Hiker Discovers 90 Million Year Old Fossilized Turtle in New Mexico

When Jeff Dornbusch went on a hike in southern New Mexico about a decade ago, he never expected to make an archaeological find. Now, years later, Dornbusch relocated the exact spot where the "rocks" were located and discovered that they are actually the fossilized remains of a turtle that lived 90 million years ago, according to The Week.

Now, a team from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History has excavated the find, according to Fox News. The team members carefully dug around the bulk of the fossilized turtle and then applied plaster to keep the remains intact while they were transported to the museum.

"I never really knew this area as a place for marine fossils-shells and stuff in the mountains," said Dornbusch in an interview with Phys.org.

Tens of millions of years ago, the landscape would have been far different than it is today. Instead of desert, it would have been a swampy, near-shore environment-perfect for the turtle that was recently discovered, according to Las Cruces News.

How did they determine the turtle fossil's age? It was all thanks to the surrounding dirt. The site where the turtle was found is part of what is known as the Crevasse Canyon formation, a chunk of dirt that has the same age and geological make-up from the late Cretaceous period, according to Las Cruces News.

Currently, the fossil is being examined and prepared by researchers for eventual display.