A team of B.C. paleontologists has now identified a long overlooked dinosaur specimen from northeastern B.C. as belonging to a species of armoured dinosaurs known for their heavy body plating, weaponized clubbed tails and up to four-ton body weight.
Despite the specimen being found nearly a century ago, it is only due to lead researcher Victoria Arbour and her team that it has now been properly identified. Until now, the Pine River region was known to house fossil ankylosaur footprints, but never actual bones.
The 1930s ankylosaurian dinosaur specimen — two broken vertebrae and a rib — is described in the experts’ new paper as “the first dinosaur skeletal fossil discovered in the province” and indicates that there could be more giant bones to find in the area.
Arbour, who is the Royal BC Museum’s curator of paleontology, hopes to follow up on this possibility of more bones through a recently acquired discovery grant. She is known for her 2019 discovery of an entirely new species of dinosaur named Ferrisaurus sustutensis, or “Buster.”
READ ALSO: Researcher who unveiled B.C. dinosaur ‘Buster’ receives research grant
Arbour and her team’s new paper, “An ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Cenomanian Dunvegan Formation of northeastern British Columbia, Canada”, is available at fr.copernicus.org/articles/23/179/2020.
VIEW ALSO: VIDEO: Victoria museum unveils ‘Buster’ a new unique-to-B.C. dinosaur
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