A 42-year-old professor in Hokkaido is on the verge of unearthing what could be the best-preserved and most complete fossils of a dinosaur ever found in Japan.

In September, a team led by Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, associate professor at the Hokkaido University Museum, conducted a second round of excavations at a site in Mukawa, near the city of Tomakomai, that was part of the seabed around 72 million years ago in the late Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era.

The fossils are believed to be of a hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur. It was likely around 8 meters long and weighed 7 tons, according to Kobayashi.