed to excavate this April of 2015 make up of over 50 percent of what they believe to be the heavily-armored nodosaur. According to Slash Gear, the bones are sent to be studied at SMU. The fossils the father and son managed to find were suggested to be over 94 to 100 million years old.

Nodosauridae, also known as nodosaurids, is a family of armored dinosaurs from the late jurassic era to the late creataceous period, according to the Tree of Life Web Project. They inhabited the places we now call Asia, North America, Europe, and Antarctica. They are described to be "armored" dinosaurs that had horizontal rows of spikes along their bodies and tails.

A professor of paleontology at SMU, Dale Winkler, spoke with the Dallas Times and said that the dinosaur was a rare find in the Texas area because it was usually inhabited by the seafaring variety of dinosaurs.

The professor described the fossilized finds as "armored beach balls that floated out to sea."

Even though the bones were found in September last year, it was only this month that they got the permits needed to dig up the bones. The Dallas zoo helped in the paperwork and once they had approval, the scientists began digging last Friday.

Winkler says, "It would definitely be months before it will be clean, maybe even longer."

Michael Polcyn, Winkler's SMU colleague, said that if it weren't for Tim and Wylie Brys, the dinosaur would have never been found and would have been destroyed or covered.

"It would have been buried and never been discovered in our lifetime," Polcyn said.

The digging in the discovery site will continue until next week. The shopping center construction will resume once the scientists are done.