The Denver Museum of Nature & Science said this week that it has unearthed a dinosaur fossil directly beneath its own parking lot, the deepest and oldest specimen ever recorded inside the city limits. The hockey-puck-sized vertebra was recovered in January from a 763-foot (233-metre) core sample drilled to assess whether the museum could switch its heating system to geothermal energy. With the bore hole measuring only about five centimetres wide, curator of geology James Hagadorn likened the accidental strike to “hitting a hole-in-one from the moon,” noting that only two similar bore-hole fossil finds have been documented worldwide. Preliminary analysis suggests the bone belonged to a small, bipedal herbivore known as an ornithopod—possibly a Thescelosaurus or duck-billed dinosaur—that lived roughly 67.5 million years ago, just before the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Fossilised plant matter found nearby indicates the animal inhabited a swamp-like landscape that once covered what is now urban Denver. The fossil has been added to the museum’s “Discovering Teen Rex” gallery, but curators say further deep drilling is improbable because of cost and the need to keep the parking lot intact. Even so, the discovery offers a rare glimpse into Denver’s prehistoric past and highlights the scientific value hidden beneath modern infrastructure.