The worker’s boots squelched in the oily sand as they rushed to the scene. They all had odd expressions and couldn’t hold back their gasps as they met Funk at the scene.
He felt dazed, wondering if any of this was real. Were his eyes deceiving him? He would never have thought he would find something like that crawling out from the rock, but he still had no idea what it was.
It was just another day at work for miner, Shawn Funk. With 12 years of experience working as a construction worker and heavy-machine operator, Funk had seen his share of buried objects.
From useless trash to treasured valuables, Funk thought he had seen it all. Little did he know he was just about to witness the most bizarre and incredible event of his entire career.
Making his way to the backhoe in Millennium Mine in Alberta, Canada, Funk prepared for another full day of excavating the earth. Funk loved his job. As long as he was outside and working with the elements of nature, he was happy.
He was obsessed with natural anomalies and secretly hoped he’d find one someday. If only he knew today was his lucky day.
For hours, Funk manned his excavator as usual. Its powerful crane gulped huge rocks from the earth and hoisted them into the air. Everything was working as it should.
He was creating a huge dent in the land full of sand and oil, laced with bitumen. With every earth he lifted, he traveled back in time. He imagined how cool it would be if he actually found something.
He remembers the news segment where a miner found an ancient egg buried beneath dirt and stone. He looked at his pit of wet sand and stone and laughed. Nothing but sand, oil, and stone… he thinks.
He continued to dig. But just as he impacted to earth to swallow another piece of ancient soil, he heard a loud crack. He hit something. Something hard.
He released the chunks of earth from his excavator and got out to have a look at what fell out. He noticed something strange about the pieces of rock, so he carried them on the back of his truck to investigate.
He went back to his site and peered into the large hole he had dug in the ground. What he saw sent his heart pounding.
Running back to his truck, he called for officials and backup. He looked around him, but nobody was there. He saw another excavator working in the distance. But he didn’t have enough time. He needed to act fast.
Noticing the widening crack, he grabbed a shovel and started to dig. His strength doubled with the rush of adrenaline. But it still wasn’t enough, he needed backup.
Still, Funk didn’t have a second to lose. He was racing against time, against loose earth that could easily collapse and bury his anomaly and himself along with it.
He didn’t have time to think, he acted on pure instinct. His gut told him to protect this, it was his sole mission. As he stood behind the large boulder, doing what he could, he heard a noise.
It was back up. They arrived in force. Bringing a large crane and pillars, they prepared to hoist the large rock into the air. They dug beneath the rock and placed wooden planks to hold it steady.
Funk helped, watching nervously as they prepared for take-off. After what he saw, he became heavily invested and couldn’t take his eyes off this mind-blogging anomaly.
Incredibly, Funk discovered a real-life fossilized dinosaur that had been petrified from its snout to its hips. This meant it was miraculously well preserved since its death 112 million years ago.
Not only did it have teeth and bones, but also its skin and remnants of its intestines – a phenomenon as rare as winning the lottery.
Scientists speculate that the unlucky dinosaur died and ended up being swept into the river by a big flood. It was kept afloat by gases in its body which washed its belly-up carcass far out to sea.
