100 million-year-old footprints — first of their kind — found in Canada. See them
They were discovered in 2000, and Charles Helm, scientific adviser at the Tumbler Ridge Museum, said several of the tracks had been discovered in the years since, prompting him to invite paleontologists to come and take a look, according to an April 14 news release from scientific publisher Taylor & Francis Group.
In 2023, researcher Victoria Arbour of the Royal BC Museum, along with teams from the Tumbler Ridge Museum and the Tumbler Ridge UNESCO Global Geopark finally studied the tracks — and realized they belonged to a species new to science.
Arbour had seen photos of the footprints a few years earlier, and said 'I thought they were really strange and interesting looking and I was really curious about them,' she told CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
Then she saw them in person.
'And I got really excited,' Arbour told the news outlet. 'I was like, 'You know, I think the only thing these really can be … is an ankylosaurid.''
Ankylosaurs fall into two groups: one with a flexible tail and four toes on each back foot, and a second with a 'sledgehammer-like tail club' and three toes, according to the release.
These footprints were three-toed and didn't match any previous records of ankylosaurs found in North America, according to a study published on the discovery April 14 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
'While we don't know exactly what dinosaur that made (the) footprints looked like, we know that it would have been about (16.4-19.6 feet) long, spiky and armoured, and with a stiff tail or a full tail club,' Arbour said in the release. 'Ankylosaurs are my favorite group of dinosaurs to work on, so being able to identify new examples of these dinosaurs in British Columbia is really exciting for me.'
The footprints themselves are about 10 inches long and nearly the same distance wide, 'crescentic in form' and five manus, or toes on the front feet, and three pes, or toes on the back feet, according to the study.
The new species was named Ruopodosaurus clava, meaning 'the tumbled-down lizard with a club/mace,' researchers said, noting where the tracks were found and the tail shape of the distinctive dinosaurs, according to the study.
The tracks are believed to be the only tracks from this group ever discovered anywhere in the world, according to the researchers.
'The tracks date back to the middle of the Cretaceous period, about 100 to 94 million years ago. No bones from ankylosaurids have been found in North America from about 100 to 84 million years ago, leading to some speculation that ankylosaurids had disappeared from North America during this time,' according to the release.
The tracks themselves show that multiple animals were walking together, according to the study, and the timeline of footprints shows multiple species of ankylosaur co-existed in the same time period.
In addition to the tracks in Tumbler Ridge, more tracks in a remote region northwest called Bullmoose Creek were also discovered, according to the study.
Scott Persons, a paleontologist studying similar species and not involved in the study, told CBC the new tracks show the ankylosaurs once thought of as 'squat' or like a 'coffee table' actually had 'a surprisingly bird-like gait' and they lined up their feet like 'supermodels on a runway.'
'This track record shows us the coffee table analogy is a little bit flawed,' Persons told CBC. 'The obvious question is: What do these animals look like? All we have are the feet.'
Tumbler Ridge is in east-central British Columbia, Canada's western-most territory.
The research team includes Helm, Arbour, Martin G. Lockley, Eamon Drysdale and Roy Rule.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NBC News
08-08-2025
- NBC News
Scientists discovered a distant black hole 300 million times the size of the sun. It's a portal back in time.
Astronomers have discovered the oldest and most distant black hole — a behemoth that likely formed at the dawn of the universe, more than 13 billion years ago. The black hole lies at the center of a galaxy known as CAPERS-LRD-z9. Both cosmic objects are thought to have formed around 13.3 billion years ago, or just 500 million years after the big bang that created the universe. (The big bang theory suggests the universe started as an ultradense, extremely hot point that rapidly expanded out in all directions in a chaotic event some 13.8 billion years ago.) The black hole discovery, described in a study published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, could shed light on the universe's earliest days and provide insight into how black holes and galaxies evolved. Light takes time to travel across space, which means observing distant objects in the cosmos is a bit like accessing a portal back in time, said Anthony Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin who led the study's international team of scientists. 'When we look at objects that are very, very far away, it has taken that light billions upon billions of years to reach us,' he said. 'So in reality, we're seeing these objects as they were in the early universe.' As far as black holes go, this one is huge, according to the researchers. It's estimated to be up to 300 million times the size of the sun, with a mass equivalent to that of half the stars in its galaxy. It's also roughly 10 times more massive than the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, Taylor said. Taylor and his colleagues found the black hole in observations of the outermost reaches of the universe from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The researchers used a technique known as spectroscopy, which splits light into different wavelengths and colors, similar to how a prism separates sunlight into the colors of the rainbow.
