Courtesy Dan Smythe
Researcher Jordan Mallon displays a fossil of a newly discovered dinosaur species.The careful storage and preservation of fossils at the Canadian Museum of Nature – which exhibits only a fraction of its total collection – has led to the discovery of a new species of dinosaur.
Dinosaur fossils may seem rare, but the museum’s holdings are so extensive there’s not enough space to show off all of the specimens scientists have uncovered.
Nick Longrich, a senior lecturer in evolutionary biology at Britain’s University of Bath, was poking around the Centretown museum’s collection a few years ago, working on a project.
But as Longrich explored the collection, he realized that a set of fossilized dinosaur bones discovered in Alberta in the 1950s – and long identified as a triceratops-like species called Pentaceratops sternbergii – was actually a new species altogether.
“I ran across the fossils years ago while writing up another dinosaur . . . I was at the Canadian Museum of Nature and looking at other ceratopsian material,” Longrich said.
“Years later, I figured I would write it up . . . and then I realized it was something new.”
The newly classified dinosaur, called Pentaceratops aquilonius, lived in Western Canada around 75 million years ago.
Canadian Museum of Nature officials say the pieces are only part of a new species and no complete dinosaur skeleton exists.
Jordan Mallon, a research scientist with the museum, says discoveries such as these help underline the importance of maintaining robust museum collections.
“It makes the case that museum collections are important and that they serve a purpose in research,” Mallon says. “Because we don’t always recognize the importance of a specimen when we dig it up, it’s important to catalogue as many of these fossils as possible.”
According to Mallon, it’s really not a case of forgotten fossils coming to light at last.
These collections are important because the knowledge surrounding dinosaurs is always changing, even though the dinosaur fossils themselves do not, says Mallon.
“It allows us to go back later and maybe recognize a new find for what it is, which maybe we didn’t realize at the time.”