Alberta dinosaur egg excavation could yield rare fossilized babies
Paleontologists say if a nest belonging to duck-billed dinosaurs was found it would be the first in Canada
Paleontologists in Alberta say they will be conducting a dinosaur egg excavation Monday afternoon that could yield fossilized dinosaur babies or the first full nest of its kind in Canada.
The Devil's Coulee dinosaur egg site near Warner, Alta., is Canada's first and largest dinosaur nesting ground.
"A great diversity of dinosaurs built their nests 75 million years ago in what is now Devil's Coulee," said the Devil's Coulee Co-operating Society in a release.
The group says François Therrien, a curator of dinosaur paleontology, stumbled across a Hypacrosaurus egg eroding out of a hill earlier this summer.
He also found a second location containing Maiasaura eggshells. Both the Maiasaura and Hypacrosaurus were duck-billed dinosaurs.
The number of eggshells found at the second site indicates there could be a nest below the surface and paleontologists say such a find would be the first of its kind discovered in Canada.
Therrien and a crew from the Royal Tyrrell Museum planned to excavate at both sites Monday in the hope of retrieving eggs and possibly a fossilized baby dinosaur.
Site provides embryonic dinosaur material
The site was discovered in 1987 after a local teenager found dinosaur eggshell fragments, according to the Devil's Coulee Co-operating Society.
Since then the site has been one of paleontology's best resources for embryonic dinosaur material.
The society says four Hypacrosaurus nests have yielded several eggs containing embryonic material, which researchers used to change many of the existing theories about duck-billed dinosaurs.
A dinosaur nest hasn't been uncovered at the site since 2008.