The Los Angeles Natural History Museum is going green with the addition of its latest dinosaur. The 75-foot-long sauropod Gnatalie (pronounced Natalie) is being assembled at the museum. According to museum officials, it is not just a member of a new species but also the only dinosaur found on the planet whose bones are green.
Gnatalie received her name from the gnats that swarmed the excavation site of the long-necked, long-tailed, herbivorous dinosaur’s fossils, which were first discovered by researchers in 2007 in the Utah Badlands. The dinosaur’s fossils have a unique coloration of dark-mottled olive green, which it received from the mineral celadonite during the fossilization process.
While other fossils typically are brown from silica or black from iron minerals, green fossils are scarce due to the mineral celadonite forming normally in volcanic or hydrothermal conditions, which typically destroy buried bones. Celadonite entered the fossils when volcanic activity around 50 million to 80 million years ago made it hot enough to replace a previous mineral.
Like a sauropod species called Diplodocus, the sauropod refers to a family of massive herbivores, including the Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus. This new species of dinosaur lived 150 million years ago, during the late Jurassic Era, which makes it older than the Tyrannosaurus rex, which lived 66 million to 68 million years ago.
While the discovery of the dinosaur will be published in a scientific paper next year, seeing Gnatalie in all her glory is a sight to behold.
Matt Wedel, anatomist and paleontologist at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona near Los Angeles, said he heard “rumors of a green dinosaur way back when [he] was in graduate school.” But, when he finally was able to glimpse the bones while they were being cleaned, Wedel said they were “not like anything else that I’ve ever seen.”
John Whitlock, who teaches at Mount Aloysius College, a private Catholic college in Cresson, Pennsylvania, joins in the excitement. Whitlock researches sauropods and expressed enthusiasm at having such a complete skeleton that helps fill in the blanks for less complete specimens.
“It’s tremendously huge, and it really adds to our ability to understand both taxonomic diversity and anatomical diversity,” Whitlock said.
Gnatalie will bring more than greenery to the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. Luis M. Chiappe of the museum’s Dinosaur Institute said in a statement about his team’s discovery that “dinosaurs are a great vehicle for teaching our visitors about the nature of science, and what better than a green, almost 80-foot-long dinosaur to engage them in the process of scientific discovery and make them reflect on the wonders of the world we live in!”
Last month, the museum asked for a public vote on five choices for the dinosaur’s name: Verdi, a derivative of the Latin word for green; Olive, after the small green fruit that symbolizes peace, joy, and strength; Esme, short for Esmeralda, which is Emerald in Spanish; and Sage, an iconic LA plant that is also grown in the Natural History Museum’s Nature Gardens.
Gnatalie will be the museum’s biggest dinosaur and can be seen this fall in its new welcome center.
