After the parents reburied the remains (as a sign of respect for the animal), news of their rare find spread throughout the small community.
Several stories of this curious case would soon reach Chris Carvajal, an amateur paleontologist vacationing in the area. And so Carvajal would set off to do what any sane paleontologist would do, he started digging.
Carvajal excavated the bones and took pictures. The local officials allowed him to keep the remains for further analysis. Carvajal posted the pictures that he took online. This amazing discovery soon caught the attention of John J. Flynn, Paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History. After a few conversations via Skype, Flynn obtained the necessary paperwork and flew over to the Philippines to inspect the fossils firsthand.
Flynn brought with him all the necessary tools to analyze and confirm what could be the first reported dinosaur found in the Philippines. After months of work, Flynn confirmed that these remains were in fact bones from a dinosaur, a Megalosaurus to be exact.
The Megalosaurus is the first dinosaur ever to be discovered by scientists, back in 1676 in England, before the term dinosaur was ever used. This dinosaur lived approximately 166 million years ago during the Middle Jurassic era. The Megalosaurus looked very similar to a Tyrannosaurus rex with its powerful hind legs, short forelimbs, strong neck, small head, and serrated teeth. It reaches a height of 10 feet, measures 30 feet long, weighs 1 ton, and is able to walk upright.
It was previously thought that dinosaurs did not live in the Philippines as the island archipelago did not come into existence until the Tertiary period, millions of years after the dinosaurs went extinct. The isolative nature of the islands in the Philippines had scientists convinced that it was not possible for dinosaurs to exist there. With the unearthing and confirmation of a dinosaur fossil found in the Philippines, scientists will now be forced to change their views on the range of dinosaurs’ existence. These fossils not only disproved previously held notions, they also turned the Philippines into a potential dinosaur island.
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