Two fossilized “mummies” unearthed by scientists in the badlands of Wyoming of the duckbilled dinosaur Edmontosaurus reveal the external anatomy in exquisite detail, including the surprising presence of hooves on the feet — a first for any dinosaur.

The two Edmontosaurus individuals, dating to the very end of the dinosaur age 66 million years ago, were a young adult roughly 40 feet (12.2 meters) long and a two-year-old juvenile about half that length. The contours of the external fleshy surface of the two dinosaurs were preserved over the skeleton by a thin clay layer about one-hundredth of an inch (0.025 cm) thick that formed after they died.

Because the shape of an animal’s soft tissue is rarely preserved in fossils, it is usually difficult to reconstruct the appearance of dinosaurs an

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