Dinosaur bones found in Bay of Fundy cliffs

Experts have found moreof Canada's oldest dinosaur bones embedded in red sandstone on the northern shore of Nova Scotia.

The bones likely of the hip or shoulder are around 200million years old, but buried in an ideal place to be discovered,said Tim Fedak, the director and curator for the Fundy Geological Museum.

"The Bay ofFundyis producing the world's highesttidesanderodingthese cliffs very quickly," Fedak said from Parrsboro, N.S., Thursday.

"Our museum is here and we're down at the beach very frequently. We can see the bones immediately."

'If our museum wasn't here, they'd be washed to beach sand'

Waves from a storm surge cleared the bones a few weeks ago, Fedak said, and it waslucky museum staff check the cliffs inParrsborofrequently for freshly uncovered fossils.

"These bones would be eroded within a month or two," Fedak said.

"If our museum wasn't here, they'd be washed to beach sand."

The mostly-white bones are easy to spotthoughstained pink from the sandstone, he said. They're likely from prosauropoddinosaurs, which werelarge herbivoresfrom theTriassic and early Jurassic eras.

The museumposted avideo about the discoveryon itsFacebookpage Thursday.

Bones from 'the dawn of the dinosaurs'

Fedak and other researchersfound similarfossilized bones in that exact area in 1997 and 1998, including a femur, a back bone and several front leg bones.

That particular area of the Parrsboro cliffs contains a bone bed filled with many such dinosaurs, he said.

"That mass accumulation is very rare. That's another thing that makes this site so, so special," Fedak said.

• Dog stumbles upon 300 million-year-old fossil in N.S.
• Dinosaur egg potential excites Digby student
• N.S. fisherman's catch older than dinosaurs

There are so manydinosaur fossils because these survived a mass extinction around 200million years ago when the giant continent Pangaeaseparated into the continents we know today, Fedak said.

"These are Canada's oldest dinosaurs,"Fedaksaid. "They basically start the dawn of the dinosaurs."

More bones likely will be found

The area around what is now theBay of Fundysank as the tectonic plates moved. Sand fell on the dinosaurs, carefully preserving them in what are now 100-metre-high red cliffs. Magma from under the moving plates also covered dinosaurs in what is now basalt rocks.

The dinosaurs which look like smallbrontosauruses lived in the area for around 140million years before they all went extinct, Fedak said.

A large section of stone will be cut out of the cliff and moved to the research lab at the nearby museum to be examined, Fedak said.

Fedak expects the museum team will find more bones in coming years as the cliffs along the Bay of Fundy continue to erode.