text: Meet "Joe" 
   
   
   
   "Joe" is a baby dinosaur, measuring under 6 feet long and a year old when it died. Careful study reveals that "Joe" was a young Parasaurolophus--the iconic tube-crested dinosaur that lived in southern Utah over 75 million years ago. 
   
   This website is a virtual museum exhibit, highlighting the story of "Joe" and what this fossil tells us about our planet's history. 
   
   "Joe" is named in honor of Joe Augustyn, a long-time supporter of the museum whose family sponsored the preparation of the fossil skeleton. ||||| Kevin Terris discovered the skeleton of a baby dinosaur named Joe in 2009, when he was a high-school student. 
   
   It's amazing enough that a 17-year-old high-school student was behind the discovery of the youngest fossil skeleton from a weird-looking breed of boneheaded dinosaur. But it's even more amazing that two professional paleontologists walked right past the bones before the kid spotted them. 
   
   "It's a little embarrassing to walk by something like that," admitted Andrew Farke, curator of the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology at The Webb Schools, "but he was just in the right place at the right time, looking in the right direction." 
   
   Farke and the California museum's director, Don Lofgren, had checked out the territory at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, and passed within several feet of the exposed fossil. A couple of days later, they brought their Webb students through the place for a field trip — and it was 17-year-old Kevin Terris who spotted the first bone. 
   
   "At first, I was interested in seeing what the initial piece of bone sticking out of the rock was," Terris recalled in a news release. Then he called Farke over to investigate. Together, they picked away at the overlying rock to see what lay beneath. "When we exposed the skull, I was ecstatic," Terris said. 
   
   An artist's conception shows the baby dinosaur in its environment. 
   
   That was back in 2009. Today, Terris is an aspiring paleontologist at Montana State University, and his discovery is the subject of a research paper published Tuesday by the journal PeerJ. In that paper, Farke and his colleagues report that the fossil is the "youngest and most complete specimen" representing Parasaurolophus, one of the strangest creatures in the dinosaur menagerie. 
   
   Crazy crest 
   
   Parasaurolophus was a plant-eating dinosaur that lived throughout western North America about 75 million years ago. Its most notable feature was a long hollow crest that stuck up from its head. Paleontologists believe the crest served not only as a kind of visual display, like the cockscomb on a rooster, but also as a resonator for deep, booming calls. (Check out this archived news release and audio file to sample the dinosaur's sound.) 
   
   
   
   During the four years that followed the find, researchers carefully excavated Terris' discovery, had it airlifted to the lab, analyzed the fossilized bones and put the skeleton on display at the Alf Museum. It's been nicknamed "Joe" — in honor of the late Joseph Augustyn, a contributor to the museum. 
   
   The skeleton of the baby Parasauropholus is on display at the Alf Museum. 
   
   Little Joe would have been about 8 feet (2.5 meters) long in life, compared with a typical length of 33 feet (10 meters) for an adult Parasaurolophus. A sample taken from the fossil's leg bone indicated that Joe was less than a year old when it died. 
   
   
   
   "Dinosaurs have yearly growth rings in their bone tissue, like trees. But we didn't see even one ring," one of the PeerJ study's co-authors, Sarah Werning of Stony Brook University, explained. "That means it grew to a quarter of adult size in less than a year." 
   
   Woofers and tweeters 
   
   Joe also had made a good start on its crest — which came as a surprise, because previous studies suggested that related types of dinosaurs didn't start sprouting their ornamentation until they were at least half of their adult size. The researchers suggest that Parasaurolophus youngsters had to start early in order to develop the ornate crest that the grownups had. 
   
   
   
   "If adult Parasaurolophus had 'woofers,' the babies had 'tweeters,'" Farke said in the news release. "The short and small crest of baby 'Joe' shows that it may have had a much higher pitch to its call than did adults. Along with the visual differences, this might have helped animals living in the same area figure out who was the big boss." 
   
   Webb Schools student Brandon Scolieri looks in on the bones of the baby Parasaurolophus as they're being prepared for a CT scan. Scolieri is one of the authors of a newly published paper on the fossil. 
   
   The research team had Joe's bones scanned to produce a virtual 3-D representation of the skeleton, which is being made available via the DinosaurJoe website. That way, scientists and the public will get access to Terris' find even if they can't see Joe in person at the Alf Museum in Claremont, Calif. 
   
   Dinosaur skeletons are bought and sold for millions of dollars, but Farke declined to say how much Joe would be worth on the fossil market. It can't be sold, because it was found on federal property. "We can't actually place a value on it," Farke told NBC News. "Its primary value is scientific." 
   
   Meanwhile, Terris isn't resting on his dino-finding laurels. The Houston native, who attended The Webb Schools because of its paleontology curriculum, told NBC News he's already working on his next publication. 
   
   "Paleo is something I've been interested in since I was a kid," he said. 
   
