The latest dinosaur on display at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History is not only a new species, but museum officials say it’s the only bone ever found on Earth that’s green.
Named “Gnathalie” (pronounced “Natalie”) after the gnats that swarmed it during the excavation, the fossil of this long-necked, herbivorous dinosaur was given its unique dark mottled olive-green color by the mineral celadonite during fossilization. It’s colored.
Fossils are usually brown from silica or black from iron minerals, but green is rare because celadonite usually forms in volcanic or hydrothermal conditions that destroy buried bone. Celadonite entered fossil form about 50 to 80 million years ago when volcanic activity made it hot enough to replace previous minerals.
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This dinosaur lived 150 million years ago during the Late Jurassic period, making it older than the Tyrannosaurus rex, which lived 66 to 68 million years ago.
Researchers discovered the bones in Utah’s Badlands in 2007.
On July 2, 2024, a 150-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton will be on display at the Natural History Museum’s new Welcome Center in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
“Dinosaurs are a great way to teach visitors about the nature of science, and what better way to engage visitors in the process of scientific discovery and to get them thinking about the wonders of the world than an 80-foot-long green dinosaur? There’s nothing there. Live!” Luis M. Chiappe of the museum’s Dinosaur Research Institute said in a statement about the team’s discovery.
“When I was in graduate school, I heard rumors of green dinosaurs,” said Matt Wedell, an anatomist and paleontologist at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, near Los Angeles.


On July 2, 2024, a 150-million-year-old dinosaur skull will be on display at the Natural History Museum’s new Welcome Center in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
When he saw the bones, which were still being cleaned, he said, “They didn’t look like any bones I’d ever seen.”
The dinosaur resembles a species of sauropod called diplodocus, and the discovery is expected to be published in a scientific paper next year. Sauropods, a family of giant herbivores that includes brontosaurus and brachiosaurus, are the museum’s largest dinosaurs and will be on view in the new welcome center this fall.


A 150-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton is on display at the Museum of Natural History’s new Welcome Center as construction crews work in Los Angeles on July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
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John Whitlock, who teaches at Mount Aloysius College, a private Catholic university in Cresson, Pennsylvania, and studies sauropods, said it was difficult to find such a complete skeleton to fill in the gaps left by incomplete specimens. He said it was interesting to find it useful.
“It’s huge and really increases our ability to understand both taxonomic diversity as well as anatomical diversity,” Whitlock said.
The dinosaur was named “Gnathalie” last month after the museum asked the public to vote on five options, including “Verdi,” the Latin word for “green.” Olive is named after the small green fruit that symbolizes peace, joy, and strength in many cultures. Esme is an abbreviation of Esmeralda, which means emerald in Spanish. And sage is a green plant that is symbolic of LA and is also grown in the Natural History Museum’s natural garden.