FIRST BC DINOSAUR WEST OF THE ROCKIES

This dapper fellow is a pine needle and horsetail connoisseur. He's a hadrosaurus — also known as "duck-billed" dinosaurs. They were a very successful group of plant-eaters that thrived throughout western Canada during the late Cretaceous, some 70 to 84 million years ago.

This beautiful specimen graces the back galleries of the Courtenay and District Museum on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. I was very fortunate to have a tour this past summer with the deeply awesome Mike Trask joined by the lovely Lori Vesper. 

The museum houses an extensive collection of palaeontological and archaeological material found on Vancouver Island, many of which have been donated by the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society.

Hadrosaurs lived as part of a herd, dining on pine needles, horsetails, twigs and flowering plants. They are ornithischians — an extinct clade of mainly herbivorous dinosaurs characterized by a pelvic structure superficially similar to that of birds. They are close relatives and possibly descendants of the earlier iguanodontid dinosaurs. They had slightly webbed, camel-like feet with pads on the bottom for cushioning and perhaps a bit of extra propulsion in water. They were primarily terrestrial but did enjoy feeding on plants near and in shallow water. There had a sturdy build with a stiff tail and robust bone structure. 

At their emergence in the fossil record, they were quite small, roughly three meters long. That's slightly smaller than an American bison. They evolved during the Cretaceous with some of their lineage reaching up to 20 meters or 65 feet.

Hadrosaurs are very rare in British Columbia but a common fossil in our provincial neighbour, Alberta, to the east. Here, along with the rest of the world, they were more abundant than sauropods and a relatively common fossil find. They were common in the Upper Cretaceous of Europe, Asia, and North America.

There are two main groups of Hadrosaurs, crested and non-crested. The bony crest on the top of the head of the hadrosaurs was hollow and attached to the nasal passages. It is thought that the hollow crest was used to make different sounds. These sounds may have signalled distress or been the hadrosaur equivalent of a wolf whistle used to attract mates. Given their size it would have made for quite the trumpeting sound.

Dan Bowen, Chair of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society, shared the photo you see here of the first partly articulated dinosaur from Vancouver Island ever found. The vertebrate photo and illustration are from a presentation by Dr. David Evans at the 2018 Paleontological Symposium in Courtenay.  

The research efforts of the VIPS run deep in British Columbia and this new very significant find is no exception. A Hadrosauroid dinosaur is a rare occurrence and further evidence of the terrestrial influence in the Upper Cretaceous, Nanaimo Group, Vancouver Island — outcrops that we traditionally thought of as marine from years of collecting well-preserved marine fossil fauna.

The fossil bone material was found years ago by Mike Trask of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society. You may recall that he was the same fellow who found the Courtenay Elasmosaur on the Puntledge River.

Mike was leading a fossil expedition on the Trent River. While searching through the Upper Cretaceous shales, the group found an articulated mass of bones that looked quite promising.

Given the history of the finds in the area, the bones were thought to be from a marine reptile.

Since that time, we've found a wonderful terrestrial helochelydrid turtle, Naomichelys speciosa, but up to this point, the Trent had been known for its fossil marine fauna, not terrestrial. Efforts were made to excavate more of the specimen, and in all more than 25 associated vertebrae were collected with the help of some 40+ volunteers. Identifying fossil bone is a tricky business. Encased in rock, the caudal vertebrae were thought to be marine reptile in origin. Some of these were put on display in the Courtenay Museum and mislabeled for years as an unidentified plesiosaur.

In 2016, after years collecting dust and praise in equal measure, the bones were reexamined. They didn't quite match what we'd expect from a marine reptile. Shino Sugimoto, Fossil Preparator, Vertebrate Palaeontology Technician at the Royal Ontario Museum was called in to work her magic — painstakingly prepping out each caudal vertebrae from the block.

Once fully prepped, seemingly unlikely, they turned out to be from a terrestrial hadrosauroid. This is the second confirmed dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous Nanaimo Group. The first being a theropod from Sucia Island. The partial left thigh bones the first dinosaur fossil ever found in Washington state.

Dr. David Evans, Temerty Chair in Vertebrate Palaeontology, Department of Natural History, Palaeobiology from the Royal Ontario Museum, confirmed the ID and began working on the partial duck-billed dinosaur skeleton to publish on the find.

Now fully prepped, the details of this articulated Hadrosauriod caudal vertebrae come to light. We can see the prominent chevron facets indicative of caudal vertebrae with it's a nice hexagonal centrum shape on anterior view.

