Limbs, ribs, and vertebrae bones – it sounds like a list for a Hallowe’en display but it’s actually part of the list of discoveries by Royal Saskatchewan Museum paleontologists this past summer. Curator, Ryan McKellar, says there were finds on both the east and west block of Grasslands National Park, and Cretaceous amber inclusions from the Big Muddy Badlands and from a dinosaur eggshell site near Consul.
The discoveries were from long-term digs, from student research projects around insects during the age of dinosaurs and in one case from a hiker at Grasslands. From that incident, about 20 vertebrae from a marine reptile called a Plesiosaur were discovered. McKellar explains that during the Cretaceous period, there was a seaway that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean and at certain times Saskatchewan would be covered by a shallow sea. At other times the land would be shoreline, with dinosaurs living nearby, and that’s why this province gets such a mixture of finds.
He says there is more than meets the eye in the prairies. Hiding underneath the glacial sediments on the surface is 80-million years of history exposed at our feet.
The other discoveries this summer include limb, rib and vertebrae bones from a juvenile Triceratops, vertebrae and limb bones from a Triceratops and Hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur), Cretaceous amber inclusions of new wasps and flies from the Big Muddy Badlands and amber around a dinosaur eggshell site.