For Shawn Funk, it was just another day on a construction site. Suddenly, he hit something, and his fellow workers rushed to see what had happened. He didn’t understand what they were so interested in. Then he heard a collective gasp as they looked down.

Shawn Funk had 12 years experience with mining, construction, and heavy machinery. Performing digging work for all those years, he’d experienced many moments of amazement, uncovering unusual items that the crew would rush to see. Few things surprised him.

Funk loved his job – being outdoors, working a big backhoe, and working for the Millenium Mine in Alberta, Canada.

That day he put in long hours like every other day, digging up rocks and lifting them into the air before putting them down in a new location. He often thought about the age of the rock layers, what might have been preserved in them, and what he might find one day. 

Shawn thought about a news segment he had seen recently. A miner had found an ancient egg in a local mine. He tried to imagine how that felt and once again got to thinking about something he might uncover one day.

Shawn shook the loose earth from his excavator and went to see what he had struck. The rocks were unusual, and he wasn’t sure what they were, so to be safe, he set them down on the back of his truck to investigate later.

Shawn stared at the hole and then realized he needed assistance from the crew. In that hole was a large, oddly shaped, and textured rock. He’d never seen anything like it in all his years of mining and digging. So what was this odd thing?  

Funk knew it was time to call in the specialists who deal with unusual underground discoveries. He’d been looking at rocks all his professional life – and had a gut feeling that he’d stumbled upon something rare. However, he was panicking that the loose ground would swallow this huge rock before the specialists arrived.  

What a wonderful noise that was – a large crane had just arrived at the scene. Together the two operators dug beneath the rock just enough to fit wooden planks to keep it steady.

Once the crane lifted the rock out of the pit, there was a brief period of relief, but much more work awaited the crew. After all, the boulder was hanging in the air at this point – anything could happen. And no one knew what was hiding inside. 

By this time, the team from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology had arrived – the folks that are called when anything unusual is found underground. They hurried to the now-open boulder and stood in shocked amazement.

What Shawn Funk had happened upon was an incredibly life-like fossilized dinosaur from 112 million years ago. The creature was almost perfectly preserved, petrified from its nose to its mid-section.

The paleontologists had a field day with this new find. Their theory is that Mr. or Ms. Dinosaur had been swept into a river by a major flood event. The gases in its body kept it afloat and pushed it far out into the ocean.

Nodosaur.  That’s the name that the paleontologists gave this brand-new species – that’s right, this type of dinosaur had never been seen before Shawn Funk’s discovery. Over the next six years, scientists from all over the world tested and re-assembled the dinosaur’s remains, trying simultaneously to uncover its history.

Shawn Funk knew that the dinosaur was heavy – he hadn’t been able to lift it with his heavy equipment; he’d needed help from the giant crane. When the scientists returned the creature to their labs, they weighed the fossilized dinosaur and estimated it weighed about two and a half tons. 

What was the likelihood that this creature would end up in this particular spot and that Shawn Funk would happen upon it during a typical workday? Those questions boggle the mind. Firstly, the Nodosaur had a long, arduous journey to the spot.

Aside from the study of the skin and bones, since the Nodosaur was found in such good condition the scientists used x-rays to see inside its skeleton and learn even more. 

If you thought that Shawn Funk went on to fame and glory, interviews on the news and the cover of magazines, think again. This humble worker returned to work the next day, knowing he’d achieved his secret life-long dream and played a huge part in one of the world’s most important discoveries. 

Scientists are still spending hours studying the Nodosaur. Each scan they take gives them more profound knowledge of the Nodosaur and dinosaurs in general. From skin, bone, stomach, and other fragments, they have broadened the world’s knowledge about the life of these creatures living so many millions of years ago.

Police sirens punctured the air as hundreds of people were gathered around a riverbank in the backyard of a local farmer. They saw something that they couldn’t even begin to explain or try to wrap their heads around.

On a sunny day in Buenos Aires, a farmer named Jose Antonio Nievas decided to go for a walk with his dog in the backyard of his new home.

As Jose was casually strolling alongside the riverbank with his trusty companion next to him, something strange was laying in the muddy water that caught his eye.

As Jose got closer and closer to the peculiar object, he noticed that it was fully covered in mud. So, in an attempt to dig it out of its muddy state, the true size of the object revealed itself slowly.

Jose was sweating profusely after digging at the object for 15 whole minutes. He couldn’t dislodge the thing from out of the muddy riverbank. Certainly, this proved to be a massive undertaking.

Jose decided to call his wife to help him. He told her that he had uncovered a massive, black egg that seemed it was from a dinosaur.

Jose’s wife arrived at the riverbank and couldn’t mutter a word after what she saw before her very eyes. Naturally, she was eager and curious to know more. She helped Jose as best she could to dig the object out of the muddy earth while being careful to not cause any damage.

Dialing 911, Jose hoped that they would believe what he told them was in his backyard. However, in a town like Carlos Spegazzini, things as miraculous as this don’t ever happen.

After Jose persuaded the police to come and witness the object for themselves, they actually agreed. Upon the police’s arrival, hundreds of residents congregated around the riverbank location of the mysterious object.

Jose’s curious dog was sniffing the area with his tail wagging. All of a sudden, he began to bark and growl near where the odd and big object was discovered. What had Jose’s dog unleashed?

As tensions ran high and questions were left unanswered, the police made the wise decision to call in two local archaeologists to the scene. They were hoping that the experts would be able to lend some explanation to this bizarre discovery.

While removing the mud from the riverbank and began to dig the object out, the archaeologists noticed something striking. The object appeared to have a green, scale-like structure on it that was shimmering in the sunlight.

The group finally extracted the object from the deep ground. It was a process that took them hours of stumbling around in the muddy, sticky water with the glistening sun beating down on them.

While at the lab, the archaeologists performed many tests on the unearthed object. Even though their examination of the strange shell-like structure took a while, they finally identified the two-ton object.

Word spread like wildfire about the ancient discovery. Although, suspicious experts expressed their claims that the whole thing was a staged hoax.