Leduc Dinosaur Fossil Find (PHOTO)

A crew of construction workers was doing some work for a new housing development in Leduc. They found dinosaur fossils on October 23rd. The fossils was six meters below the surface. One of the crew members, Ryan Eschak, said a co-worker named Shannon asked “What’s that?” Eschak responded “That’s a vertebrae.”

The staff at the Royal Tyrell museum got a call from the Degner Construction Group informing them of their find and asked if they can take a look at the fossils. The construction workers and the museum staff worked together on safely clearing the fossil pieces from the area. They also helped in taking the fossils over to the Royal Tyrell museum in Drumheller.

Researchers at the museum said that the fossils were that of a hypacrosaurus. A hypacrossaurus is a large billed dinosaur also know as a hadrosaur.It is estimated that the fossil is about twelve meters long. The researchers also believed that the hadrosaur may have lived about 68 million years ago.

Francoise Therrien said that this find is significant because it fills in a gap between the geographic distribution in the province. The fossil will be kept in the Drumheller museum until further research is done.