Searching for a Stegosaurus in Alberta's Badlands
Dinosaur hunters say there is an iconic dinosaur hiding out right here in Alberta.
Alberta is known as a dinosaur fossil hot-spot but paleontologists have yet to discover the spiked Stegosaurus in the province.
"Stegosaurus is a dinosaur that did undoubtedly live and die right here in Alberta, and many of its fossils are almost certainly here but they're still buried too far underground to really be discovered," Scott Persons, paleontologist at the University of Alberta, told The Homestretch.
Persons said the fossils are hidden deep below the ground but formations on the surface are "too young" to contain fossils of the armoured dinosaur.
Welcome to Cretaceous park
Persons said the 160 million years spanning the age of dinosaurs is split into three main time periods — the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
Fossils discovered in Dinosaur Provincial Park mainly come from the most-recent period, the Cretaceous, while the Stegosaur roamed the earth during the older, middle period, the Jurassic.
Despite the franchise title, Persons said most of the dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park films were actually alive in the Cretaceous period, meaning the Stegosaurus never ran into any Jurassic Park co-stars.
"No T. rex actually ever crossed paths with a Stegosaurus, and neither did a lot of the other carnivorous dinosaurs like Velociraptor or Spinosaurus," Person said.
"Big predators that would have met a Stegosaurus would include Allosaurus and Torvosuarus."
Persons said there are a number of types of Stegosaurus with different armour patterns, the largest weighing in at more than four tons and measuring nine metres long.
While Persons said paleontology involves a lot of geological luck, the dinosaur hunter said he is confident there are Stegosauruses buried in Alberta, adding the proof can be found when looking at dinosaur graveyards in the United States.
"Stegosaurus fossils haven't been found [in Alberta] but they're really abundant if you just hop over the border," Persons said.
"If you go to Colorado or the Dakotas, if you're in the right age of rock, there's lots of Stegosaurus skeletons to be found."
Persons said Stegosaurus would have roamed across a wide territory and their fossils are somewhere in Alberta but just haven't been found yet.
"Undoubtedly they did live in the Dinosaur Park area, but because our rock layers are so much younger we haven't found them," he said.
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With files from the Calgary Homestretch