There are well-defined long, raked neural spines that expand distally — up and away from the acoelous centrum. 

Between the successive vertebrae, there would likely have been a fibrocartilaginous intervertebral body with a gel-like core —  the nucleus pulposus — which is derived from the embryonic notochord. This is a handy feature in a vertebrate built as sturdily as a hadrosaur. Acoelous vertebrae have evolved to be especially well-suited to receive and distribute compressive forces within the vertebral column.

This fellow has kissing cousins over in the state of New Jersey where this species is the official state fossil. The first of his kind was found by John Estaugh Hopkins in New Jersey back in 1838. Since that time, we've found many hadrosaurs in Alberta, particularly the Edmontosuaurs, another member of the subfamily Hadrosaurine.

In 1978, Princeton University found fifteen juvenile hadrosaurs, Maiasaura ("good mother lizard") on a paleontological expedition to the Upper Cretaceous, Two Medicine Formation of Teton County in western Montana. 

Their initial finds of several small skeletons had them on the hunt for potential nests — and they found them complete with wee baby hatchlings!

Photo One: Fossil Huntress / Heidi Henderson, VIPS

Photo Two / Sketch Three: Danielle Dufault, Palaeo-Scientific Ilustrator, Research Assistant at the Royal Ontario Museum, Host of Animalogic. 

The vertebrate photo and illustration were included in a presentation by Dr. David Evans at the 2018 BCPA Paleontological Symposium in Courtenay, British Columbia, Canada.

Photo Four: Illustration by the talented Greer Stothers, Illustrator & Natural Science-Enthusiast.

DINOSAURS OF THAILAND

This beautiful dinosaur track is from Kalasin Dinosaur Park in northeastern Thailand. 

Thailand boasts some of the finest Mesozoic trackways from five endemic dinosaur species.  

Since 1976, the Department of Mineral Resources with Thai-French Paleontological Project had continuously investigated the dinosaurs in the Phu Wiang mountains. The project found so many vertebrae, teeth, and footprints of the dinosaurs mainly from the sandstones of the Early Cretaceous Sao Khua Formation (about 130 million years old). These include sauropods and theropods ranging in size from adorable chickens to beasties up to 15 meters long. 

The Thai dinosaur record from the continental rocks of the Khorat Plateau is the best in Southeast Asia. The oldest footprints are those from small dinosaurs from the Middle to Late Jurassic Phra Wihan Formation. The most varied dinosaur assemblages come from the Late Jurassic Sao Khua Formation. Here we see the sauropods dominate the fossil beds interspersed with a variety of theropods. Large theropod footprints are known from the Early Cretaceous Phu Phan Formation. Theropods and the primitive ceratopsian Psittacosaurus occur in the Aptian-Albian Khok Kruat Formation. We find dinosaur material further north along the Mekong River region of Laos. Thai fossils show a close relationship to those found in China and Mongolia. 

If you'd like to go visit them, there is a rather nice display at the Phu Wiang Dinosaur Museum in the newly established Wiang Kao district about 80 kilometres to the west of the provincial capital of Khon Kaen. They have several species on display, including: Phuwiangosaurus sirindhornae, Siamosaurus suteethorni, Siamotyrannus isanensis, Kinnareemimus khonkaenensis, Compsognathus (awe, a wee vicious chicken...) and, of course, the Phu Wiang dinosaur footprints.

If you'd like to visit Kalasin Dinosaur Park, follow route 227 towards Lam Pao Dam and Dok Ket Beach. Instead of turning left towards the dam, continue up towards Sirindhorn Dinosaur Museum. You'll see it on your left about 5km before the museum. For some GPS help, pop this into Google Maps: Dinosaur Park, Ni Khom, Sahatsakhan District, Kalasin 46140, Thailand.

References: 

• Ingavat, R., Janvier, R., and Taquet, P. (1978) Decouverte en Thailande d'une portion de femur de dinosaure sauropode (Saurischia, Reptilia). C.R. Soc.Geol.France 3: 140-141
• Wickanet Songtham and Benja Sektheera (2006) Phuwiangosaurus sirindhornae Bangkok: Department of Mineral Resources: 100 pages
• Buffetaut, E., Suteethorn, V., and Tong, H. (2009) An earliest 'ostrich dinosaur' (Theropoda: Ornithomosauria) from the Early Cretaceous Sao Khua Formation of NE Thailand, pp. 229-243, in E. Buffetaut, G. Cuny, J. Le Loeuff, and V. Suteethorn (eds.), Late Palaeozoic and Mesozoic Ecosystem in SE Asia. Geological Society, London, Special Publication 315.

