In a jaw-dropping revelation, a well-known Denver museum famous for its impressive dinosaur displays has made an unexpected find—right under its own parking lot!

This remarkable discovery occurred while drilling over 750 feet deep to explore geothermal heating options for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The museum, a hotspot for dinosaur fans young and old, offers breathtaking sights of life-sized dinosaur skeletons that leave children in awe.

But this latest fossil isn’t particularly grand in appearance; it’s a small, hockey-puck-shaped vertebra of a plant-eating dinosaur, believed to have roamed the Earth during the late Cretaceous period around 67.5 million years ago.

Museum officials admit that the chances of hitting a dinosaur bone with a drilling bore just a few inches wide are astronomically low. James Hagadorn, the curator of geology, likened it to hitting a golf ball into a hole-in-one from the moon—a thrilling and rare find.

To date, only two similar fossil discoveries have been reported from borehole samples worldwide, with this being the first of its kind found on the premises of a dinosaur museum.

The fascinating evidence suggests this dinosaur thrived in a lush, swampy environment. Patrick O’Connor, the museum's curator of vertebrate paleontology, described its habitat as richly vegetated during its time.

The Denver area has unveiled its share of dinosaur remnants over the years, including fragments from T. rex and triceratops fossils. However, this recent find is both the deepest and oldest yet discovered in the region.

While the fossil has garnered mixed reactions from experts, it has been labeled "absolutely legit and VERY COOL!" by Erin LaCount, director of education programs at the nearby Dinosaur Ridge track site.

The fossil suggests it could either belong to a duck-billed dinosaur or a thescelosaurus, a smaller relative. It's now on display at the museum for all to see!

However, despite the excitement, museum officials have no plans to dig deeper beneath the parking lot. "I would love to excavate that dinosaur's remains, but we really need our parking," Hagadorn quipped.