Move over, young Indiana Jones. Four-year-old Wylie Brys found 100-million-year-old dinosaur bones near a shopping center in Texas. The rare fossils the boy found belonged to a horse-size dinosaur.
Wylie had been excavating with his father Tim, who is a zookeeper. They had been "dino-digging" near a shopping center development in Mansfield, Texas. Mansfield is a suburb of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex region.
When Wylie showed his father the animal bones, his father was certain it was something "interesting," according to Review Journal. He calls finding the bones an event that happens "once" in a lifetime.
Tim thought at first that all the bones were turtle bones. Researchers now think that some turtle bones were possibly mixed with the dinosaur bones.
Wiley had made the discovery of the bones last September. However, he learned on Saturday that the bones were actually dinosaur fossils, according to New York Daily News.
Tim and his son had been searching in the area for fish fossils seven months ago. They had started searching near a construction site when Wylie discovered the bones.
The fossils belonged to a type of dinosaur called Nodasaur, which was probably as big as a horse, and was covered with armored plates.
Nodasaurus, or "knobbed lizard," was a plant-eater. The first incomplete fossil skeletons were located in Kansas and Wyoming during the 1800s.
The bones found by Wiley were shipped to Southern Methodist University (SMU) for examination. SMU scientists say that the find is quite rare, and especially since a five-year-old child located it.
Lewis Jacobs, a SMU professor, argues that Wylie is already a young paleontologist. Even if he does not study to become an actual paleontologist he will still be a "spectacular" adult.