PARASAUROLOPHUS WALKERI OF ALBERTA

Holotype Specimen of P. walkeri, Royal Ontario Museum

Closer to home, we can find species of Parasaurolophus walkeri in the Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta, Canada. 

The Dinosaur Park Formation is the uppermost member of the Belly River Group — also known as the Judith River Group, a major geologic unit in southern Alberta. 

It is an area rich in fossils. The formation contains dense concentrations of dinosaur skeletons, both articulated and disarticulated, often found with preserved remains of soft-tissues. Remains of other animals such as fish, turtles, and crocodilians, as well as plant remains, are also abundant. The formation has been named after Dinosaur Provincial Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where the formation is well-exposed in the badlands that flank the Red Deer River.

The Dinosaur Park Formation was deposited during the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous, between about 76.9 and 75.8 million years ago in what was an alluvial and coastal plain environment. It is bounded by the nonmarine Oldman Formation below and the marine Bearpaw Formation above.

The formation includes diverse and well-documented fauna including dinosaurs such as the horned Centrosaurus, Chasmosaurus, and Styracosaurus, fellow duckbills Gryposaurus and Corythosaurus, the mighty tyrannosaurid Gorgosaurus, and armoured Edmontonia, Euoplocephalus and Dyoplosaurus. 

Dinosaur Park Formation is interpreted as a low-relief setting of rivers and floodplains that became more swampy and influenced by marine conditions over time as the Western Interior Seaway transgressed westward. The climate was warmer than present-day Alberta, without frost, but with wetter and drier seasons. Conifers were apparently the dominant canopy plants, with an understory of ferns, tree ferns, and angiosperms.

Some of the less common hadrosaurs in the Dinosaur Park Formation of Dinosaur Provincial Park, such as Parasaurolophus, may represent the remains of individuals who died while migrating through the region. They might also have had a more upland habitat where they may have nested or fed. The presence of Parasaurolophus and Kritosaurus in northern latitude fossil sites may represent faunal exchange between otherwise distinct northern and southern biomes in Late Cretaceous North America. Both taxa are uncommon outside of the southern biome, where, along with Pentaceratops, they are predominant members of the fauna.

Photo: Holotype Specimen: The incomplete Parasaurolophus walkeri type specimen in the Royal Ontario Museum. Location: 43° 40′ 5.09″ N, 79° 23′ 40.59″ W. Shared by MissBossy.

WOLVERINE RIVER DINOSAUR TRACKS

Jen Becker, British Columbia Paleontological Alliance Field Trip

In the summer of 2005, I joined Jen Becker, and fellow delegates from the British Columbia Paleontological Symposium for an impromptu late-night tour of Wolverine River, one of many prolific research sites of Lisa Buckley, a vertebrate paleontologist working in the Tumbler Ridge area of British Columbia.

There are two types of footprints at the Wolverine River Trackside –theropods (at least four different sizes) and ankylosaurs. The prints featured in this photo were laid down by some lumbering ankylosaurs out for a stroll in soft mud. Many of the prints are so shallow that they can only be recognized by the skin impressions pressed into the mud. We'd been up to the fossil sites in the day but wanted to come back in the evening to see them by lamplight. After a lovely dinner, we hiked up to Wolverine in the dark. We filled the tracks with water and lit them with warm yellow lamplight. Some clever soul brought a sound system and played spooky animal calls to add prehistoric ambiance. A truly amazing evening.

CRETACEOUS HADROSAUR FROM ALBERTA

A rare and very beautifully preserved Cretaceous Hadrosaur Tooth. This lovely specimen is from one of our beloved herbivorous "Duck-Billed" dinosaurs from 68 million-year-old outcrops near Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, and is likely from an Edmontosaurus.

When you scour the badlands of southern Alberta, most of the dinosaur material you'll find are from hadrosaurs. These lovely tree-less valleys make for excellent-searching grounds and have led us to know more about hadrosaur anatomy, evolution, and paleobiology than for most other dinosaurs.

