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First dinosaur in space

First dinosaur in space
Who
Maiasaur
What
First
Where
Not Applicable
When
29 July 1985

The first dinosaur in space was maiasaura, a duck-billed hadrosaur that lived in what is now the US state of Montana during the late cretaceous period. The dinosaur didn't manage to leave Earth during life, but on 29 July 1985 – around 76 million years after its death – a few bones from a maiasaur fossil were taken into orbit on board the Space Shuttle by Montana-born astronaut Loren Acton.

Dinosaurs did not return to space until 23 January 1998, when a Coelophysis skull was taken to the Russian Mir space station by the crew of space shuttle mission STS-89.

Neither the maiasaur or the Coelophysis were taken to space for any particular scientific reason. The maiasaur was personal memento of home, carried in Loren Acton's personal bag while the Coelophysis was "symbol of the bond between Earth's history and humankind's future".