Named Dakota, the 67-million-year-old dinosaur, is one of the most important dinosaur discoveries in recent times -- calling into question the conception of dinosaurs' body shape, skin preservation and movement.

On 9 December the show Dino Autopsy joins palaeontologists in the US as they uncover the rocky tomb of one of the most complete dino mummies ever found. Whereas most of our understanding of dinosaurs is based on fossilized skeletal remains, this specimen includes an uncollapsed skin envelope on many parts of the body and limbs that offers a degree of insight impossible from just bone structure.

With the use of a CT scanner provided by Boeing, scientists attempt to peer inside this preserved body and tail in one of the largest CT scans ever attempted. Will this dino mummy alter our conception of dinosaurs' body shape, skin texture and movement? And how was this dinosaur astonishingly preserved?

Palaeontologist Dr. Phillip Manning says, "It is quite fair to say that our dinosaur mummy [Dakota] makes many other dinosaurs look like road kill. Simply because the evidence we're getting from our creature is so complete compared to the disjointed sort of skeletons that we usually have to draw conclusions from" .

Nearly everything one knows of dinosaurs comes from bones and teeth, usually the only tissue durable enough to fossilize. But unlike most previous fossil finds, Dakota has survived millions of years nearly intact, with fossilised skin and tendons, allowing us to reconstruct major muscle sizes, and with many body parts in place, offering a glimpse of a 3-D dinosaur.

Viewers will hear the story of the discovery of Dakota by teenager Tyler Lyson on his family's land in North Dakota. Dr. Phil Manning and his team of scientists from the University of Manchester work with Tyler and his team of volunteers as they struggle to unearth the tomb, bringing us closer to understanding how this dinosaur really looked and moved and whose fossil remains survived through the sands of time.

Dakota is first transported to the Black Hills Institute in the US where he is revealed to be a Hadrosaur, more commonly called a duck-billed dinosaur. A team of scientists in the UK then test skin samples, examining the fossilised skin to determine how Dakota might have looked and measuring muscle mass to determine how he might have moved.

With the aid of a Boeing CT scanner, the scientists attempt to peer inside Dakota's preserved body and tail. A technology usually reserved for testing aircraft and spacecraft parts for Nasa, will provide a scan of the 8,000-lb. body.

In fact, Dakota may contribute some significant findings to the field of palaeontology, altering our comprehension of how dinosaurs looked and moved. The Hadrosaur's backside appears to be 25 percent larger than previously thought; a surprising conclusion that could change the image of the dinosaur for the last 150 years.

With a larger backside, the Hadrosaur would have been able to reach top speeds of 45 kilometers an hour - 16 kilometers faster than the T. Rex. The skin envelope also shows evidence that the Hadrosaur may have been striped and not block coloured, producing an almost striped camouflage pattern on some parts of the dinosaur.

With its body so well preserved, researchers are able to more accurately estimate the spacing between vertebrae. While most museums, have the dinosaur bones stacked tightly against each other, Dr. Manning's research suggests that the vertebrae should be stacked approximately one centimeter apart. This could mean that some dinosaurs are at least one meter longer than previously thought.

The National Geographic Society is a partly funded analysis of the mummified dinosaur, including the CT scanning of the fossil. Scientific papers based on study of the dinosaur are in progress.

Accompanying the release of Dino Autopsy is a book Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs: Soft Tissues and Hard Science by Dr. Phillip Manning, published by National Geographic Books; and a children's book DinoMummy: The Life, Death, and Discovery of Dakota, a Dinosaur From Hell Creek.