We have oodles of very tasty specimens and data to work with. We've got great skin impressions and scale patterns from at least ten species and interesting pathological specimens that provide valuable insights into hadrosaur behaviour. Locally, we have an excellent specimen you can visit in the Courtenay and District Museum on Vancouver Island, Canada. The first hadrosaur bones were found on Vancouver Island a few years back by Mike Trask, VIPS, on the Trent River near Courtenay.

The Courtenay hadrosaur is a first in British Columbia, but our sister province of Alberta has them en masse. Given the ideal collecting grounds, many of the papers on hadrosaurs focus on our Canadian finds. These herbivorous beauties are also found in Europe, South America, Mexico, Mongolia, China, and Russia. Hadrosaurs had teeth arranged in stacks designed for grinding and crushing, similar to how you might picture a cow munching away on the grass in a field. These complex rows of "dental batteries" contained up to 300 individual teeth in each jaw ramus. But even with this great number, we rarely see them as individual specimens.

They didn't appear to shed them all that often. Older teeth that are normally shed in our general understanding of vertebrate dentition, were resorped, meaning that their wee osteoclasts broke down the tooth tissue and reabsorbed the yummy minerals and calcium.

As the deeply awesome Mike Boyd notes, "this is an especially lucky find as hadrosaurs did not normally shed so much as a tooth, except as the result of an accident when feeding or after death. Typically, these fascinating dinosaurs ground away their teeth... almost to nothing."

In hadrosaurs, the root of the tooth formed part of the grinding surface as opposed to a crown covering over the core of the tooth. And curiously, they developed this dental arrangement from their embryonic state, through to hatchling then full adult.

There's some great research being done by Aaron LeBlanc, Robert R. Reisz, David C. Evans and Alida M. Bailleul. They published in BMC Evolutionary Biology on work that looks at the histology of hadrosaurid teeth analyzing them through cross-sections. Jon Tennant did a nice summary of their research. I've included both a link to the original journal article and Jon Tennant's blog below.

LeBlanc et al. are one of the first teams to look at the development of the tissues making up hadrosaur teeth, analyzing the tissue and growth series (like rings of a tree) to see just how these complex tooth batteries formed.

They undertook the first comprehensive, tissue-level study of dental ontogeny in hadrosaurids using several intact maxillary and dentary batteries and compared them to sections of other archosaurs and mammals. They used these comparisons to pinpoint shifts in the ancestral reptilian pattern of tooth ontogeny that allowed hadrosaurids to form complex dental batteries.

References:

LeBlanc et al. (2016) Ontogeny reveals function and evolution of the hadrosaurid dinosaur dental battery, BMC Evolutionary Biology. 16:152, DOI 10.1186/s12862-016-0721-1 (OA link)

To read more from Jon Tennant, visit: https://blogs.plos.org/paleocomm/2016/09/14/all-the-better-to-chew-you-with-my-dear/

Photo credit: Derrick Kersey. For more awesome fossil photos like this from Derrick, visit his page: https://www.facebook.com/prehistoricexpedition/

DIGITS AND PHALANGES

While they resembled fish and dolphins, Ichthyosaurs were large marine reptiles belonging to the order known as Ichthyosauria or Ichthyopterygia.

In 2018, Benjamin Kear and his team delved into a new are of study through technology that allows us to look at ichthyosaur remains at the molecular level. Their findings suggest ichthyosaurs had skin and blubber quite similar to our modern dolphins.

While ichthyosaurs evolved from land-dwelling, lung-breathing reptiles, they returned to our ancient seas and evolved into the fish-shaped creatures we find in the fossil record today. Their limbs fully transformed into flippers, sometimes containing a very large number of digits and phalanges.

Their flippers tell us they were entirely aquatic as they were not well-designed for use on land. And it was their flippers that first gave us the clue that they gave birth to live young; a find later confirmed by fossil embryo and wee baby ichy finds. They thrived during much of the Mesozoic era; based on fossil evidence, they first appeared around 250 million years ago (Ma) and at least one species survived until about 90 million years ago into the Late Cretaceous.

During the early Triassic period, ichthyosaurs evolved from a group of unidentified land reptiles that returned to the sea. They were particularly abundant in the later Triassic and early Jurassic periods before being replaced as a premier aquatic predator by another marine reptilian group, the Plesiosauria, in the later Jurassic and Cretaceous.

In the Late Cretaceous, ichthyosaurs were hard hit by the Cenomanian-Turonian anoxic event. As the deepest benthos layers of the seas became anoxic, poisoned by hydrogen sulphide, deep water marine life died off. This caused a cascade that wreaked havoc all the way up the food chain. At the end of that chain were our mighty predaceous marine reptiles.

