FERRISAURUS SUSTUTENSIS: A NEW NON-AVIAN DINOSAUR IN BC

Say hello to Ferrisaurus sustutensis —  “A new leptoceratopsid dinosaur from Maastrichtian-aged deposits of the Sustut Basin, northern British Columbia, Canada."

You may recall Dr. Victoria Arbour, curator of palaeontology at the Royal BC Museum from her work on ankylosaurs & that interesting specimen from Hornby Island thought to be a pterosaur but further study revealed to be a saurodontid fish, an ambush predator with very sharp serrated teeth and elongate, torpedo-like body. Not a pterosaur but still a massively exciting find. Arbour was very gracious about the new interpretation, taking it in stride. She has since gone on to name this partial ornithischian dinosaur from Sustut Basin, as well as the ankylosaurs Zuul, Zaraapelta, Crichtonpelta, and Ziapelta. She's been a busy bee.

For this latest find, she’s partnered up & published her findings with David Evans from the Royal Ontario Museum in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PeerJ - the Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences last year. Their paper describes this partial dinosaur skeleton found amongst the inhospitable boreal forests and folded rock of the Canadian Cordillera near the Sustut Basin of northern British Columbia, Canada.

The first bones were collected by geologist Kenny F. Larsen who was surveying for uranium along the then in-construction BC Rail line along the Sustut River. The bones were later donated to Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia then accessioned by the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, BC. The skeleton includes parts of the pectoral girdles, left forelimb, left hindlimb, and right pes. Their rationale for a new species distinguished from other named leptoceratopsids is based on the proportions of the ulna and pedal phalanges.

This specimen was previously described in 2008 as an indeterminate small-bodied, bipedal neornithischian, possibly representing either a pachycephalosaur or a basal ornithopod similar to Thescelosaurus. With more material to work with, Arbour and Evans reinterpreted the remains as a leptoceratopsid ceratopsian, Ferrisaurus sustutensis, gen. et. sp. nov.

Figure 2: Preserved elements of RBCM P900

The news deserves some fanfare. While Alberta, our sister province to the east is practically littered with dinosaur remains, they are relatively rare in BC. This is the first unique non-avian dinosaur species reported from British Columbia.

It has been placed, within a reasonably resolved phylogenetic context, with Ferrisaurus recovered as more closely related to Leptoceratops than Montanoceratops. At 68.2–67.2 Ma in age, Ferrisaurus falls between, and slightly overlaps with, both Montanoceratops and Leptoceratops, and represents a western range extension for Laramidian leptoceratopsids. Leptoceratopsidae is an extinct family of neoceratopsian dinosaurs from Asia, North America and Europe. They resembled and were closely related to, other neoceratopsians, such as Protoceratopsidae and Ceratopsidae, but they are more primitive and generally smaller.

Figure 3: Pectoral Elements of Laramidian leptoceratopsids

Back in 2017, Arbour led an expedition to the Sustut River in Northern British Columbia to relocate the site where Ferrisaurus was originally discovered forty-six years earlier in 1971 along the BC Rail line near the intersection of Birdflat Creek and the Sustut River. The expedition was a huge success as the team found the remains of this new species of dinosaur and also recovered several species of fossil plants.

The fossil plant finds may not seem that exciting in comparison to a dinosaur but Cretaceous plants in BC are also relatively rare. Most of our best fossil plant sites are Eocene, the ancient lakebed sites at McAbee and Princeton — so a good 15 million or so years earlier.

During that expedition, the team recovered a fragment of a large Cretaceous terrestrial trionychoid turtle Basilemys from the family Nanhsiungchelyidae near the confluence of Birdflat Creek and the Sustut River. This largely North American turtle along with the plants will allow us to make correlations with terrestrial finds from other sites including those from the Nanaimo group, the inland island construction sites and the Trent River on Vancouver Island and Horseshoe Canyon in southwestern Alberta. Jordan Mallon and Donald Brinkman have done some good work on the Basilemys morrinensis from the Upper Cretaceous Horseshoe Canyon Formation. The Sustut Basin turtle and plant remains have been accessioned into the Royal BC Museum’s collections in Victoria.