Miami Herald
07-08-2025
- Miami Herald
Ancient creature with porcupine-like quills found in amber. It's a new species
Fossils offer the opportunity to look at an era of time permanently frozen in stone. Dinosaurs swallowed by mud or plants pressed into the ground over millions of years create imprints of a world long extinct. Another material, however, allows researchers in the modern day to see a specific moment in time, from an insect stuck in flight to a creature's last breath still captured in a bubble. That material is amber and it's created when gloopy, sticky tree resin hardens over millennia. In Myanmar, amber has been discovered throughout the Kachin State — including one piece with a new species hidden inside. The amber was discovered and sold into trade in 2014, before political conflict surrounded the amber mines, and later moved to a lab at Capital Normal University in Beijing, according to a study published Aug. 4 in the peer-reviewed journal Fossil Record. The piece was trimmed and polished, providing a window to the animal caught inside, according to the study. The new species is a mite and it represents the first species in a new genus, researchers said. The amber dates to the Cretaceous period about 98 million years ago, according to the study. The mite looks like something you might find today, except for one key feature. The critter has 'ultra-long' dorsal setae, or hair-like structures that cover the back of the body, according to the study. 'The dorsal setae of Cretachyzeria macroseta (a new genus and species) are extremely long and dense, resembling the quills of a porcupine,' researchers said. 'This unusual morphological structure likely served specific biological functions.' In modern mites, small hair-like features on the body are used to provide shelter to their larvae, making it easier for them to transport and disperse the larvae, according to the study. The prehistoric mite may have used them for the same purpose, or at least for protection as the specimen trapped in amber is covered with small grains of sand or earth. 'This suggests that the ultra-long setae may provide some protection from impurities, safeguarding the fragile abdomen. This feature would enhance the survival of the mite inhabiting tree or soil environments,' researchers said. The scientists also hypothesized that the mite might have been red in color, which would have made it less likely to be eaten by predatory insects or spiders, according to the study. The long setae could have also made it hard for predators to grab on to the small critter. 'The discovery of a new species in Cretaceous Myanmar amber suggests that this feature was already present 99 million years ago,' researchers said, also suggesting this mite group 'evolved at a slow rate and that its ancestral traits have remained relatively unchanged from those (living) species.' Kachin State is in northern Myanmar, along the border with China. The research team includes Yu Liu, Qing-Hai Fan and Dong Ren.
31-07-2025
‘A Star Is Born' producer Lynette Howell Taylor elected president of Oscars org
Veteran producer Lynette Howell Taylor has been elected president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Taylor will succeed Janet Yang in the role, presiding over the organization that puts on the Oscars, film academy CEO Bill Kramer said Thursday. An academy member since 2014, Taylor has served the organization in several high-profile positions, including as vice president and chair of the awards committee. She's also a prolific film producer whose works include 'A Star Is Born' (2018), 'Blue Valentine' and 'The Accountant.' She also produced the 92nd Oscars broadcast. Taylor is now the fifth woman to lead the film academy. The outgoing president, Yang, was elected to the position in 2022 and served in the role for the maximum of three years. Kramer said in a statement that Taylor has been a vital part of the board of governors and singled out how she 'revitalized our awards work.' Several officers were also elected by the board, including actor Lou Diamond Phillips as chair of the equity and inclusion committee and producer Jennifer Fox, who will chair the awards committee. 'This is an exceptional group of Academy members who will advance the Academy's mission, support our membership around the world, ensure our long-term financial stability, and celebrate the achievements of the global filmmaking community,' Kramer said. After years of declining ratings, the Oscars have been on an upswing the past few years. March's broadcast, in which 'Anora' won five Oscars, drew some 19.7 million viewers, a slight uptick from the ceremony the year prior, when 'Oppenheimer' dominated. The organization has already announced that Conan O'Brien will return as host in 2026 and has made several big changes for the future, including adding a stunt design award, starting with films released in 2027, and one for casting directors, which goes into effect this year.
