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| Pat Trask with a Fossil Rib Bone. Photo: Rebecca Miller |
This thrilling find marks the culmination of a three-year palaeontological puzzle that began with mere fragments and ended with a daring cliffside excavation!
I hope to see it published with the Trask family name. Their paleontological history is forever tied to the Comox Valley and the honour would be fitting.
Elasmosaurs were long-necked marine reptiles roaming Earth's oceans from the Late Triassic to the Late Cretaceous (roughly 215 to 80 million years ago).
Our Trent River specimen clocks in at about 85 million years old. The rock layers in this area were originally laid down as tropical islands far to the south of the equator. Over tens of millions of years, plate tectonics slowly carried these ancient seabeds north and slightly east to the site we know today on Vancouver Island.
For years, tantalizing fragments of this juvenile elasmosaur washed out of the riverbanks—bones that fired the imagination of fossil enthusiasts but stubbornly refused to reveal their precise origin. The first clue surfaced back in 2017 during a Courtenay Museum fossil tour led by Pat Trask.
One lucky participant picked up a small finger bone from the river. Pat recognized it immediately as belonging to a marine reptile, possibly an elasmosaur. Although it was an exciting discovery, its source on the cliffs remained a frustrating mystery.
Fast forward to 2018. Another fossil tour, another chance encounter: a wrist bone—again, possibly elasmosaur—turning up in the Trent River. Pat looked down in that very moment and spotted a vertebra right at his feet! Now with multiple bones in hand, Pat collected them in the museum’s lab, increasingly determined to find their point of origin.
Throughout 2019, Pat and volunteers from the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS) combed the area for clues. They rappelled down cliff faces, deployed a drone to scour every crack and crevice, but found nothing definitive.
Then, in August 2020, everything changed. While leading another fossil tour, Pat stumbled across a newly revealed bone in the river—one that absolutely had not been there the day before. Looking up, he spotted a promising section of cliff and, with help from his wife, Deb, and a trusty telescope, he finally spied a bone jutting from the rock.
The excavation that followed was a marvel of planning and perseverance. Scaffolding had to be built, climbing gear prepared, and countless safety measures put into place.
Over several weeks, the team carefully pried fossil after fossil from the cliff—loose rib bones, gastroliths (stones swallowed for digestion), wrist bones, finger bones, and parts of the back and pelvis.
The bigger prize, wrapped safely in plaster and lowered ever-so-gently to the riverbank below, contained an array of bones that could include the skull.
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| Pat Trask Wrapping the plaster casing |
This discovery is part of the Trent River’s ongoing reputation for yielding stunning fossils.
The Courtenay Museum regularly hosts tours here, offering members of the public a chance to walk the same banks and maybe—just maybe—spot the next big find.
Past discoveries include other marine reptiles and invertebrate fossils, painting a picture of Vancouver Island’s prehistoric marine ecosystems.
For Pat Trask and his family, the discovery is deeply personal. Pat’s brother, Mike Trask, famously found another elasmosaur on the nearby Puntledge River back in 1988.
There’s even talk that if this particular find proves to be a new species, it could bear the Trask family name in the scientific literature—a fitting tribute to their passion, grit, and history-making finds in the Comox Valley.
So far, the bones point clearly to an elasmosaur. At roughly four meters in length, this juvenile is smaller than its adult kin, but it’s no less impressive. Every retrieved vertebra, humerus, and pelvis bone draws us deeper into the ancient ocean world of 85 million years ago. James Wood of the VIPS has taken on the painstaking task of preparing the specimen, aided by a new air abrasive generously provided by the Courtenay Museum.
With the fossil safely in the museum’s care, and research well underway, the Trent River elasmosaur story is poised to shine a spotlight on Vancouver Island’s extraordinary prehistoric past. From the moment that first finger bone surfaced in 2017 to the triumphant lowering of the plaster-wrapped jacket in 2020, this has been an adventure for the ages—and a spectacular reminder that our island still has secrets waiting to be discovered!
Photo One: Rebecca Miller, Little Prints Photography — she is awesome!
Photo Two: James Wood prepped the material and Pat Trask labelled and oriented the bones.
Photo Three: Pat Trask perched atop scaffolding along the Trent River. And yes, he's attached to a safety line to secure him in case of fall.
Photo Four: A diagram of the juvenile elasmosaur. See the Excavation Moment via Video Link: https://youtu.be/r82EcEF7Pfc