Watch Raleigh scientists uncover a 75-million-year-old dinosaur

What they're saying: "We have known this type of dinosaur to be in this formation, but really just parts of the animal: a piece of foot, some vertebrae, some ribs… This is the first time that we've had the whole thing," lab manager Eric Lund tells Axios.

• If it is indeed a new species, the skeleton being dusted off in Raleigh would be its holotype — the specimen used to formally describe the species — the museum's communications director Kerry Irish says.

Flashback: The same lab discovered another new species — Nanotyrannus lancensis — a year ago in its "Dueling Dinosaurs" fossil.

Zoom in: The fossil currently being worked comes from the Kaiparowits Formation in Utah.

• When alive, the animal would have been beaked, toothless and fast — a runner, not a flyer. It was likely 8 to 10 feet long.
• The fossil is believed to date to the Late Cretaceous, after the Jurassic period.

Behind the scenes: Lund says weathering initially exposed some bones, and "we just kept finding more and more, and realized that we had the whole thing."

• The museum's head of paleontology, Lindsay Zanno, called it a dream fossil in a statement: "A beautifully preserved skeleton with the potential to tell us something genuinely new about dinosaur evolution."

The latest: Delivering the 5,000-pound fossil Wednesday required closing a street and removing windows. The bones remain encased in sandstone and protective white plaster.

Context: Museum director Denise Young says the open lab was "built around a powerful idea: the public shouldn't have to wait until the science is finished to be part of discovery," according to a statement Wednesday.

• The museum is part of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

If you go: The SECU DinoLab is open 10am–5pm Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is free.

• 📍 11 W. Jones St., Raleigh