Once upon a time, roundabout 86 million years ago, a dead dinosaur drifted out to sea. The shovel-beaked hadrosaur expired somewhere inland, and, despite the herbivore’s bulk, the gases from decomposition buoyed up the carcass just enough to float the animal out into the warm waters where hungry sharks tucked into the dinosaur’s flesh. The scant details of the feast are recorded in bone.

In 2005, in the Smoky Hill Chalk of western Kansas, amateur fossil hunter Keith Ewell discovered a set of nine dinosaur tail bones. The ancient setting in which the bones were deposited made them remarkable. During the time the sediment of the Smoky Hill Chalk was being laid down, Cretaceous