As the 2018 dig season wraps up, paleontologists at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum (RSM) revealed their best Saskatchewan fossil finds from this summer – including a dinosaur skull and a new species of ancient wasp.
Throughout the summer, paleontologists from the museum were hard at work across the province digging up pieces of history.
The skull of a baby elasmosaur – a long-necked dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period around 80 million years ago – was found at Lake Diefenbaker. A partial skeleton of a 38 million-year-old rhino-like mammal called a juvenile bronotothere was found near Eastend.
Near Shaunavon, the skull of an Edmontosaurus (a duck-billed dinosaur) was discovered, and triceratops bones were dug up in Grasslands National Park.
For one discovery, it wasn’t until the fossil made it back to the lab that the scientists realized what they had. In pieces of amber collected near Bengough, a newly discovered species of wasp from the Cretaceous period was found, dating back more than 66 million years.
“Saskatchewan is becoming better known as having one of the great fossil resources in Canada and indeed the world,” said Gene Makowsky, provincial minister of parks, culture and sport, in a government release.
“Each summer brings another opportunity to realize new, untouched fossil sites and the potential for scientific discoveries of international importance.”
These finds will be added to the provincial collection, where they will be studied and researched until next summer when a new season of discovery begins.