It wasn't until last summer that Arbour was able to extract more of this dinosaur and not all of it as their field season was shortened by a cold snap that brought snow and ice, freezing the ground they were working in the high alpine. Arbour plans to continue her work searching for dinosaur fossils in the high alpine plateaus of northern British Columbia. A fresh grant this year from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) will help pave the way for both her and some summer students to continue their fieldwork.

Reference: Arbour VM, Evans DC. 2019. A new leptoceratopsid dinosaur from Maastrichtian-aged deposits of the Sustut Basin, northern British Columbia, Canada. PeerJ 7:e7926 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7926. Here's a link to the paper: https://peerj.com/articles/7926/

Figure 1: RBCM P900, the holotype of Ferrisaurus sustutensis, was collected along the BC Rail line near the intersection of Birdflat Creek and the Sustut River in 1971, in the Sustut Basin of northern British Columbia, Canada. Map modified from Evenchick et al. (2003).

Figure 2: Preserved elements of RBCM P900, holotype of Ferrisaurus sustutensis, in white (gray represents missing parts of incomplete bones). RBCM P900 includes a partial right coracoid, partial left scapular blade, complete left radius, partial left ulna, partial left tibia, fibula, and coossified astragalus and ?calcaneum, partial left metatarsals I-IV, and digits III (phalanges 2–4) and IV (phalanges 2–5) of the right pes.

Figure 3: Pectoral elements of RBCM P900, holotype of Ferrisaurus sustutensis, compared to other Laramidian leptoceratopsids. (A) Fragmentary right coracoid of RBCM P900 in lateral view, compared to (B) complete right scapulocoracoid of CMN 8889, Leptoceratops gracilis, lateral view centered on coracoid with scapula in oblique view. Fragmentary left scapular blade of RBCM P900 in (C) lateral and (D) medial view, compared to (E) left scapula of MOR 300, Cerasinops hodgskissi in medial view, and (F) left scapula of TCM 2003.1.9, Prenoceratops pieganensis in lateral view. Abbreviations: sp, sternal process.

HADROSAUR TOOTH 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/

PLAZA DE ESPANA, SEVILLE

The Plaza de España is a plaza in the Parque de María Luisa, in Seville, Spain. It was built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. 

It is a landmark example of Regionalism Architecture, mixing elements of the Baroque Revival, Renaissance Revival and Moorish Revival styles of Spanish architecture. You can stroll through the grounds and explore each of the buildings. There is amazing tile work.

The Plaza de España, designed by Aníbal González, was a principal building built on the Maria Luisa Park's edge to showcase Spain's industry and technology exhibits. González combined a mix of 1920s Art Deco and Spanish Renaissance Revival, Spanish Baroque Revival and Neo-Mudéjar styles. The Plaza de España complex is a huge half-circle; the buildings are accessible by four bridges over the moat, which represent the ancient kingdoms of Spain. In the centre is the Vicente Traver fountain.

Many tiled alcoves were built around the plaza, each representing a different province of Spain. Each alcove is flanked by a pair of covered bookshelves, now used by visitors in the manner of a "Little Free Library". Each bookshelf often contains works with information about each province. Visitors have also donated favourite novels and other books for others to read.

Today the buildings of the Plaza de España have been renovated and adapted for use as offices for government agencies. The central government departments, with a sensitive adaptive redesign, are located within it. Toward the end of the park, the grandest mansions from the fair have been adapted as museums. The most distant museum contains the city's archaeology collections. The main exhibits are Roman mosaics and artefacts from nearby Italica.

The Plaza de España has been used as a filming location, including scenes for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). The building was used as a location in the Star Wars movie series Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) — in which it featured in shots of the City of Theed on the Planet Naboo. It also featured in the 2012 film The Dictator.

CERECINOS DE CAMPOS: DEINOTHERIUM

This partial specimen of Deinotherium giganteum hails from Middle-Upper Miocene, c. 15.97-5.33 Million Years outcrops near Cerecinos de Campos, Zamora Castile and León, northwestern Spain.

