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This genuine piece of fossilized dinosaur bone is from the Jurassic Period, 160 million years ago. Many of these bones were found in the “dinosaur graveyards” exposed in the Morrison formation in Wyoming and Utah. The term fossilized is important. It is not the dinosaur bones themselves that paleontologists find, but their stony replicas. Fossil bones are created by the slow replacement of bone molecules with the molecules of minerals in ground water. This process sometimes preserves even the delicate cell structure of the bones. Other times the bones dissolve completely and only their imprint is left on the rocks.
