{"id":2999,"date":"2016-05-11T17:02:16","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T21:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=2999"},"modified":"2025-10-17T17:41:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T21:41:30","slug":"dinosaur-discoveries","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/dinosaur-discoveries\/","title":{"rendered":"Dinosaur Discoveries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Dinosaur Discoveries\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

For years, Canada\u2019s first dinosaur fossils remained in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Nature, overlooked by scientists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, more than 120 years after being discovered in what are now areas of southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan, a Carleton University undergraduate student has begun the painstaking work of cataloguing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brigid Christison is working closely with her supervisor Jordan Mallon, research scientist and paleobiologist with the museum, to identify the bones. Mallon is also an adjunct research professor in Earth Sciences at Carleton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carleton
Carleton University undergraduate student Brigid Christison has begun cataloguing Canada’s first dinosaur fossils.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to know what was found, and to compare the diversity of fossils found back then with what we know today from the sites,\u201d says Christison, now in her third year of an Earth Sciences degree with a focus on vertebrate palaeontology and palaeoecology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her project involves identifying each bone and the location in which it was found. Unfortunately, the poorly documented bones make for a difficult task. \u201cSome of the bones weren\u2019t labelled or anything,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s as if the discoverers just picked the bones up, put them in a box and shipped them home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

[wide-image image=”3010″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team of scientists who found the fossils at various sites throughout the 1880s included major figures such as George Dawson, Thomas C. Weston and Joseph Tyrrell, who were working for the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC). But as Christison explains, they weren\u2019t properly trained in vertebrate palaeontology or equipped to comprehend the magnitude of the discovery.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cThey were almost all geologists. Science wasn\u2019t as specialized back then,\u201d she says. \u201cDawson, who found the first bone, was a geologist by training, so he likely didn\u2019t know much about dinosaurs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It is likely the bones were found by accident while looking for natural resources such as coal. If anything, the GSC tried to find fossils, not complete dinosaurs, just to prove that they had indeed existed in Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n

[wide-image image=”3008″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About a decade before the Canadian discoveries, the United States had experienced the “Bone Wars” pitting two famous palaeontologists\u2014Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh\u2014against one another. It was a period of intense fossil speculation and discovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dawson, who found the first Canadian dinosaur bones in 1874, actually sent his findings to Cope in Philadelphia, because the Geological Survey of Canada had nobody qualified to examine them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Christison's
Christison’s project involves identifying each bone and the location in which it was found.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While it took Canada a little longer to join the dinosaur craze, today the Western provinces are known for some of the richest dinosaur locales in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christison travelled to Alberta\u2019s Dinosaur Provincial Park with her father in the summer of 2013, where she noticed that some dinosaur bones are more valuable to scientists than others.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cTour guides were literally kicking some vertebrae out of the way as they walked,\u201d she says. \u201cSo today I don\u2019t think people would have even bothered picking these bones up.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Nevertheless, the fossils collected more than a century ago tell an important historical story. And while more complete fossils of the same creatures have since been found and scientifically described, Christison\u2019s work is still vital according to her supervisor.<\/p>\n\n\n

[wide-image image=”3009″]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe know a lot about where the early GSC collectors went and what they did,\u201d says Mallon. \u201cBut we still know very little about precisely what they collected. That\u2019s the significance of Brigid\u2019s project: to document these historically important finds and properly credit the men who collected them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christison\u2019s findings will be compiled in a paper for school, a report for the museum and an abstract at an upcoming conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Adapted from a story by the Canadian Museum of Nature<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For years, Canada\u2019s first dinosaur fossils remained in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Nature, overlooked by scientists. Now, more than 120 years after being discovered in what are now areas of southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan, a Carleton University undergraduate student has begun the painstaking work of cataloguing them. Brigid Christison is working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[13],"cu_story_tag":[1919,1925],"class_list":["post-2999","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","hentry","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-science","cu_story_tag-research"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/2999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/2999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98395,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/2999\/revisions\/98395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=2999"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=2999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}