Deinotherium means "terrible beast," which feels a bit unkind to this vegetarian — though he was one of the largest elephants to walk this Earth. 

They are relatively recent in the evolutionary story of the Earth. They first appeared 17 million years ago, had a short run of it and became extinct relatively recently — just 1.6 million years ago. This fellow's cousin, Deinotherium bozasi would likely have interacted with some of our oldest relatives. 

One of the distinguishing features of Deinotherium is their curved tusks inserted only in the jaw. One of the tusks from this fellow, on display at the Museo Nacional De Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain, while incomplete, was preserved rather nicely and shows the detail of where the tusk meets the jaw. Deinotherium could reach a height of over 3.5 meters. Its structure and size are similar to those of the present-day elephant. 

EL TORCAL DE ANTEQUERA

El Torcal de Antequera

El Torcal de Antequera is a nature reserve in the Sierra del Torcal mountain range south of the city of Antequera, in Andalusia, Spain. 

From the tops of the hillsides, you can see far into the fertile grazing lands of the province of Málaga. 

There are numerous hiking routes throughout the park, some for serious walkers and climbers, as well as for those who might prefer a more gentle meander. 

El Torcal is known for its unusual landforms and is regarded as one of the most impressive karst landscapes in Europe. Karst topography forms from the dissolution of soluble rocks like limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It often has underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves. 

Water loves to dissolve the softer rocks but it works its erosional magic on harder, more weathering-resistant quartzites given the right conditions. El Torcal has many wonderful caves and thousands of chasms for the small animals living in this area to call home. Some are quite small, while others are large enough to be explored. The rock we see at El Torcal formed over several hundred million years. 

About 200 million years ago, much of Europe and the Middle East were submerged under the Tethys Sea. 

This was a time of carbonate sedimentation as the skeletons, shells and shells of small marine animals lived and died, depositing their remains at the bottom of the sea. 

Over vast amounts of time, these wee bits of marine matter built up until 175 million years later, the sediments have built up and compacted to form strat thousands of metres deep. 

Towards the Middle Miocene, the Iberian plates to the north of the Tethys Sea and the African plates to the south, compressed, deformed and fractured those sediments. This process is slow and continuous and still continues today. Water, wind and ice continue to shape the landscape and present the continually eroding karst landscape you can hike through today at El Torcal de Antequera.

El Torcal Natural Park is a UNESCO site. Hiking through the hills, you can see the large mushroom-shaped folds, with a very wide upper part and horizontal layers, and short and abrupt flanks. Karst acts as a large sponge, storing rainwater and releasing it within the rock to encourage the limestone to dissolve. 

Gravity pulls the water down and it trickles out again as streams along the edge of the cliffs. One of the sites that the water gathers is in the Nacimiento de La Villa spring on El Torcal's north side.

El Torcal, Karst Topography

Along with its distinct hoodoos, sprinkled amongst the limestones, you will find a wealth of interesting plants and wildlife. Look for lilies, red peonies, wild rose trees and thirty varieties of orchid.  

The many species of reptiles include the Montpellier snake and ocellated lizard, both endemic to El Torcal. 

Other wildlife to look for are the resident Griffon vultures and Spanish Ibex, Andalusian mountain goats, voles, fox and rabbits. If you are here in the evening, look for some of the nocturnal mammals who call these hills home — badgers and weasels.

The park has an excellent Visitor Centre which makes a natural starting point for your exploration of the reserve. There you will find details about the park, parking and walking routes. Guided walks are available, including the popular ‘Route of the 5 Senses’, a night-time ‘El Torcal Under Moonlight’ walk and a fossil-hunting walk, Route of the Ammonites. The visitor centre includes a very reasonably priced restaurant which offers a good selection of traditional food, all made with locally sourced ingredients.

For those who might enjoy some sightseeing in the heavens, this area of Spain has extremely favourable conditions for stargazing and astronomy. The Astronomical Observation of El Torcal (OAT) is located within the park. They host regular observation evenings that take advantage of the lack of light pollution in this region.  

