SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The nearly complete fossilized remains of a tyrannosaur found two years ago in southern Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument have been airlifted to the Natural History Museum of Utah.

The 75 million-year-old teratophoneus was covered in plaster and flown by helicopter in pieces Sunday to the Salt Lake City museum, where paleontologists will spend several years removing rock from the fossil.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports the teratophoneus lived several million years earlier than its relative, the T. rex.
The remains appear to be 80 percent complete.

Museum paleontology lab manager Tylor Birthisel told the Deseret News that most dinosaur remains are only 20 to 30 percent complete, making the discovery rare.

Grand Staircase paleontologist Alan Titus discovered the fossils in the monument’s Kaiparowits Formation, a thick layer of sandstone that also has vast coal reserves.