The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) is confirming the significant discovery of a dinosaur skeleton on its Nodwell property at Horseshoe Canyon, near Drumheller.

The conservation area is located in an isolated pocket of Badlands amidst the Alberta prairies. The geological layers of the area include sandstones, mudstones, coal seams, volcanic ash and fossils of prehistoric life, including dinosaurs.

In July, 12-year-old aspiring paleontologist Nathan Hrushkin and his father, Dion, discovered the partially exposed bones while hiking on the conservation site.

Nathan says, “My dad and I have been visiting this property for a couple of years, hoping to find a dinosaur fossil, and we’ve seen lots of little bone fragments. This year I was exploring higher up the canyon and found about four bones. We sent pictures and to the Royal Tyrrell Museum and François, the palaeontologist who replied, was able to identify one of the bones as a humerus from the photos so we knew we’d found something this time.”

(Nature Conservancy of Canada/Facebook)

The Royal Tyrrell Museum identified that the bones belonged to a young hadrosaur, commonly known as a duck-billed dinosaur.

Because fossil reports from the Horseshoe Canyon area are rare, the Royal Tyrrell Museum sent a team to the conservation site. Since Hrushkin’s find, paleontologists have uncovered between 30 and 50 bones in the canyon’s wall. The bones were removed in protective jackets made of burlap and plaster and taken back to the museum lab for cleaning and research.

All of the bones collected belong to a single specimen, a juvenile hadrosaur approximately three or four years old. While hadrosaurs are the most common fossils found in Alberta’s Badlands, this particular specimen is noteworthy because few juvenile skeletons have been recovered and also because of its location in the strata, or the rock formation.

Numerous significant fossil discoveries are made each year by the public, and this young hadrosaur is a great example.

According to the NCC, the Hrushkins are a perfect example of what to do when someone discovers fossils: take photos of the bones, record their location using a GPS or Google Earth, report the find to the Royal Tyrrell Museum and, most importantly, leave the fossils undisturbed in the ground. The latter is the most important step, as fossils are protected by law and much information is lost when they are removed from their location.