Places to Stay: Finca Gran Cerros Rural Retreat: The epitome of tranquil, rural Spain, Finca Gran Cerros nestles into the Andalusian hillside just a few minutes drive from the traditional white villages’ of Álora and Valle de Abdalajis. Visit them: https://www.fincagrancerros.com. Fina Gran Cerros is about 30 km south of El Torcal de Antequera nature reserve in the Sierra del Torcal mountains.

TORVOSAURUS: SAVAGE LIZARD

This toothy fellow is Torvosaurus tanneri and he hails from Late Jurassic outcrops in the Carnegie Quarry at Dinosaur National Monument, Morrison Formation, western United States — where we have found a single bone, his humerus telling us about his mighty size. 

The specimen you see here is currently on display at the Museo Nacional De Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain.

Torvosaurus were one of the largest and most robust carnivores of the Jurassic. 

These "savage lizards," were true to their name. They were skilled bipedal hunters who weighed over two tons. They had powerful dentition, large, sharp teeth and strong claws on their forelegs — ferocious predators of the Upper Jurassic. He would have roamed alongside the mighty Camarasaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, Stegosaurus and Allosaurus.

Palaeontologist Earl Douglass, 1909

Fossil specimens of Torvosaurus have been found in the Lourinha Formation near Lisbon, Portugal. Here, he would have towered over the smaller Allosaurus of the region who were just over eight metres or 27 feet on average, while he towered at over ten metres or 35 feet. 

This was not the case for the Allosaurus — famed brontosaur hunters — who roamed the fern-covered floodplains of the Jurassic west and what would one day become the United States. Here they grew massive, passing twelve metres or 40 feet in length and towering over the local Tovosaurus. Allosaurus had a large bite, their jaws opening up very wide, making them capable of taking very big bites and positioning them as the top carnivores of the Late Jurassic.

Still, both of these hunters had to contend with Sauophaganax, the largest Jurassic theropod at a whopping twelve to thirteen metres — making it the largest Allosaurus and maybe even a wee bit larger than the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex roaming around western North America back when it was the island continent of Laramidia. This would have been fearsome land to roam as the juvenile of any species as all of these brutes would have the skill, speed and teeth to take you down. 

Photo One: Tovosaurus tannerion display at the Museo Nacional De Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain.

Photo Two: Palaeontologist Earl Douglass digging up the remains of a Brontosaurus at the Carnegie Quarry, 1909. To learn more about this fossil site, visit: https://carnegiemnh.org/celebrated-fossil-quarry/

A PASSION FOR PALAEONTOLOGY

An old friend connected via social media to ask how he can best support his seven-year-old daughter's love of palaeontology. That is a question I love to hear! Now, my personal response is a bit of a tidal wave — buy her books, and rocks and a rock tumbler... take her out on fossil field trips, bring her to museums — fuel the flames of that passion for palaeo. Take no prisoners. Get her good and hooked! 

A love of palaeontology spills over to other areas of science and will help spark an interest in biology, ecology and natural history. In a perfect storm, the whole family catches the bug and summer field trips turn to trips from March to October or as soon as the snow clears.

If you are looking to purchase some fossils — be mindful not to purchase Canadian specimens — then Etsy is a good general source. Since we are living in the new normal of Covid, I would also turn to Amazon as a book source and take a boo at their starter rock collections and rock tumblers.

Local museums are a wonderful source of inspiration and tend to favour local fossil specimens. I particularly like the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta and the Courtenay and District Museum on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Seeing these is useful as it gives you the visual aid you'll need when collecting out in the field.  

Eyewitness Books: Fossils

If you are looking for resources and are readying this from a laptop, you'll see a column down the right-hand side of the page with a whole host of yummy options from books to gear. It is targeted at a slightly older audience, but I'll add some titles that might appeal to a younger audience. 

Ashley Hall did up quite a good children's book targeted for those aged 6-8 years old: Fossils for Kids: A Junior Scientist's Guide to Dinosaur Bones, Ancient Animals, and Prehistoric Life on Earth. It is available on Amazon and includes some wonderful images and covers all the introductory topics one would want to see in a first book on fossils. She also has a nice homage to her parents who inspired and encouraged her love of palaeontology. Dean Lomax and Darren Naish have published some worthy books that make a great addition to the family library.

