Fossils & Evolution
Contributed by Peter May, President, Research Casting International Ltd.
We held a press preview day at our shop last week to launch the ROM’s major summer exhibition – Ultimate Dinosaurs: Giants from Gondwana. Of the 17 dinosaur skeletons to be exhibited, ten are pretty well finished; just final paint to be applied.
Fig. 1. Reconstruction of a Massospondyus nesting site. Courtesy J. Csotonyi
David M. Rudkin, Assistant Curator in Invertebrate Palaeontology, will be presenting at the upcoming ROM Research Colloquium – join us on February 3 at 11:30am in the Signy & Cléophée Eaton Theatre to hear more about An Embarrassment of Worms: Fossil Priapulida from the Silurian of Ontario … Real and Imagined
Join us Thursday, December 1 from 11 am to noon EST as we live blog from the ROM during the launch event for the Burgess Shale Virtual Museum of Canada. This online exhibition is the most current and comprehensive resource for knowledge on one of the world’s most important fossil sites.
Well, at least, some serious insight into life on Earth…
Where do we come from? What was the world like long before the dinosaurs?
Today, Caleb Brown and colleagues announced the discovery of Canada’s newest dinosaur, Thescelosaurus assiniboiensis – the first new dinosaur species to be discovered in Saskatchewan since 1926. The new dinosaur is named after the historic District of Assiniboia, where it was found. The small-bodied, two-legged plant-eater lived alongside the famed Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops, at the very end of the age of dinosaurs.
After three days of successful fieldwork on the chilly Grand Rapids Uplands, we return – toting a fresh batch of fossils – to The Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg. This is the home turf of my colleague, Graham Young, and almost a second home for me.
Marked field jackets containing horned dinosaur bones from the McPheeter’s bonebed (MBB) and the South Side Ceratopsian (SSC).
Ah, the romance of fieldwork. There’s nothing quite like waiting for the morning sun to rise high enough to illuminate a cold, wet outcrop, so that one can spend the next 8 or 9 hours kneeling in mud and splitting razor-sharp rock slabs. But we have hot coffee in the thermos, dry gloves in the pack, and — hopefully — there are some new fossils to be found!
