Fossil hunters found a 67 million-year-old duck-billed hadrosaur in North Dakota in the US, with its skin, muscle, tendons and other tissue preserved, making it a unique find in palaeontology's history.

The preservation allowed scientists to estimate that it was more muscular than thought, perhaps giving it the ability to outrun predators like Tyrannosaurus Rex.

It has already been dubbed a dinosaur "mummy", even though the actual tissue has been fossilised into stone.

"It's unbelievable when you look at it for the first time. There is depth and structure to the skin. The level of detail expressed in the skin is just breathtaking." palaeontologist Phillip Manning from the University of Manchester in UK was quoted as saying by the BBC.

The in 1999, it is now being analysed with the world's largest computerised tomography (CT) scanner, which, researchers hope, will help them learn more about the fossilised insides of the creature.

The reptile had no chest cavity, suggesting it had been partially eaten by predators before being "mummified" in unusual conditions: acidic, waterlogged sediments collected around the dinosaur, triggering the rapid deposit of minerals and trapping organic molecules before they decayed.

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