Dinosaur National Monument - a dinosaur skeleton prepared for display

Example of a dinosaur skeleton being prepared for a museum display. Once a fossil is discovered, it may take many years to carefully remove the fossil from the ground and prepare it for public display. Most fossils that have been removed are stored in research collections in museums and universities. Today, fossils are oftened cataloged by location and left where they are found so that critical information about the physical environment is not separated from the specimen.