Gnatalie is the only green-boned dinosaur found on the planet. She will be exhibited in LA

The newest dinosaur on display at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles is not only a new species, but museum officials say it’s also the only one in the world whose bones are green.

The fossils of this long-necked, long-tailed, herbivorous dinosaur were named “Gnatalie” (pronounced Natalie) because of the mosquitoes that appeared in large numbers during the excavations. Their unique color, a dark mottled olive green, was obtained from the mineral celadonite during the fossilization process.

While fossils are typically brown from silica or black from iron minerals, green is rare because celadonite forms in volcanic or hydrothermal conditions that typically destroy buried bones. The celadonite entered the fossil record when volcanic activity about 50 million to 80 million years ago made it hot enough to displace an earlier mineral.

The dinosaur lived 150 million years ago, in the late Jurassic, making it older than Tyrannosaurus rex, which lived 66 to 68 million years ago.

Researchers discovered the bones in 2007 in the Badlands of Utah.

“Dinosaurs are a great tool to teach our visitors about the nature of science. And what better way than an 80-foot-long green dinosaur to engage them in the process of scientific discovery and make them reflect on the wonders of the world we live in!” Luis M. Chiappe of the museum’s Dinosaur Institute said in a statement about his team’s discovery.

Matt Wedel, an anatomist and paleontologist at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, near Los Angeles, says that “when I was in college, I heard rumors about a green dinosaur.”

When he saw the bones while they were still being cleaned, he said they were “nothing like I’ve ever seen before.”

The dinosaur resembles a sauropod species called Diplodocus, and the discovery will be published in a scientific paper next year. The sauropod, which refers to a family of giant herbivores that also includes Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus, will be the largest dinosaur in the museum and can be seen in the new Welcome Center this fall.

John Whitlock, who teaches at Mount Aloysius College, a private Catholic college in Cresson, Pennsylvania, and researches sauropods, said it was exciting to have such a complete skeleton because it could fill in the gaps left by specimens that were less complete.

“It’s huge and it really adds to our understanding of both taxonomic diversity and anatomical diversity,” Whitlock said.

The dinosaur was named “Gnatalie” last month after the museum asked the public to vote on five choices. They included Verdi, derived from the Latin word for green; Olive, named for the small green fruit that symbolizes peace, joy and strength in many cultures; Esme, short for Esmerelda, which is Spanish for emerald; and Sage, an iconic green plant from Los Angeles that also grows in the Natural History Museum’s Nature Gardens.

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