The Utahraptor Project has attracted interest from dinosaur enthusiasts on social media and paleontology blogs. But while donations ranging from $5 to $1,500 have trickled in, the campaign has raised only $15,150 over the past 10 months. That is enough to buy some basic tools and begin work, Mr. Madsen said, but not enough for the team’s more ambitious goals.

Mr. Madsen has yet to be paid for his efforts. “I’m in a personally awkward place doing this crowdfunding thing, not least of which because I’m asking for money to pay myself for this work.”

The contents of the block already offer some intriguing possibilities, Dr. Kirkland said. They represent the remains of predators that stumbled into quicksand while pursuing trapped prey, one of the first such cases in the fossil record. Dr. Kirkland wants to determine whether each of the seven animals arrived at different times, or whether a single pack was buried at once. If the bones are interlaced, or show signs of equivalent amounts of weathering, that would be good evidence for a rich family life for Utahraptor.