Mosasaur skeleton Morden centre’s ‘biggest discovery’ in two decades

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This article was published 03/08/2023 (803 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A vast sea teeming with massive, carnivorous aquatic reptiles… welcome to Manitoba, 83 million years ago.

At the small community of Miami, near Morden, a discovery was recently made of a nearly complete mosasaur skeleton. The mosasaur was an aquatic reptile and apex predator that lived in the region during the late Cretaceous period, when the entirety of what is now Manitoba was part of the Western Interior Seaway, an inland sea which split the now-North America in half.

The discovery was made by researchers from the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre, led by the Morden-based centre’s executive director, palaeontologist Adolfo Cuetara.

“It’s the biggest discovery since 2004,” Cuetara said Thursday. “2004 was the last time we found a complete skeleton. This is the first time in almost 20 years.”

In 2004, researchers found an intact plesiosaur (another ancient marine reptile) skeleton in their 100-acre property in the Manitoba escarpment.

Cuetara explained, prior to the museum’s recent acquisition of a new tractor to perform excavations, it mostly found fossils by chance, relying heavily on hand tools.

“For us, it is very exciting, because last year we purchased a new excavator,” Cuetara said. “Now we are able to move a lot (more) and we can cover a bigger area than before.”

The Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre has existed since 1971.

Since 1974, it has been in possession of the largest mosasaur skeleton on public display in the world, nick-named Bruce, according to Guinness World Records.

The newly discovered skeleton is estimated to be 75 per cent intact and may be a different species of mosasaur from Bruce. Excavation remains ongoing and the researchers are continuing to find new parts of the skeleton.

“We just discovered the first skull elements,” Cuetara said. “It was a tooth. We’re in the right direction because we need the skull to determine which species it was.”

Cuetara explained skull remains are the best way of distinguishing between different species of mosasaur, because their flippers and limb bones are too similar across species.

The current excavation is the only one ongoing for researchers from the museum.

“Now we’re just trying to develop this property and we know there will be more and more findings in the future,” Cuetara said.

graham.mcdonald@freepress.mb.ca