Eye Witness has produced some wonderfully visual books on fossils. They are general, but that is the perfect place to start. Some folk love dinosaurs, others are into shark's teeth. Myself, I love all the wee invertebrates.  I love a good visual with a bite-size bit of information so you can digest it easily. I have sliced more than one Eyewitness book apart to laminate a section for use in kid's palaeontology courses. 

Some of these topics were touched upon in Season One of the Fossil Huntress Podcast. There is a wee cast on the legal side of palaeo that is worth a listen if you are planning to head out collecting or find yourself tempted to purchase Canadian specimens.

One of the best things about palaeontology is that it can be enjoyed at any age and everyone can contribute to science. Young, old, rich, poor, boy, girl, professional or vocational — fossils do not discriminate. You can be in elementary school and find a new dinosaur or marine reptile species. 

Some of the most significant finds in Canada and around the world are credited to youngsters — from the likes of Mary Anning to British Columbia's first marine reptile and dinosaur finds. The first elasmosaur in British Columbia was found by a young girl and her father. The dinosaurs up near Tumbler Ridge were found by two boys tubing along a river. 

Families and friends out for a stroll have found fossil bits and bones from many new species. The pterosaur Vectidraco was found by a four-year-old, who was honoured through the species name V. daisymorrisae. The Late Jurassic herbivorous dinosaur, Chilesaurus diegosuarezi, from Chile, was discovered by a seven-year-old while his parents briefly distracted — a lucky bit of timing for us all.  

So, if you're reading this, JD, I'm thrilled for you! Fuel the flames. Encourage her love of fossils, science and the natural world.

THERIZINOSAURUS: DINOSAUR EGGS

The brood of eggs you see here belong to the slow-moving but massive dinosaur Therizinosaurus. He belonged to a genus of sizable therizinosaurid that lived during the Late Cretaceous, 70 million years ago. 

Therizinosaurus was a colossal therizinosaur that could grow up to 9–10 m (30–33 ft) long and weigh possibly over 3 t (3,000 kg). Like other therizinosaurs, it would have been a bit of a slowpoke on the ground. These fellows had a rhamphotheca (horny beak) and a wide torso for food processing. 

The forelimbs were particularly robust and had three fingers that bore unguals which, unlike other relatives, were very stiffened, elongated, and only had significant curvatures at the tips. After years of taxonomic debate, nevertheless, they are now placed in one of the major dinosaur clades, Theropoda, specifically as maniraptorans. 

DINOSAUR GEORGE / EPISODE #143

 

PALAEONTOLOGIST EARL DOUGLASS: THE CARNEGIE QUARRY

Palaeontologist Earl Douglass, 1909

About 150 million years ago, a severe drought ravaged the western interior of North America. In eastern Utah, malnourished dinosaurs gathered near a dwindling river to live out their last days. 

Today, this site is known as the Carnegie Quarry at Dinosaur National Monument, and it is one of the most incredible fossil sites in the world.

The celebrated fossil quarry at what is now recognized as Dinosaur National Monument in Utah was discovered in 1909 by Carnegie Museum field collector Earl Douglass.

“I saw eight of the tail bones of a Brontosaurus in exact position. It was a beautiful sight.”  — Earl Douglass in his diary on August 17, 1909, recounting the moment he found the first dinosaur remains of a Brontosaurus at the Carnegie Quarry. Those vertebrae were part of a fully articulated skeleton that became the type for a new species, Apatosaurus louisae, (Gilmore, 1936), published a detailed quarry map showing the skeleton, with "outcrop" identifying the discovery bones. The specimen is now mounted in the Carnegie Museum and those eight tail bones, freed from their sandstone tomb. 

From 1909–1923, Douglass and his crews collected more than 350 tons (700,000 pounds) of fossils from that site alone. Several dinosaur skeletons discovered by Douglass at this quarry are featured in our core exhibition hall, Dinosaurs in Their Time.

