The aircraft was removing parts of a dinosaur fossil from where they had rested on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument for the past 75 million years, as a tropical sea turned into southern Utah's red-rock desert.

When the first load of plaster-encased fossils of a duckbill hadrosaur was set next to a waiting truck off state Route 12, monument paleontologist Alan Titus let loose with a victory cheer.

"That whoop you heard was genuine," chortled Titus, as the chopper disappeared to pick up the second of five such loads at a site 2 1/2 miles away from this south-central Utah town. The fossil's final destination: the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

"We're going to start seeing a lot of big bones come out of here," Titus said.

Wednesday's airlift was a cooperative effort of the museum, whose paleontologists uncovered the fossil; the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the 1.9 million-acre monument, and nearby Zion National Park, which furnished the helicopter.

For Mike Petty, museum manager of paleontology collections and field operations, the airlift culminated a three-year effort that started when his wife, Jodi Vincent, discovered part of the fossil during a hike.

The few bone fragments she spotted in September 2001 emerged as the nearly complete skeleton of a 30-foot-long, 3-ton, grazing bovine of the Cretaceous Period. Scientists name it "Jodi Hadrosaur" in Vincent's honor.

"We . . . came back in April [2002] and started to brush [the fragments] off," said Petty. "We realized we had found an articulated [connected] skeleton, so we applied for an excavation permit."

Getty said that two years ago he, other paleontologists and volunteers began the tedious job of removing the rock that entombed the beast where it had dropped dead in a stream bed.

To remove the skeleton, he said, it was necessary to first determine its outline then dig a trench around it and scoop out the earth underneath it. As bone was exposed, it was treated with special chemicals to preserve and harden it. "There was a lot of [fossilized] skin on its underside and oval-shaped scale impressions along the back of its spine - something like an iguana has, only it was 75 million years old."

They also discovered that the skeleton's lower half, including hips and tail, was connected. Bones that formed the torso and part of the skull, including the jaw mechanism, were found nearby.

To protect the bones, 1,000 pounds of plaster and enough water to mix it were packed into the rugged area on the Kaiparowits Plateau. Once the plaster was mixed, 600 feet of burlap strips were dredged in the mixture and wrapped, like bandages, around the bones, creating 12 separate bundles ranging in weight from 300 pounds to more than half a ton each.

Scott Sampson, curator of the museum's vertebrate paleontology section, said the fossil and several similar skeletons found on the monument might produce a new species of dinosaur. But it is still too early to tell.

"A lot of people imagine that when a paleontologist finds a dinosaur, they just call CNN from a satellite phone and announce it. But a lot of work goes into getting it [the skeleton] out of the ground, and rock removed from the fossil," said Sampson. "They start with jackhammers and saws, and end up using tooth brushes and dental picks."

Sampson said the hadrosaur is the most complete skeleton yet found on the monument.

For Erick Lund, a museum paleontologist, Wednesday meant the end of hauling 50-pound sacks of plaster to the site as he has for the past three summer and fall digs on the monument.

"It was a lot of sweat, tears and blood," Lund said. "But very exciting."

mhavnes@sltrib.com