Dinosaur footprints discovered in B.C.

Dinosaurs appear to have left their mark on Canada's Pacific coast about 125 million years ago, geologists say.

Researchers in British Columbia announced they'd discovered dinosaur tracks and a fossilized turtle shell on Tuesday.

Mike Boddy, a geologist with B.C.'s Ministry of Energy and Mines, found the turtle remains in the Bowser Basin, north of Terrace, B.C., while conducting a routine mapping survey for oil and gas resources.

Scientists at Alberta's Royal Tyrrell Museum and the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria confirmed the fossils are from the early Cretaceous period.

The fossils are the most westerly dinosaur tracks to be found in Canada, the researchers said.

People assumed a geological feature such as a mountain may have blocked the dinosaurs from travelling so far west, said Peter Mustard, a professor of earth sciences at Simon Fraser University, who discovered the dinosaur tracks.

The size of the footprints suggests they were laid by raptors that stood about as high as a man, Mustard told reporters.

"This first-time evidence shows these dinosaurs crossed the prehistoric North American continent over the newly formed landscape of ancestral British Columbia to gaze upon the western ocean," said Richard Hebda, curator of Botany and Earth History at the Royal British Columbia Museum.

Mustard added the turtle skeleton is a rare find in western North America, and may turn out to be scientifically important.

Today, the logging community of Terrace is about 150 kilometres from the Pacific Ocean.