If you’re excited by the prospect of seeing a potential new dinosaur species with your own eyes, then a visit to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) on November 17 might be a good idea.
That’s when Gnatalie, thought to belong to a previously undiscovered species of herbivorous long-necked dinosaur, goes on display. Discovered in Utah in 2007, the dinosaur is a composite display of several fossil specimens. The effort was led by paleontologist Luis M. Chiappe, NHM’s chief of research and collections.
Gnatalie will also be the only green-colored dinosaur in the world on display, because her bones absorb minerals where the fossils were found. Visitors can also view Gnatalie for free in NHM Commons, the museum’s new wing and community hub.
ABC News’ Juju Chang spoke with paleontologist Nate Smith about how Gnatalie was discovered, the process of reassembling the 150-million-year-old giant, and recent controversies in the world of dinosaur fossils.
ABC NEWS: What’s 75 feet long, green and older than a T. rex? Meet Gnatalie, thought to be an entirely new species of dinosaur. Scientists have spent the past decade painstakingly piecing together the 150-million-year-old giant. And National Geographic cameras have captured the entire process.
CHIAPPE: Well, this is a 150 million year old dinosaur, right? So I guess you wouldn’t expect it to be in perfect condition. And it’s not. If you look at some of the tail vertebrae, you’ll see that some of the spines are a little bit twisted. They’re a little bit broken, they’re a little bit deformed.
ABC NEWS: Wow. And I’m joined now by Dr. Nate Smith. He’s the director of the Dinosaur Institute at the LA Natural History Museum, where Gnatalie will be on display soon. Dr. Smith, thank you for joining us.
SMITH: Thank you for having me here.
ABC NEWS: I think it’s great that you’re living the dream, because every kid dreams of being a paleontologist. Here you are studying dinosaurs. But let’s start with her color. Why is she green?
SMITH: Yeah, the color comes from a lot of the mineralogy, and that’s much more general. What gives Gnatalie that green color is a mineral called celadonite, which became concentrated after it was originally fossilized. And that mineral replaced some of the minerals that were already there.
ABC NEWS: And she was found in the Badlands, right, in Utah?
SMITH: Yeah. So the southeast corner of Utah, near a town, a tiny little town called Bluff – a really picturesque and beautiful part of the United States.
ABC NEWS: And this is like breaking news in the dinosaur world. You call this a whole new species. Tell us more about that.
SMITH: Right. So a number of our researchers are working on that now. That takes time, when you’re going to establish and name a new species. But it looks like there’s nothing that really fits with the previously described large, long-necked sauropods from this area. And it’s a species that we could call a transitional form between a couple of other species. So that’s made the find even more exciting.
ABC News: Take us through the excavation process that led to the creation of this exhibit.
SMITH: Yeah, it’s a monumental task, as you can imagine. And in a way, the fun part of it is the easy part — you know, finding and starting to excavate those bones. But we give a lot of credit to our technicians and our staff here at the Dinosaur Institute and the NHM, because it takes hundreds and thousands of hours to actually excavate these bones from the surrounding rock or matrix. And that’s really the limiting factor for us to bring these giants back to life.
ABC NEWS: And I can see you in an Indiana Jones hat, out there, digging. And I understand that Gnatalie is going to be on display this fall. And you had people vote on her name, and she’s Gnat-alie for a reason.
SMITH: That’s right. It’s Gnatalie with a G. And that’s a shout-out to the early days of working in this quarry, the field crew was just harassed relentlessly by flying midges and biting midges.
ABC NEWS: What can visitors to your impressive museum do when they see the new exhibition?
SMITH: Well, Gnatalie is really a community dinosaur, right? It’s been excavated by a community of people for, you know, over a dozen years, including students, volunteers, researchers from all over the world. It’s on BLM land, so it’s kind of community-owned. And it’s going to be part of a new exhibit in our new NHM commons community center. So anyone will be able to come and see Gnatalie for free and learn the story of what we call essentially a ground-to-mound — so everything that went into finding, excavating, preparing, studying, and ultimately exhibiting this giant dinosaur.
ABC NEWS: There’s another dinosaur fossil that won’t be on public display, because Apex, the largest stegosaurus ever found, recently sold to a private collector for nearly $45 million. How do you feel about these rare specimens being off-limits to the public and out of reach of researchers?
SMITH: It’s a challenge, and there’s a lot of controversy and debate about it. One of the things that a lot of us in the paleontological community are hoping for is that the bidder who bought Apex has a long history of working with natural history museums and exhibiting those specimens and doing a lot of paleontological and museum education outreach. So our hope is that Apex won’t be lost forever to the public and to researchers.
ABC NEWS: And of course we all hope that everyone will come out to Gnatalie en masse. Thank you, Dr. Smith, for being there.
SMITH: Thank you for your time. And we look forward to having everyone here in the fall.
ABC NEWS: And we know that Gnatalie will be making her public debut at the LA Natural History Museum in November. Thanks again.
Disney is the parent company of ABC News and National Geographic.
Meet Gnatalie: Paleontologist Discusses Preparing Potential New Dinosaur Species for Exhibition originally appeared on abcnews.go.com