Monsters and Myths

The search for gem stones in a southern Alberta quarry has resulted in a priceless find of another sort — an ancient sea monster.

Scientists say the well-preserved fossilized elasmosaur discovered mid-May at Korite International’s ammonite mine south of Lethbridge could be the largest prehistoric marine reptile ever found in Alberta.

Paleontologist Don Henderson, of the Royal Tyrrell Museum, said the find is so significant it will be written up in scientific journals.

“It’s the most complete one from Western Canada,” Henderson said Thursday.

The elasmosaur is a type of plesiosaur, an aquatic creature with stiff, paddle-like flippers for limbs that feasted on fish and other underwater creatures.

The creature found in the ammonite quarry would have had a long neck, tiny head, fine sharp teeth and a strong jaw. Though carnivorous, it would not have been a savage beast, like a shark.

“It wasn’t chomping and attacking large things . . . it would probably hurt to be bitten on the hand by it but I can’t see it tearing your arm off,” said Henderson.

Though its appearance conjures images of mysterious sea creatures such as the Loch Ness monster, experts say plesiosaurs no longer lurk deep beneath water bodies around the world, having disappeared from the earth along with the land-dwelling dinosaurs at the end of the cretaceous period millions of years ago.

“They lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, right from the very beginning and up to the very end and mass extinction at the end of the cretaceous,”said Henderson.

The elasmosaur found in southern Alberta would have lived as many as 72 million years ago, swimming in the sea that once covered much of the province.

Back then, the area resembled the Florida coast.

“This seaway ran all the way from the Arctic Ocean all the way down to the gulf of Mexico,” added Henderson. “This animal died millions of years before the seaway was gone.”

The paleontologist said the fossilized creature found in the Bearpaw Shale — an area that stretches to Montana and is rich with fossils — could have been as long as 12 metres, seven of which would be neck.

It was a vertebrae from its neck that prompted workers at Korite’s mine to turn off the engines of their heavy equipment several weeks ago and call in the six-member Tyrrell team.

“They were digging when (a worker) spotted a bone,” said John Issa, of Canada Fossils Ltd., a sister company to Korite.

The unusually shaped rock was hanging out of the bucket of a large excavator. There were more leading into the shale at the side of the shallow pit, added Issa.

“It’s very exciting,” said Issa, adding the company has turned over fossils from two other major finds in recent years to the Tyrrell.

It took three weeks to haul out three slabs of rocks weighing more than 9,000 tonnes believed to contain the entire skeleton. There is a strong possibility that the head may still be intact.

The long, painstaking process to prove it, however, could take up to two years.

“These giant blocks of rock are still locked in burlap and plaster and sitting in our storage area. We can’t do anything on this until October,” said Henderson, adding he hopes the discovery will eventually become the showpiece for an aquatic exhibit.

Because the elasmosaur is so well preserved, experts hope to learn more about how species from this region compare to those worldwide.

Stones that were swallowed by the elasmosaur — common among the creatures — will also provide important information to scientists about how far the creatures swam and what purpose the swallowed rocks served.

Alberta has come to be known for its prehistoric discoveries.

Late last month, world renowned paleontologist Phil Currie, a science professor, revealed the discovery of a bone bed in Edmonton that is believed to have been a feeding ground for ancestors of the fierce Tyrannosaurus rex. Currie said it is one of the richest beds of dinosaur bones he has seen.

Source: canada.com

NORTHWEST COVE — Bloodshot eyes as big as saucers, a body coated in mossy hair, spinal protrusions along undulating bodies covered in scales 15 centimetres long. These are just some characteristics of the “denizens of the deep” spotted off the coast of Nova Scotia as recently as a few years ago.

Sea captains have seen them. Military men have seen them. And Andrew Hebda, curator of zoology with the Nova Scotia Museum, says there’s definitely something to these sightings of monsters and sea serpents.

The question is what?

Granted, he said, there’s no doubt some creatures were likely seen through the bottom of a rum bottle, “but the point is, they saw something.”

In 2003, Wallace Cartwright was in his lobster boat off Alder Point, Cape Breton, when he saw a sea serpent about eight metres long. It was the diameter of an oil drum and he followed it until it dove down deep and disappeared.

Two hundred years earlier, a woman by the name of Mrs. W. Lee saw a 30-metre sea monster off the coast of Cape Breton. “Its back was dark green and it stood in the water in flexuous hillocks and went through it with infectious noise,” says one account of her sighting.

Pretty enthralling stuff for Mr. Hebda, who is writing a book on these mysterious creatures of the deep.

He spoke at the community centre here on Sunday at an event hosted by the Athenaeum Society of Nova Scotia. “You’re in sea monster central in Nova Scotia,” he told them.

In 1833, five fellows were out fishing off Mahone Bay when they reported seeing a monster some 180 metres from their boat. They provided good detail despite the rum they had drunk.

It was about 31 metres long. “We saw the head and neck of some denizen of the deep, precisely like those of a common snake, in the act of swimming, the head so far elevated and thrown forward by the curve of the neck as to enable to see the water under and beyond it.”

There have been pockets of such sightings around the province, many of them quite similar despite the decades, if not centuries, that pass between them. And they tend to be in warmer waters, shipping channels and fishing grounds.

Many of them have been off the South Shore, as well as the Pictou area and Cape Breton.

Mr. Hebda is writing a book about sea monster sightings and has been inspired by the detailed accounts he’s collected. In 1975, Keith Ross was in his boat off Cape Sable Island with his son Rodney when a sight suddenly rose before them. “It had eyes as big around as saucers and bright red-looking. I mean, you could see the red in its eyes like they were bloodshot. It had its mouth wide open and there were two big tusks — I call them tusks — that hung down from its upper jaw.”

Mr. Ross roared his boat away from the grey, snake-like body as it passed astern.

The Mi’kmaq first recorded similar serpents in petroglyphs found at Kejimkujik National Park. The first documented account was by Nicolas Denys of a merman spotted in Canso Harbour in 1656. The first reported sighting in Halifax Harbour was of an 18-metre serpent in 1825.

The fishermen’s world revolves around things they see every day. Mr. Hebda said when they see something unusual, they want to know what it is. Sometimes the answer is quite innocuous. Often the truth will never be known.

For instance, Mr. Cartwright may well have seen an oarfish, also known as the king of the herring, when he was working off Cape Breton six years ago. “Do we know everything that’s out there? No, no we don’t. Have we seen everything that’s out there? No, now we haven’t,” but Mr. Hebda suspects there’s an explanation for pretty much every case — whether it’s a rare tropical fish brought north by warm currents or the distorted vision produced by the thick glass at the bottom of a bottle of spirits.

Mr. Ross hadn’t been drinking when he saw that tusked animal with the bloodshot eyes. But Mr Hebda said that’s also the year officials confirmed and photographed a walrus in the area.

“People see things, they try to figure out what they saw,” he said.

“Yes, they did see something. What is it? Therein lies the challenge. It’s a voyage of exploration to see what it is.”

Source: thechronicleherald