It wasn’t a full dinosaur at all. What looked like a complete beast was actually just the hyper-dense, heavily armored exterior shell of a juvenile Nodosaur. The softer internal organs and skeleton had long since vanished.
The paleontologist explained that a catastrophic prehistoric volcanic blast had instantly vaporized the creature’s soft body tissue on impact, but its thick, armor-plated hide miraculously survived the inferno. The indestructible outer shell was blasted directly into a massive pool of fresh coniferous resin, binding with the amber to freeze its lifelike, dragon-like shape forever. Shortly after, a volcanic mudslide swept the capsule away, flash-cooking the obsidian layer, before hydrothermal fluids eventually sealed it in tungsten.
Dave eventually went back to his regular job with a massive finders-fee bonus. But his perspective had completely changed. Every time his bucket scraped against a stubborn rock, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was looking at ordinary granite—or if he was one lever-pull away from cracking open another of nature’s secrets.