Gnatalie is the only green-boned dinosaur found on the planet. She will be on display in LA

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The newest dinosaur being mounted on the Pure Historical past Museum in Los Angeles will not be solely a member of a brand new species — it’s additionally the one one discovered on the planet whose bones are inexperienced, in response to museum officers.

Named “Gnatalie” (pronounced Natalie) for the gnats that swarmed in the course of the excavation, the long-necked, long-tailed herbivorous dinosaur’s fossils received its distinctive coloration, a darkish mottled olive inexperienced, from the mineral celadonite in the course of the fossilization course of.

Whereas fossils are sometimes brown from silica or black from iron minerals, inexperienced is uncommon as a result of celadonite kinds in volcanic or hydrothermal situations that sometimes destroy buried bones. The celadonite entered the fossils when volcanic exercise round 50 million to 80 million years in the past made it sizzling sufficient to exchange a earlier mineral.

The dinosaur lived 150 million years in the past within the late Jurassic Period, making it older than Tyrannosaurus rex — which lived 66 million to 68 million years in the past.

Researchers found the bones in 2007 within the Badlands of Utah.

“Dinosaurs are an awesome car for educating our guests concerning the nature of science, and what higher than a inexperienced, virtually 80-foot-long dinosaur to have interaction them within the strategy of scientific discovery and make them replicate on the wonders of the world we dwell in!” Luis M. Chiappe of the museum’s Dinosaur Institute mentioned in a press release about his group’s discovery.

Matt Wedel, anatomist and paleontologist at Western College of Well being Sciences in Pomona close to Los Angeles, mentioned he heard “rumors of a inexperienced dinosaur method again after I was in graduate faculty.”

When he glimpsed the bones whereas they have been nonetheless being cleaned, he mentioned they have been “not like anything that I’ve ever seen.”

The dinosaur is much like a sauropod species known as Diplodocus, and the invention will probably be revealed in a scientific paper subsequent 12 months. The sauropod, referring to a household of huge herbivores that features the Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus, would be the largest dinosaur on the museum and may be seen this fall in its new welcome middle.

John Whitlock, who teaches at Mount Aloysius School, a non-public Catholic faculty in Cresson, Pennsylvania, and researches sauropods, mentioned it was thrilling to have such an entire skeleton to assist fill within the blanks for specimens which are much less full.

“It’s tremendously large, it actually provides to our capacity to grasp each taxonomic variety … but additionally anatomical variety,” Whitlock mentioned.

The dinosaur was named “Gnatalie” final month after the museum requested for a public vote on 5 selections that included Verdi, a by-product of the Latin phrase for inexperienced; Olive, after the small inexperienced fruit symbolizing peace, pleasure, and energy in lots of cultures; Esme, quick for Esmeralda, which is Spanish for Emerald; and Sage, a inexperienced and iconic L.A. plant additionally grown within the Pure Historical past Museum’s Nature Gardens.