Dragonlike 'Mona Lisa of dinosaurs' finally has a name

MIAMI, Florida - An extraordinarily well-preserved, 110-million-year-old dinosaur found in a mine pit in Canada now has a name and evidence that it struggled to survive, researchers say.

With fossilized skin and scales, the dragonlike creature is actually a new kind of nodosaur, named Borealopelta markmitchelli after the museum technician Mark Mitchell, who spent more than 7,000 hours painstakingly removing rock from around the specimen.

The report in the journal Current Biology described it as "the best-preserved armored dinosaur ever found, and one of the best dinosaur specimens in the world".