   More about dinosaurs: 
   
   In addition to Farke and Werning, the authors of "Ontogeny in the Tube-Crested Dinosaur Parasaurolophus (Hadrosauridae) and Heterochrony in Hadrosaurids" include high-school students Derek Chok, Annisa Herrero and Brandon Scolieri. The fossil was collected under a permit from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the Bureau of Land Management. 
   
   Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding +Alan Boyle to your Google+ circles. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. ||||| The skeleton of "Joe" is the smallest, most complete and youngest Parasaurolophus ever found. 
   
   A dinosaur skeleton discovered by an eagle-eyed high-school student turns out to be the smallest, youngest and most complete duck-billed dinosaur of its kind ever found. 
   
   This Cretaceous-era herbivore, Parasaurolophus, walked the Earth some 75 million years ago. The dinosaurs in this genus are best known for their impressive tube-shaped head crests, which may have been used for display or perhaps to amplify the animals' calls. The little specimen, dubbed "Joe," was so young that its crest was a mere bump on its head. 
   
   "We now understand a lot more about how Parasaurolophus grew its crest," said Andrew Farke, a paleontologist and curator at Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, Calif. [See Photos of the Baby Dinosaur Discovery] 
   
   Lucky find 
   
   The museum is affiliated with The Webb Schools, a private high-school campus outside of Los Angeles. The students at the schools participate in paleontology fieldwork as part of their coursework, which is how student Kevin Terris came to discover "Joe" in 2009. 
   
   Farke and a group of students were prospecting for fossils in Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, surveying ground Farke had already covered. Terris spotted a little sliver of bone sticking out from under a boulder and alerted Farke, who thought it looked like a piece of dinosaur rib — nice, but not really worth the trouble of excavating. 
   
   "We were going to try to see if we could get something better," Farke told LiveScience. 
   
   He walked around the other side of the boulder and picked up what looked like a large cobblestone, turning it over in his hands. A dinosaur skull stared back at him. 
   
   In light of the skull, Farke thought it wise to go re-check Terris' discovery. A closer look revealed it to be a string of toe bones. 
   
   "We have the skull on one side of this boulder and the toes on the other side. That means the whole dinosaur skeleton has to be in between," Farke said. "So we got pretty excited." 
   
   Growing baby 
   
   The team had to line up permits to excavate on the public land; they returned in 2010 to dig the bones from the ground. Surrounded by an 800-pound (363 kilograms) armor of rock, the bones had to be airlifted out of the rugged backcountry by helicopter. [Video: Airlifting a Baby Dino] 
   
   The skull of baby "Joe" sports a small bump that would have grown into an impressive tube-liked crest. Credit: Copyright Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology. 
   
   After 1,300 painstaking hours of cleaning, chiseling and picking, technicians revealed the fossil buried in all that stone. The completeness of the skeleton turned out to be "pretty spectacular," Farke said. 
   
   The paleontologists realized they had an amazing example of a baby Parasaurolophus on their hands. Even better, they were able to sample the baby's leg bone. As dinosaur bones grow, they develop ring patterns, much like trees. 
   
   "It didn't have any rings at all," Farke said of "Joe." "So what that shows is that this animal was under a year old when it died." 
   
   The infant dinosaur was already 6 feet (1.8 meters) long, however, an impressive feat when you consider that duck-billed dinos hatched at about the same size as a human infant. The fact that "Joe" was already sprouting a crest bump so young suggests that Parasaurolophus started growing its crest earlier than other duck-billed dinosaurs. 
   
   "It finally lets us understand how Parasaurolophus evolved that big crest, just by shifting around events in its development," Farke said. 
   
   "Joe" will go on display at the Alf museum beginning today (Oct. 22) to coincide with a publication about the discovery in the journal PeerJ. A digital exploration of the skeleton will also be available at dinosaurjoe.com. 
   
   As for Terris, the student who found the little duck-bill, he's now in college, studying geology, Farke said. 
   
   Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.
target: – A California high school student made a find LiveScience calls "amazing": While doing paleontology fieldwork for school in Utah in 2009, Kevin Terris helped to discover an almost complete baby Parasaurolophus skeleton—in fact, the most complete one ever found. Nicknamed "Joe," it also turned out to be the smallest and youngest Parasaurolophus fossil ever found at under a year old and 6 feet long. The herbivore is known for its tube-shaped head crest, and this one was so young the crest is just a bump. "We now understand a lot more about how Parasaurolophus grew its crest," says a paleontologist. Specifically, the fact that the crest was already in existence on such a young dinosaur suggests that Parasaurolophus crests started growing earlier than those of other duck-billed dinosaurs. "It finally lets us understand how Parasaurolophus evolved that big crest, just by shifting around events in its development," the paleontologist says. Why so much time between the discovery and its reporting? The team couldn't even dig up the bones until 2010, because of the need for permits, and it took 1,300 hours of cleaning and chiseling to unearth the fossil—the completeness of which is "pretty spectacular," according to the paleontologist. Fun side note: Terris spotted the first bone after two professional paleontologists walked right by it, which one of them tells NBC News is "a little embarrassing."