People gather at the exhibit of a titanosaur cast in 2016 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Scientists have recognized the first dinosaur fossil found in Antarctica -- a tail bone from a titanosaur -- after it spent 40 years in a drawer. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
June 29 (UPI) -- For about 40 years, an ordinary-looking fossil sat in a drawer in the geology collection of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. Today, it's finally being recognized and described for what it is -- the first dinosaur fossil found in Antarctica.
Mark Evans, the BAS collection manager, told BBC News that he found the nearly 4-inch-wide fossil among many other items collected on Antarctic missions over the decades.
"It's only when you start thinking, 'what's in this drawer,'that sometimes you come across something and you think, 'ah, this looks interesting,' " Evans said.
According to a field notebook in the collection, a team collected the fossil in December 1985 on James Ross Island. Geologist Mike Thomson drew a sketch of the bone and wrote "vertebra of large reptile," next to it, Evans said.