Others grace the exhibit halls of other prominent North American museums, such as the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

If you would like to visit Dinosaur National Monument, you can explore extensive outcrops of the Morrison at the Dinosaur Quarry, on the Fossil Discovery Trail, the Sounds of Silence Trail, and other areas in the park.

To learn more about this fossil site, visit: https://carnegiemnh.org/celebrated-fossil-quarry/

CRETACEOUS HADROSAUR TOOTH

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/

PERMIAN-TRIASSIC MASS EXTINCTION: EVOLUTIONARY ARMS RACE

Yesterday, on the Fossil Huntress Podcast, we wrestled with the question of whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded. It is an excellent question and there is good evidence on both sides of that debate.

Many dinosaurs stood upright — a warm-blooded trait. They are also the ancestors of birds who are warm-blooded. Dinosaurs often began life with porous bones, moving to denser bones later in life. This is as much a mark of growth rate as it is for the warm-cold debate. 

And, dinosaurs had small brains relative to body size — a trait of our cold-blooded animals. So, which is it? Cold or warm? My money is on the latter, but we'll likely have some time to wait before we have enough evidence to say for sure one way or the other. One thing we do know to be true is that we see a trend of the Earth's animals moving from cold-bloodedness to warm-bloodedness over time. 

What was the driver for that adaptation? One of the drivers looks to be the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event some 250 million years ago. It was a catastrophic event that killed ninety-five percent of all life on Earth. The remaining species were left to fight for survival against an inhospitable planet and one another. The few surviving species found themselves in a turbulent world —repeatedly hit by ice ages, rapid warming and ocean acidification cycles.

Through all of that, two main groups of tetrapods survived; the synapsids and archosaurs, ancestors of mammals and birds. The ancestors of both mammals and birds became warm-blooded at the same time.

Warm-bloodedness, or endothermy, is the ability to regulate your body temperature using your metabolism rather than relying on the external environment. Humans are endothermic. We eat food and wear warm sweaters to guard against the cold. Warm-bloodedness is key for both survival and reproductive fitness.

There is evidence of warm-bloodedness, including a diaphragm and whiskers in the synapsids as far back as the Triassic. This is supported by a more porous bone structure in both synapsids and archosaurs. Warm-blooded animals tend to have highly vascularized bone tissue. Cold-blooded animals have a denser bone structure that even exhibits annual growth rings. 

Dinosaurs show both traits. They start off life with highly vascularized bone which becomes denser as they mature. This move from vascular to dense bone may have more to do with growth rates than to whether the animals were warm or cold-blooded. 

Another factor in warmth is hair. We know that mammal ancestors had hair from the beginning of the Triassic. More recently, we have learned that archosaurs had feathers from 250 million years ago. Archosaurs are a group of diapsids and are broadly classified as reptiles. The living representatives of this group are birds and crocodilians. It also includes all extinct dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and extinct close relatives of crocodilians. 

Medium-sized and large tetrapods switched from sprawling to erect posture right at the Permian-Triassic boundary. As you know, most warm-blooded animals have an erect or upright posture and our cold-blooded friends tend to walk on all fours. 

The mass posture change and early origin of hair and feathers all speak to the beginning of a species arms race. In ecological terms, an arms race occurs when predators and prey compete on an escalated scale for survival. This pressure caused a rapid change in their evolution as their adaptations escalate. 

When we look at our world today, warm-blooded animals populate all areas of the Earth. They have fewer offspring and show intense parental care, taking months or years to care for their young before they become independent. These adaptations give birds and mammals an edge over amphibians and reptiles and we see this in their domination of the ecosystems in our world.

This revolution in ecosystems was triggered by the independent origins of endothermy in birds and mammals. This particular adaptation lives on as these species survive and thrive in an Earth that can be fickle in terms of environmental conditions.

Reference: Benton, Michael J. The origin of endothermy in synapsids and archosaurs and arms races in 
the Triassic, Gondwana Research, School of Earth Sciences, Life Sciences Building, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TH, UKThe evolution of main groups through the Triassic. Image: Nobu Tamura

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.