Ryley Paul and Aaron Krywiak were jackhammering their way through a sewer last week — 30 metres below an Edmonton street — when they unearthed a well-preserved dinosaur tooth.
"I was pretty surprised. I heard from other people working here 30 years that they have never found anything," said Krywiak, 21, a member of a City of Edmonton drainage crew. "It was pretty cool. I never thought I would have a dinosaur tooth in my hand."
On Friday, Jack Brink, curator of archeology at the Royal Alberta Museum and Mike Burns, a Ph.D student in paleontology from the University of Alberta, discovered more bones in the sewer, including a vertebra and a femur.
The tooth is believed to belonged to Albertosaurus, the "Alberta lizard," among the more fearsome predators in the Cretaceous period. The other fossils unearthed are large bone fragments, most likely from the plant-eating hadrosaur, Edmontosaurus.
The bones are believed to be 70 million to 72 million years old.
Paul, 24, said the tooth was black when they found it, but in about 20 minutes it began to oxidize and turned brown and shiny.
Work on the tunnel came to a stop and "everything kind of went into a frenzy," Paul said.
The city is now working with the Royal Tyrrell Museum and University of Alberta paleontologists to ensure there is someone on-site as more bones are unearthed so the fossils are preserved without causing any construction delays for the city.
Donald Brinkman, director of preservation and research with the Royal Tyrrell Museum, said while it is not uncommon to find dinosaur fossils in the Edmonton area, bones are not usually found nine storeys below a city street.
"They were found in a very distinctive layer so we know they died within a relatively short time of each other. We don't know if they died together," Brinkman said Monday during a news conference at the site, where the fossils were on display.
University of Alberta paleontologist Mike Caldwell said an analysis will be done to determine if the fossils found last week have any link to a fossil bed found in the Blackmud Creek area of southeast Edmonton.
The fossil bed, the location of which is a secret to deter curiosity seekers and vandals, is believed to have been a feeding ground for ancestors of the fierce Tyrannosaurus rex.
Paul said they have been told to continue working in the 1.2-kilometre tunnel as they normally would, but he admitted he and Krywiak are a little more cautious as they jackhammer their way through the clay.
"Everything looks like a bone now."
Author: Florence Lovey | Source: The Montreal Gazette [August 23, 2010]