Photo credit: AP photo of dinosaur excavation in North Dakota

A guy was digging in his uncle’s yard in North Dakota a while back and he uncovered a dinosaur.

Not just any dinosaur, but one of about five known specimens that has been well preserved – mummified - because of the sandy soil and dry climate when nature buried it 65 million years ago. Scientists are now delicately trying to carve the mummy out of the sandstone formation where it was found.

Just yesterday, I had the chance to watch an Egyptian mummy from the Walters Art Gallery go through CT scanner at the University of Maryland Medical Center. It was one of those stories I really enjoyed working on because it involved watching hands-on work.

So much science, health and medicine reporting involves talking to people AFTER they’ve done whatever work they’ve done. The challenge becomes keeping that kind of story from being too dry.

Yesterday, I didn't have to worry about that so much. The story meant watching and describing how a museum staff packs up and moves an extremely delicate  2,900 year-old mummy through city streets. There’s more on the Walters project here and more on the dinosaur mummy here.