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[00:00.43] About 110 million years ago, a large plant-eating dinosaur covered with sharp points walked the land.

[00:15.31] Called a nodosaur, it is now the best example of its kind ever found.

[00:24.34] This new species of dinosaur is being called a one-in-a-billion discovery.

[00:34.17] Recently it was put on display at Canada’s Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drummheller, Alberta.

[00:47.18] The museum worked with the U.S. National Geographic Society to research the nodosaur.

[00:58.34] The National Geographic magazine June issue featured the dinosaur.

[01:08.18] This is “an incredibly unique specimen,” says Caleb Brown, the museum’s lead researcher on the nodosaur.

[01:15.87] He says it is so well preserved, with skin and armor, and it is three-dimensional — that means it was not flattened after it died.

[01:29.15] “It’s the closest thing that you’ll ever get to looking at a living dinosaur.

[01:30.48] If you are really lucky you'll have small bits of skin preserved and you really have to use your imagination to figure out what they would have looked like in life.

[01:42.96] In this case you don’t need a lot of imagination, what you see in front of you is what the animal looked like while it was alive."

[01:47.21] Researcher Mark Mitchell spent five and a half years, about 7,000 hours, carefully uncovering the nodosaur from the rock around it.

[02:03.95] Looking at its head, one can see where the eye once was.

[02:08.73] Brown says the animal looks like it has some personality.

[02:15.10] ”When you are looking at it, it looks like it is looking back at you.

[02:22.01] And that’s because of how well preserved it is.

[02:23.60] Even though the eye is not preserved anymore."

[02:24.93] But it has been a long time since this animal was alive.

[02:30.24] It lived in the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs ruled the world.

[02:37.68] At that time, the cold place where it was found in Canada was more like Florida today-- warm and humid and probably close to water.

[02:53.09] Scientists think it was swept out to sea and was buried in one piece in the soft muddy bottom.

[03:03.71] It was covered in sediment that later turned into stone.

[03:13.01] Over time it was covered by more layers and lay undisturbed until March 21, 2011.

[03:22.04] That was when Shawn Funk was working at a mine in Fort McMurray, Alberta. His machine hit something much harder, and colored differently, than the rock around it.

[03:39.31] There were black, brown and orange pieces.

[03:44.09] Funk had found the fossilized remains of the nodosaur—a creature that was 5 and a half meters long and weighed almost 1,400 kilograms.

[04:04.28] The orange pieces were part of the bony armor that protected the animal from attack.

[04:10.65] Researchers were only able to recover part of the creature, from the nose to the hips.

[04:18.88] So, what do scientists know about the nodosaur?

[04:24.46] “This was not an intelligent animal, it would be kind of a slow lumbering beast.

[04:32.96] Heavily armored and probably had slow reaction times."

[04:43.06] The nodosaur, Brown says, was covered in armor to protect it from attackers.

[04:45.45] It had two half-a-meter long spikes, or sharp pieces, coming out from its shoulders.

[04:52.62] It was wide and had short legs, which made it low to the ground.

[05:00.32] “So you have to kind of imagine a spiny four-legged tank and that’s basically what this animal was.

[05:09.62] It would walk around on the landscape.

[05:10.95] It was an herbivore, so it would have been eating plants.

[05:15.20] It didn’t do a lot of chewing, the teeth weren’t overly efficient.”

[05:19.98] That means the creature processed much of its food in its stomach, just like cows do today.

[05:29.01] Inside the nodosaur’s stomach there were different colored small sized balls.

[05:37.25] Researchers think these are what the animal was eating when it died.

[05:43.36] They will study their chemical and light properties to find out what they are.

[05:51.32] They do not know if it was male or female.

[05:56.37] They think it was an adult, but they do not know how old it was when it died.

[06:04.34] If it made a sound, they do not know what it would have been.

[06:10.18] While chemical studies were done on the nodasaur, the results have not been made public yet.

[06:18.15] Brown says that will happen soon, when their study is published.

[06:24.53] Meanwhile people have been reacting to the pictures.

[06:29.31] Brown says some have been emotional; they cannot believe they are finally seeing this very real dinosaur.