A construction worker hit a gigantic dinosaur tail while using a backhoe in Canada this week.

Researchers believe the millions-of-years-old tail could be attached to an entire 30-foot dinosaur, CNN reported.

"As we walked around it, we saw this whole part of a tail of a dinosaur. To see something like that is pretty incredible," paleontologist Matthew Vavrek, who inspected the fossil, told CNN.

It's extremely rare to find a fossil as complete as this newly-discovered specimen.

"The last time I've seen something like that was in a museum. I've never found something like this before," Vavrek said.

The researchers almost didn't get to see what could be one of the world's most complete skeletons. If the backhoe had kept going the fossil would be nothing more than dust. Some pieces that were picked up with a shovel before the researchers got there crumbled into dust.

"You handle it carefully, or it's just going to shatter," Vavrek said.

Tourmaline Oil Corp, the company that discovered the fossil, will help Vavrek and colleagues move the delicate behemoth.

The process could take weeks, or even months if the Canada winter comes early and freezes the fossil into the ground. The team will remove the surrounding soil, cart it away, and gently remove the ancient bones.

"If it turns out to be something new, never found before ... it would take even longer," Vavrek told CNN.

 The team will use tiny jackhammer-like tools to brush the top layer of soil off of the specimen.

"What we have is a totally composed tail," Brian Brake, executive director of the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said, the Edmonton Journal reported. "It's beautiful."

The researchers have their fingers crossed that the tail is a part of a larger fossil.

"We don't know for sure that the rest of the animal is there," Vavrek told CNN. "Sometimes, all you get is what you see."

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