Six Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation volunteers rescued
a 190 pound dinosaur footprint cast 29 July. The footprint
was discovered a few weeks ago by Rich McCrea, the U of
A palaeontologist, and Larry White, who recently received
training at the Royal Tyrrell Museum.
It was lying loose in the creek bed below a waterfall in
the bottom of a 300 foot deep canyon. Close by were half
a dozen other dinosaur footprints. McCrea identified
it as having been made by an ornithopod dinosaur, but its
distinguishing feature was its size: 48 cms across and
42 cms from heel to toe. This is by far the largest footprint
discovered so far in the Dunvegan Formation in theTumbler
Ridge area (larger ornithopod footprints had previously
been described in the older Gething Formation in the
Peace Canyon).
With the help of visiting palaeontology students from
Wisconsin, the footprint was cajoled a few hundred meters
downstream
in a hockey bag to a break in the canyon wall, where
it rested a few weeks. Finally it was placed on a wilderness
emergency stretcher, and pulled out of the canyon with
ropes and the sweat of the museum’s human workhorses,
followed by the compulsory weigh-in.
If left alone, this
print would in time have been destroyed by floods and
the ravages of freeze-thaw cycles. It has
now found a secure home in the Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation’s
field station, where it will be exhibited.
