A Fossil From Antarctica Sat in a Drawer for 40 Years. It Turned Out to Be the First Dinosaur Bone Ever Found on the Continent

The bone was collected in December 1985 by the late geologist Mike Thomson, who described it as a "vertebra of large reptile" in his field notebook. British Antarctic Survey. The biggest scientific breakthroughs can come from the most mundane places. A forgotten fossil that sat in a collection drawer for around 40 years is now providing a rare glimpse at the dinosaurs that roamed what is now Antarctica—and which paths they may have traveled around the south.

The specimen, an 82-million-year-old fossilized tail vertebra, marks the first dinosaur fossil ever recovered from the southernmost continent, scientists report in a study published on June 29 in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. It belonged to a titanosaur—a member of a group that included the largest dinosaurs known to walk the Earth.

Geologist Mike Thomson collected the fossil in December 1985. He and other members of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) were conducting an expedition to map rock layers on James Ross Island. At the time, Thomson thought that the vertebra came from an ancient marine creature, like the other fossils found by the team. So, the unassuming bone was boxed up, transported back to the U.K. and left unstudied in a storage drawer.