Many fossils and amber inclusions were found this year by staff at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.
Paleontologists, volunteers and assistants focused mainly on the Big Muddy Badland region and Grasslands National Park. Crews were able to find bones from a juvenile Triceratops, a Hadrosaur, and a plesiousaur, as well as ambers from wasps and flies.
Paleontologist Ryan McKellar said with how short the digging season can be in Saskatchewan, it’s difficult to get to every area of the province.
“Each year it’s sort of a scramble to hit as many sites as we can and account for the whole range of material that Saskatchewan has to offer, and that spans everything from marine reptiles in the Cretaceous (period), through to dinosaurs that are on land, and some of the material that plants left behind like their leaves and amber,” McKellar said. “We try to capture it all with our team each summer.”
McKellar said many times throughout the digging season, staff members scout different areas to see if a dig is warranted.
“We don’t have enough people to dig every spot every summer, so quite often we’ll focus on one or two locations, and then do a little bit of work prospecting new sites as well.”
Wes Long from the RSM said a site in Grasslands National park has revealed several Triceratops fossils this summer, and is coming along nicely.
“Another exciting things about this site is there’s still material going into the hill,” Long said. “There’s part of a shoulder blade that’s still running into the hill, we ran out of time (this summer), we had to rebury it, cover it up, and let it winter, and (we’ll) get back out there in the spring.”
The new findings will be used by scientists to study for many years to come according to the province.