Bounty turned to scarcity and a race for survival began. The ichthyosaurs lost that race as the last lineage became extinct. It may have been their conservative evolution as a genus when faced with a need for adaptation to the world in which they found themselves and/or being outcompeted by early mosasaurs.

There are promising discoveries coming out of strata from the Cretaceous epeiric seas of Texas, USA from Nathan E. Van Vranken. His published paper from 2017, "An overview of ichthyosaurian remains from the Cretaceous of Texas, USA," looks at ichthyosaurian taxa from the mid-Cretaceous (Albian–Cenomanian) time interval in North America with an eye to ichthyosaurian distribution and demise.

Photo: This beautifully preserved Ichthyosaur paddle with its incredible detail is from Early Jurassic (183 Million Years) deposits in the Ohmden, Posidonia Shale Formation, Baden-Württemberg, east of the Rhine, southwestern Germany.

SALTRIO THEROPOD

In the summer of 1996, Angelo Zanella, an avocational fossil collector and active collaborator at the Museo di Storia Naturale di Milano (MSNM) spotted some intriguing fossil bone sticking out of a large block of rock while hunting for ammonites in the Salnova marble quarry.

The quarry is in the Alpine foothills, at the Swiss–Italian border near Saltrio. Saltrio is about 80 km north of Milan in the province of Varese, Lombardy, Italy.

Zanella reported the bones to the MSNM, which arranged a paleontological expedition to the site. The research was difficult because the explosives used for industrial quarrying had blown up the fossil-bearing layer and had broken it into hundreds of pieces.

The Saltrio quarry has been active since the 15th century as one of the finest sites of marble production, and the “Saltrio Stone” provides high-quality building materials for many famous Italian monuments  — the Scala Opera House in Milan and the Mole Antonelliana in Turin. They actively use dynamite to extract the marble. Great for the workers who are not required to manually break-up the massive pieces. Less so for the fossils. The bones from the Saltrio theropod were blown to bits just prior to Zanella's discovery then had to be pieced back together.

Three years later, after 1,800 h of chemical preparation in the Laboratory of the MSNM, 132 remains were extracted from three main blocks. Although fragmentary, jaw fragments, one tooth, rib remains, pectoral and limb bones were analyzed and found to be that of a large theropod dinosaur.

The Saltrio theropod (MSNM V3664) became popular by the name, Saltriosauro, and so it was reported (Dal Sasso, 2001a) and preliminarily described (Dal Sasso, 2001b, 2004).

Pictured above: selected elements used in the diagnosis of Saltriovenator zanellai n. gen. n. sp. Right humerus in medial (A), frontal (B) and distal (C) views; (D) left scapula, medial view; (E) right scapular glenoid and coracoid, lateral view; (F) furcula, ventral view; tooth, labial (G) and apical (H) views; (I) left humerus, medial view; right second metacarpal in dorsal (J), lateral (L) and distal (N) views; first phalanx of the right second digit in dorsal (K), lateral (M) and proximal (O) views; (P–T) right third digit in proximal, dorsal and lateral views; (U) right distal tarsal IV, proximal view; third right metatarsal in proximal (V) and frontal (X) views; second right metatarsal, proximal (W) and frontal (Y) views; (Z) reconstructed skeleton showing identified elements (red). Abbreviations as in text, asterisks mark autapomorphic traits. Scale bars: 10 cm in (A)–(E), (I), and (U)–(Y); two cm in (F), and (J)–(T); one cm in (G).

Photos by G. Bindellini, C. Dal Sasso and M. Zilioli; drawing by M. Auditore. - https://peerj.com/articles/5976/

T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR

The first skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex was discovered in 1902 in Hell Creek, Montana, by the Museum's famous fossil hunter Barnum Brown. Six years later, Brown discovered a nearly complete T. rex skeleton at Big Dry Creek, Montana.

The rock around it was blasted away with dynamite to reveal a “magnificent specimen” with a “perfect” skull. This skeleton, AMNH 5027, is on view in the American Museum of Natural History's Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs. It's also reproduced in their new exhibition T. rex: The Ultimate Predator Exhibition should you find yourself lucky enough to be in New York.

