Saskatchewan continues to be a hotbed of remarkable fossil finds and this summer didn’t disappoint.
Grasslands National Park East Block played host to the most recent haul, with around 60 participants partaking in Fossil Fever that unearthed a large soft-shelled turtle and bones from a Triceratops.
Both creatures were found in the Frenchman Formation which is exposed throughout parts of Southwestern Saskatchewan. The formation represents the last 200,000 years of the Cretaceous period, just before dinosaurs went extinct.
“[It’s] the same rock layer that’s produced stuff like Scotty the T Rex around Eastend,” explained Ryan McKellar, the curator of paleontology at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. “It’s also exposed within the National Parks as well. Some of the badlands exposures there are a little bit more extensive, so we tend to go hunting there but also around the Eastend area as well.”
The turtle, McKellar believes is an Axestemys, was first spotted in June when they were preparing the dig site for Fossil Fever. Only a few inches of the shell were uncovered leaving the bulk of the work for the five-day event that welcomed volunteers from the general public and some paleontologist students from across Saskatchewan.
