The fossilized remnants of a Triassic period dinosaur, believed to be over 225 million years old, were discovered at a UCSB baseball game this past Sunday.

Midway through the third inning of the Gauchos’ game with the University of San Francisco, senior anthropology major Jessica Mann spotted the dinosaur’s remains, believed to be those of the mysterious Brontsemasaurus, on the bench of the Santa Barbara dugout. She immediately pointed it out, and soon a crowd of several hundred had gathered at the stadium.

“It was weird,” senior catcher Marty Mullins said. “We’re not used to having more than 15 or 20 people at our games, so to see upwards of 500 people at the game was really confusing. We knew there had to be something strange going on.”

UCSB Assistant Communications Director Matt Hurst maintained that the fossil was actually the Gauchos’ head coach of 29 years. However, this claim was widely rejected by those in attendance.

“No, that’s definitely a Brontsemasaurus fossil,” archaeology professor Flynn Campbell said. “By the looks of it, it’s been glued to that dugout bench for untold millennia. Discovering one in such exquisite condition is really a great find for the university, and for science as a whole.”

Campbell speculated that the dinosaur crawled into his final resting spot some 228 million years ago, right after Caesar Uyesaka Stadium’s construction was originally completed, and has remained undisturbed ever since.

Former UCSB center fielder Brian Gump was unaware of a fossilized beast from the Mesozoic Era being a fixture in the dugout during his tenure at UCSB, though he said he could not exclude the possibility.

“Now that you mention it, I kind of remember something like that,” Gump said. “Did it have a blue hat and sunglasses, occasionally swaying gently in the breeze? Yeah, I definitely recall that.”

The Brontsemasaurus is believed to still be in the Gaucho dugout, though no one has been able to confirm or deny this since Sunday. Despite the potential scientific implications, Campbell has not returned to CU since the game’s end, citing the stadium’s depressing appearance and atmosphere as the reasons for her absence.

“CU is bad enough when there’s a baseball game going on, do I really want to put myself through that on a weekday?” she asked rhetorically. “I’ll see it whenever I go to another game. I’m sure that fossil isn’t going anywhere.”