PROSAUROLOPHUS MAXIMUS

Prosaurolophus maximus, Ottawa Museum of Nature

Prosaurolophus was a large-headed duckbill dinosaur. The most complete described specimen has a skull around 0.9 metres (3.0 ft) long on a skeleton about 8.5 metres (28 ft) long. It had a small, stout, triangular crest in front of the eyes; the sides of this crest were concave, forming depressions.

This crest grew isometrically (without changing in proportion) throughout the lifetime of the individual, leading to speculation that the species may have had a soft tissue display structure, such inflatable nasal sacs.

When originally described by Brown, Prosaurolophus maximus was known from a skull and jaw. Half of the skull was badly weathered at the time of examination, and the level of the parietal was distortedly crushed upwards to the side.

The different bones of the skull are easily defined with the exception of the parietals and nasal bones. Brown found that the skull of the already described genus Saurolophus is very similar overall but also smaller than the skull of P. maximus. The unique feature of a shortened frontal in lambeosaurines is also found in Prosaurolophus, and the other horned hadrosaurines Brachylophosaurus, Maiasaura, and Saurolophus. Although they lack a shorter frontal, the genera Edmontosaurus and Shantungosaurus share an elongated dentary structure.

Patches of preserved skin are known from two juvenile specimens, TMP 1998.50.1 and TMP 2016.37.1; these pertain to the ventral extremity of the ninth through fourteenth dorsal ribs, the caudal margin of the scapular blade, and the pelvic region. Small basement scales (scales which make up the majority of the skin surface), 3–7 millimetres (0.12–0.28 in) in diameter, are preserved on these patches - this is similar to the condition seen in other saurolophine hadrosaurs.

More uniquely, feature scales (larger, less numerous scales which are interspersed within the basement scales) around 5 millimetres (0.20 in) wide and 29 millimetres (1.1 in) long are found interspersed in the smaller scales in the patches from the ribs and scapula (they are absent from the pelvic patches). Similar scales are known from the tail of the related Saurolophus angustirostris (on which they have been speculated to indicate pattern), and it is considered likely adult Prosaurolophus would've retained the feature scales on their flanks like the juveniles.

HADROSAURUS OF THE UPPER CRETACEOUS NANAIMO GROUP

Hadrosaurus, also known as the "duck-billed" dinosaurs, were a very successful group of plant-eaters that thrived throughout western Canada during the late Cretaceous, some 70 to 84 million years ago. Hadrosaurs may have lived as part of a herd, dining on pine needles, twigs and flowering plants.

There are two main groups of Hadrosaurs, crested and non-crested. The bony crest on the top of the head of the hadrosaurs was hollow and attached to the nasal passages. It is thought that the hollow crest was used to make different sounds. These sounds may have signalled distress or been the mating calls used to attract mates. Given their size it would have made for quite the trumpeting sound.

This beautiful specimen graces the back galleries of the Courtenay and District Museum on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. I was very fortunate to have a tour this past summer with the deeply awesome Mike Trask joined by the lovely Lori Vesper. The museum houses an extensive collection of palaeontological and archaeological material found on Vancouver Island, many of which have been donated by the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society.

Dan Bowen, Chair of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society, shared a photo of the first partly articulated dinosaur from Vancouver Island ever found. The research efforts of the VIPS run deep in British Columbia and this new very significant find is no exception. A Hadrosauroid dinosaur is a rare occurrence and further evidence of the terrestrial influence in the Upper Cretaceous, Nanaimo Group, Vancouver Island.

This fossil bone material was found years ago by Mike Trask of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society. You may recall that he was the same fellow who found the Courtenay elasmosaur. The bone was initially thought to be a plesiosaur but turned out to be a hadrosauroid. The find was confirmed by hadrosaur authority Dr. David Evans, senior curator of the Royal Ontario Museum.
You can see the articulated Hadrodauriod fossil bone Mike found now prepped fully prepped.

This fellow has kissing cousins over in the state of New Jersey where this species is the official state fossil. The first of his kind was found by John Estaugh Hopkins in New Jersey back in 1838.

KASKAPAU FORMATION: DINOSAUR BONE

Dinosaur bone / Kaskapau Formation

Bones from a variety of dinosaurs have been found in the Tumbler Ridge area of British Columbia.

Here plaster is used to protect a valuable dinosaur bone collected from Flatbed Creek near Tumbler Ridge. The bone is from the Kaskapau Formation (Turonian) and was found a few metres away from a Tetrapodosaurus, "four-footed lizard," trackway.

