Posted on 05/14/2013 7:00:46 AM PDT by Renfield
On Monday, March 21, 2011 the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta received word that the remains of either a plesiosaur or an ichthyosaur had been discovered in the Milllennium Mine operated by the petroleum company Suncor Inc. This mine is located about 30 km north of the town of Fort McMurray (population ~50,000) in northeastern Alberta (about 800km north of Drumheller), and is one of the places where bitumen rich sand is mined and refined into various petroleum products.
On Wednesday, March 23, 2011 myself and technician Darren Tanke flew up to Fort McMurray expecting to see a marine reptile of the sort found occasionally in the region over the past 20 years. After a few minutes of puzzling we realized it was something totally unexpected a perfectly three-dimensionally preserved, uncrushed, armoured dinosaur complete with all the armour in place, original scales perfectly aligned with the armour, all the fingers and toes (very rare), and probable stomach contents. Unfortunately, half the fossil was smashed by the giant excavator bucket into many tens of large pieces, and the other half was embedded 8m up a 12m high cliff. A week later Darren Tanke and I returned to the mine to oversee the collection of the specimen...
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
ark Mitchell prepares the nodosaur. You can see the bands of little armoured plates (light colour) and the bands of preserved scales of the skin in between (darker). Copyright: Dr Donald Henderson and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology.
Dinoping.
Amazing.
Wow! Thanks for posting!
If the dinos had not been made extinct and continued to change, developing larger brains, think what intelligent life on earth would look like now! ... *X-files music* Reptiloids anyone?
Ichthyosaur:
Quite a difference and can't see any armor plates.
Nodosaur, on the other hand:
“The least likely type of dinosaur to venture into water would have been a squat, heavily built and armoured, slow-moving anklyosaur.”
“anklyosaur”, so named because he’d only go into the water up to his anklys....
Yup, with a good ‘plastic’ surgeon’s work, she looks almost human! ... I wonder, is she from one of those four species which are ‘visiting’ the Earth? LOL
I always liked those and the swimming ones when we played with our plastic dinosaurs.
(A half century or so ago!)
:-)
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GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
Thanks Renfield. |
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The Royal Tyrrell Musem has the best collection of Dinosaur fossils in the world. It also houses the Burgess shale collection. It is sort of out in the middle of nowhere but if you are up in that area, a visit is well worth the miles.
As I stood viewing one of the full size exhibits, a Stegosaurus, an old gentlemen walked up and after taking in the exhibit said “It’s hard to believe they hunted those with only spears.”
A magical Liopleuradon
Its hard to believe they hunted those with only spears.
Then there's the Hillarius Canklyosaurus, so named because of its unusually fat anklys.
I’ve been to the Tyrrell museum. Yes, it’s grand.
If you have an interest in Tertiary megafauna, the University of Nebraska has a museum devoted to them, and I think it’s even better than the Tyrrell museum.
This is cool.
Thanks for posting.
Sleestack comes to mind.
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