The fossils from an extraordinary dinosaur find near Marmarth made their way to the North Dakota Heritage Center Monday morning.

Enduring the snow and cold, a half-dozen workers spent more than half an hour figuring out how to carefully lift the 8,000-pound object out of a semitruck and into the Heritage Center. It arrived here from the Los Angeles area, where it was scanned by government scientists using a giant CAT-scanlike machine.

A separate 1,500-pound piece with the animal's tail also is scheduled to arrive at the Heritage Center.

The dinosaur fossils - a duckbilled hadrosaur nicknamed Dakota - is special because it contained not only bones, but also skin and tendons as well. It was first discovered by teenager Tyler Lyson on his uncle's farm in 1999 and fully excavated last year.

"It is highly unusual to find all this intact," said North Dakota state paleontologist John Hoganson. "This is a very important scientific discovery, that's for sure."

The dinosaur skeleton will be on exhibit at the Heritage Center this coming May. It is expected to be there for about three years, Hoganson said.

Lyson, a Baker, Mont., native who is now a graduate student in geology and geophysics at Yale, wants to build a permanent home for the fossils in Marmarth, where he made the discovery.

The find has been chronicled internationally by the science community.

It is the subject of a book "Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs: Soft Tissues and Hard Science" by Phillip Manning and of the National Geographic Channel documentary "Dino Autopsy," which aired in December.

Check out the video of the fossils being delivered below.

(Reach reporter Jonathan Rivoli at 223-8482 or jonathan.rivoli@;bismarcktribune.com.)