Cowboy State Daily has a story about “Rex Junior.” First discovered in the 1950’s on a ranch near Newcastle, Wyoming, a partial skeleton of a sub-adult T. rex may be the most important T. rex that has or will ever be found. That is the opinion of paleontologist Paul Sereno. Sereno said “this specimen from the newly discovered mummy zone will redefine what we know about T. rex, inside and out.”

Sereno encountered Rex Junior at the top of a hill near Newcastle in the 1990s. It eroded out of the Lance Formation, a 67-million-year-old layer of rock dating to the end of the Late Cretaceous Period, when T. rex and Triceratops roamed Wyoming.

This T. rex wasn’t so much excavated as wrapped up and hauled off the Zerbst Ranch. The Zerbsts have been assisting paleontologists with that for generations.

William Zerbst helped paleontologist Charles Sternberg excavate a mummified Edmontosaurus from the ranch in 1910. His son, Leonard, encouraged paleontologists to explore the ranch his entire life, leading to the discovery of spectacular Triceratops specimens and other Edmontosaurus mummies.

That’s how Sereno zeroed in on “the big block.”

“I worked on the Zerbst Ranch and got to know the family quite well,” he said. “They know the land, as many ranchers do, and they knew there was something in a big block on the top of a hill.”

Kristen Zerbst, Leonard’s daughter, mentioned the block to Sereno. It wasn’t a new discovery, as the family had been finding broken scraps of fossilized bone lying beside it for decades.

“I found an interview with Leonard Zerbst where he talked about the dinosaur at the top of a hill,” Sereno said. “It was from 1952.”