Oilsands fossil find extracted from mine

The fossils of an ancient marine reptile have been extracted from an oilsands mine in northeastern Alberta and will be storedt the siteuntil spring.

The plesiosaur was found bya shovel operatorin November, who spoke with CBC News this week.

"You keep you eyes peeled for stuff like this, but you never expect to go home at the end of the day and say you found something this old," said Maggie Horvath.

Horvath was breaking up rock with a massive shovel when something caught her eye.

"You just take it layer by layer," she said, "like a three-layer cake."

"I looked into a faceand saw what appeared to be a long vertebrae of a larger type of animal bigger than a moose," said Horvath. "It looked like an oversized neck of a chicken or a turkey."

She gently replaced her last shovelful, stopped digging and called her supervisor.

That's whenpaleontologist Don Henderson was called in.

"The shapes of the bones tells you it's a plesiosaur right away," he said.

"They are so rare, they are like the top predator. You think of Africa today and you have a few lionssupported by thousands of wildebeests.

"It's the same thing here," said Henderson. "This ate all of the other fishes."

About 110 million years ago, the entire oilsands area wasavast sea, but still fossils are rare finds.

Since digging began in the oilsands only 11 fossils have been found, he said.

"The chance of anyone of them becoming a fossil is extremely rare," said Henderson. "And to top it off, someone has to see it."

That doesn't always happen, said Henderson while examiningfragments of a fossil.

"Unfortunately it got run over by a backhoe," he said. "Some of the bones are a bit smushed."