Both Rich McCrea and Lisa Buckley have published extensively on the fossil material from this area. Additional Papers: Arbour et al. (2008ish) wrote up a paper in the Canadian Journal of Earth Science on dinosaur material collected in the 60s from BC; Rylaarsdam et al. contributed to the same journal two years earlier on the association of dinosaur footprints and skeletal material in the Kaskapau Formation.

DINOSAUR GEORGE PODCAST

Recently, I had the very great pleasure of chatting with the deeply awesome "Dinosaur George" Blasting for his Dinosaur George Podcast. We talked about fossil sites of the Pacific Northwest, what's cool in paleontology, new fossil discoveries, finds that have made me cry and hunting ammonites (while getting shot at) in Alberta, Canada.

George is the host of the Dinosaur George Podcast. And, as one might expect, it is devoted entirely to paleontology and the natural sciences. In each episode, he and a guest explore what paleontologists do, what area of research or discovery lights them up, how they know what kind of fossil they have found and share personal stories from the field. If you're interested in learning more about paleontology, I highly recommend it.

Dinosaur George interviews some of the most interesting cats in paleo. Evolutionary Biologist, Dr. Devin O'Brien was on recently talking about canine teeth of our beloved saber-tooth-cat, Smilodon. Paleo-artist, Eric Warren shared about his craft which is a mix of science with pure-hearted creativity, and Dr. Dave Hone waxed poetic about pterosaurs. The podcast promises a veritable who's who in paleontology eager to share their love of fossils, along with stories of their very best and very worst days in the field.

Give it a listen. I'm hugely biased (we love George) but I'm not alone. The Dinosaur George Podcast just made the Top 5 Podcasts of all time. I'll pop a live link here: http://www.dinosaurgeorgepodcast.com/

FOOTSTEPS THROUGH TIME

Dinosaur Trackway / Trace Fossils

Walking along the beach at sunset, the last rays of the day catch the edges of ancient trackways of meat-eating dinosaurs who hunted in packs 100 million years ago. These were living, breathing, fear and awe-inspiring beasts that we may never meet in person but can imagine in vivid detail.

It is through their footsteps, these trace fossils, that we get our first peek at behavior we might not otherwise have known. Trace fossils or ichnofossils are burrows, footprints, tracks or even feces left behind by plants and animals that lived long ago. They may have scurried across a muddy exposure or eaten a tasty meal then pooped it out -- leaving behind clues to how they lived, what they ate and what the environment was like at the time.

Dinosaur footprints are an excellent example as they tend to make the news and are met with great excitement. Worm burrows on the other hand often go unnoticed and do not receive the hoopla and applause they deserve.

Ichnofossils can tell us a great deal about ancient environments, the behavior of ancient life and fill in gaps for us through the information they contain. As you might expect, trace fossils are often formed in soft substrates, particularly nice soft mud and sand. Those footprints you left at the beach or along a soft riverbank are candidates for fossilized trackways given the right condition and ichnological studies of the future.

CRETACEOUS SPINE LIZARD: SPINOSAURUS

Spinosaurus was a huge carnivorous theropod dinosaur who lived in the swamps of North Africa during the upper Albian to upper Turonian stages of the Cretaceous, some 112 to 93.5 million years ago.

Larger even than some Tyrannosaurus and Giganotosaurus, this fellow weighed up to 21,000 kg and with all that mass was still an accomplished swimmer.

The genus was known first from Egyptian remains discovered in 1912 and described by German palaeontologist Ernst Stromer in 1915. 

The original remains were destroyed in World War II, but additional material came to light in the early 21st century.  It is unclear whether one or two species are represented in the fossils reported in the scientific literature. The best known species is S. aegyptiacus from Egypt, although a potential second species, S. maroccanus, has been recovered from Morocco. 

The contemporary spinosaurid genus Sigilmassasaurus has also been synonymized by some authors with S. aegyptiacus, though other researchers propose it to be a distinct taxon. 

CRETACEOUS BONE BEDS

Einiosaurus procurvicornis was a horned dinosaur that roamed North America 74 million years ago. We find their bones in mass bone beds in Cretaceous outcrops of Montana and the Blackfeet Nation. The fossils have been recovered from rich bonebeds, largely consisting of only Einiosaurus fossils. Bonebeds with only one species are called monospecific bonebeds. But why do they occur? ⁣

⁣The most commonly suggested reason is that a herd of animals was suddenly killed by a natural disaster, like a volcanic eruption or flood. 

