Identifying fossil bones can be quite the challenge. Fossils might be broken, scattered, or distorted from the weight of the rock encasing them. This dinosaur bone was collected in June 2018 by the Western Science Center, Zuni Dinosaur Institute for Geosciences, and Southwest Paleontological Society in the Menefee Formation of New Mexico. We know from other bones collected in the same spot that we are dealing with the 79-million-year-old partial skeleton of a ceratopsid, one of the large horned dinosaurs related to Triceratops.In the field, all we could see was a flat but somewhat intricate surface that we thought might be a skull bone. WSC volunteer John Deleon recently started prepping this fossil out of its small plaster jacket, so we can see more of its shape and features for the first time. Turns out this bone is actually a highly distorted vertebra that has been flattened side to side. Right now it is visible only from the left side. Many characteristics of a typical vertebra are observable, including the centrum (the main body of the vertebra), the neural spine, and the left prezygapophysis and postzygapophysis (along with the centrum, these structures are where the vertebra would articulate with the vertebra in front of it and the one behind it).We have many more vertebrae, ribs, and a large hip bone to prepare from this ceratopsid, so we will have much more to say about this dinosaur in the near future.