Three young boys left 'completely speechless' after finding a T-rex fossil in North Dakota Badlands

In short: Three young boys discovered a T-rex bone poking out of the ground while hiking in North Dakota.

Three young boys discovered a T-rex bone poking out of the ground while hiking in North Dakota. Over 100 individual fossils from the same T-rex have since been unearthed.

Over 100 individual fossils from the same T-rex have since been unearthed. What's next? The public can watch crew chipping the fossil out of its rock cast at a Denver museum.

Two young brothers and their cousin were wandering through a fossil-rich stretch of the North Dakota badlands when they made a discovery that left them "completely speechless" — a T-rex bone poking out of the ground.

It all started when Kaiden Madsen, then nine, joined his cousins, Liam and Jessin Fisher, then seven and 10, on a hike through a stretch of land owned by the Bureau of Land Management in North Dakota in July 2022.

In a Zoom news conference to announce the discovery on Monday, Liam Fisher recalled that he and his dad, who accompanied the trio, first spotted the bone of the young carnivore.

Liam and Jessin Fisher, then seven and 10, and their cousin Kaiden Madsen, then nine, spotted the bone of the famous carnivore. ( AP: David Clark/Giant Screen Films )

After its death around 67 million years ago, it was entombed in the Hell Creek Formation, a popular palaeontology playground that spans Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas.

The formation has yielded some of the most well-preserved T-rex fossils ever.

But none of them knew that then.

Liam said he thought the bone sticking out of the rock was something he described as "chunk-osaurus" — a made-up name for fragments of fossil too small to be identifiable.

Still, Sam Fisher snapped a picture and shared it with a family friend, Tyler Lyson, the associate curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Crew from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science have unearthed more than 100 individual T-rex fossils at fossil dig site "The Brothers". ( AP: Andy Wood/Giant Screen Films )

Initially, Professor Lyson suspected it was a relatively common duckbill dinosaur.

But he organised an excavation that began last summer, adding the boys and a sister, Emalynn Fisher, now 14, to the team.

It did not take long to determine they had found something more special.

Boys dig towards an 'electric' discovery

Professor Lyson recalled that he started digging with Jessin where he thought he might find a neck bone.

"Instead of finding a cervical vertebrae, we found the lower jaw with several teeth sticking out of it," he said.

"And it doesn't get any more diagnostic than that, seeing these giant tyrannosaurus teeth starring back at you."

A documentary crew with Giant Screen Films was there to capture the later discovery with Professor Lyson.

"It was electric. You got goosebumps," recalled Dave Clark, who was part of the crew filming the documentary that later was narrated by Jurassic Park actor Sir Sam Neill.

Liam, Jessin and Kaiden — who the brothers consider to be another sibling — affectionately dubbed the fossil "The Brothers".

Based on the size of the tibia, experts estimate the dinosaur was 13 to 15 years old when it died and likely weighed around 1,587.57 kilograms — about two-thirds of the size of a full-grown adult.

Professor Lyson said more than 100 individual T-rex fossils have been unearthed, but many are fragmentary and it is unclear yet how complete this fossil is.

The film T.REX documents the trio's 2022 find and ongoing work. ( Courtesy of Giant Screen Films via AP )

Jessin, a fan of the Jurassic Park movies and an aspiring palaeontologist, has continued looking for fossils, finding a turtle shell just a couple of days ago.

For other kids, he had this advice: "Just to put down their electronics and go out hiking."

The public will get to watch crews at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science chip away the rock, which the museum estimates will take about a year, at a special exhibit called Discovering Teen Rex.

"We wanted to share the preparation of this fossil with the public because it is a remarkable feeling," Professor Lyson said.

The exhibit's opening on June 21 will coincide with the debut of the film T.REX, about the trio's discovery.