Their bodies were buried and remained in proximity to each other as they preserved, and today excavations uncover the remains of the unfortunate herd. Multiple other monospecific bonebeds have been found for other species of horned dinosaurs, such as Achelousaurus, causing researchers to suggest some groups of horned dinosaurs did exhibit herding behaviour— and that sometimes they met sudden unfortunate ends. But is sudden mass death from a natural disaster the only reason for monospecific bonebeds? ⁣

⁣Researchers say no. While the monospecific nature is still largely argued to represent herding in many cases, natural disaster is not always the cause of death. Sometimes large numbers of animals die from disease or starvation. Their carcasses could later be pushed together and buried by an event like a mudflow unrelated to their deaths. Their bones could also sit on the surface for years before an event that buries them. ⁣

⁣To understand the cause of a bonebed, researchers look at the bones themselves and the sediment that surrounds them. Bonebeds can tell us a lot about how these animals were living— but there is a lot to be learned from trying to figure out how they died, too. ⁣

Currie, P. J., & Padian, K. (Eds.). (1997). Encyclopedia of dinosaurs. Elsevier. • Rogers, R. R. (1989). Taphonomy of three monospecific dinosaur bone beds in the Late Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation northwestern Montana: Evidence for dinosaur mass mortality related to episodic drought. Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 5871. • Sampson, S. D. (1995). 

Two new horned dinosaurs from the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of Montana; with a phylogenetic analysis of the Centrosaurinae (Ornithischia: Ceratopsidae). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 15(4), 743-760. • Schmitt, J. G., Jackson, F. D., & Hanna, R. R. (2014). Debris flow origin of an unusual late Cretaceous hadrosaur bonebed in the Two Medicine Formation of western Montana. Hadrosaurs. Indiana Press, Bloomington, 486-501.

WOLVERINE RIVER: DINOSAUR SITE

No visit to BC's Peace Region is complete without a trip to the Tumbler Ridge Museum. In 2000, Mark Turner and Daniel Helm were tubing down the rapids of Flatbed Creek just below Tumbler Ridge. As they walked up the shoreline excitement began to build as they quickly recognized a series of regular depressions as dinosaur footprints.

Their discovery spurred an infusion of tourism and research in the area. The Hudson's Hope Museum has an extensive collection of terrestrial and marine fossils from the area. They feature ichthysaurs, a marine reptile and hadrosaur tracks.

At a British Columbia Paleontological Symposium in Tumbler Ridge, I joined Jen Becker for an impromtu late night tour of Wolverine River. There are two types of footprints at the Wolverine River Tracksite, carnivorous theropods and plant eating ankylosaurs.

During the day, the trackways at Wolverine are difficult to see. Many of the prints are so shallow that they can only be recognized by the skin impressions pressed into the tracks. By night, we filled them water and lit them by lamplight to make them stand out, reflecting the light.

PTEROSAURS: CATCHING PREY ON THE WING

Pterosaurs, the mighty winged-lizards, soared ancient skies expertly hunting for prey. Because they evolved from reptiles prior to modern birds, it was once believed that pterosaurs were primitive, passive fliers. They were seen as gliders, rather than skillfull hunters. Being the earliest vertebrates to have evolved powered flight, we now recognize that they were powerful fliers, chasing and catching their prey on the wing. One clue to this revelation is a small bone at the front of the wing bone which curves back towards the shoulder, roughly like an elongated thumb on a spread hand.

Modern birds have a small but vital feather, the aula, in this position. It shifts, acting like the leading edge on some airplane wings, redirecting the airflow over the wing, and allowing major changes in speed and angle in the air for comparatively little effort. It seems clear the pterosaurs’ extended thumb would have held a flap of membrane in a similar position at the front of the wing, and for a similar purpose. Their skulls hold the other clue; they have much larger brain cases in relation to their size than their earth-bound contemporaries. Co-ordination of flight requires tremendous brainpower, and co-ordination of active flight, with the constant shift in the shape and location of massive wings, even more so. Nature is extremely parsimonious, not frittering away investment in any organ where it is not needed.

Given the engineering challenges and the energy costs of getting each additional gram of weight off the ground, pterosaurs would never have developed such large and heavy “on board computers” unless they clearly paid their own way in faster, more nimble flight that would have allowed their owners to catch more prey and outmaneuver competing aerial hunters and scavengers.

ANKYLOSAUR TRACKWAY

FOSSILIZED DINOSAUR EGGS