JORDAN — A Montana fossil discovery nearly two decades ago is now ready for unveiling and study in North Carolina.
It’s a rare find of two dinosaurs found together in the Hell Creek Formation in Phillips County.
Clayton Phipps, known as the Dinosaur Cowboy, found the dueling dinosaurs on land about 10 miles from his current dig site.
He's been working on this for two years with his family and has about five more years on that piece of land, which he says is the best site he's ever had in 30 years of searching for fossils.
On this day, Phipps found a T-rex tooth.
“It looks like a fairly complete, possibly tyrannosaurus rex,” Phipps said about the tooth. "A piece of every dinosaur known from the Hell Creek formation I found at this site.”
The Hell Creek Formation near Jordan was once close to the ocean and stretches into parts of the Dakotas in Wyoming.
"All the Hell Creek Formation, which is a world-famous fossil-bearing layer from the end of the dinosaur times," Phipps said. "The last dinosaurs on earth that are found in the formation."
Phipps’ idea of a full-time paleontological life first started to take shape back in 2006 when he and friends made a big discovery at another site of a tyrannosaurus rex and the triceratops.
Phipps says there are theories, and none can be proven, but he has his own idea about the two dinosaurs.
“I think they're in very close proximity to where they died,” Phipps said. “And I think they killed each other. It's obvious they weren't friends.”
That find, the Dueling Dinosaurs, is now owned by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
Phipps says he agreed not to disclose the price but published reports have it at seven figures.
Some of the museum’s paleontologists visited Jordan in September.
“Not only was it, you unique to find these two of the most iconic animals preserved together, but the state of the preservation was remarkable,” said Dr. Elizabeth Jones, manager of the museum's Cretaceous Creatures Project
Phipps’ discovery is so special that the museum has built a new lab to study the fossil.
One of the paleontologists says it’s the trip of a lifetime in this line of work.
“It's one of the best parts of my job,” said Dr. Eric Lund, the museum’s Dino Lab manager. “To be able to go out and see things that no other human has seen before to dig stuff up and to, you know, try to piece together all these pieces of information that we're seeing.”
“Most of the good scientific fossils that we found have found their way to institutions and I'm proud of that,” Phipps said. “I like to find them so that people can study and enjoy them.”
Phipps loves ranching and even bought some of his first cattle with what he made on a T rex tooth.
But now the Dinosaur Cowboy has given up cattle ranching in pursuit of what's buried beneath.
“All I ever wanted to do is be a cowboy,” Phipps said. “But then I kind of caught this disease and now all I want to do is find fossils and it's worked out.”
It's worked out into a nice family business.
