Latest news with #pachyrhinosaurus
CTV News
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Grande Prairie area dinosaur featured in upcoming Walking with Dinosaurs television series
Emily Bamforth applies plaster to the pachyrhinosaurus lakusta skull to prepare it for its move in the Pipestone Creek bone bed about 40 km west of Grande Prairie, Alta. on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (Photo by Jesse Boily) After almost 25 years a show that brought dinosaurs to life on our television screens is returning, with a local dinosaur taking the spotlight. BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs will feature Wembley's own Pipestone Creek bonebed and its locally unique dinosaur, the pachyrhinosaurus. 'I really loved the original Walking with Dinosaurs, because it was the first time that they had brought dinosaurs to life in a way that presented them as animals,' said Emily Bamforth, Philip J. Currie Museum (PJCDM) curator. She said although dinosaurs were seen on the big screen in movies like Jurassic Park they were depicted as monsters. 'Walking with Dinosaurs was really like a nature documentary about dinosaurs, and no one had ever done that before, so it was hugely influential for me as a kid, and I think it was one of the milestones in terms of the things that influenced me, in terms of the wanting to go into paleontology.' Bamforth is now part of the series as she will help tell the more than 70-million-year-old story of the pachyrhinosaurus and the river of death. 'We tell a story about the bonebed and the herd of animals and the dying from a flood and then getting preserved, but to actually have that brought to life is kind of jaw-dropping,' said Bamforth. She hasn't yet seen the final episode, but an early draft left her with 'tingles' due to how real it felt. 'These aren't just dusty old bones sitting in the ground, these were animals living in this ecosystem,' she said. 'All of this happened right here in northern Alberta, this was our world back then.' A young pachyrhinosaurus named Albie will be featured in the fifth episode of the new series. 'Every year, his herd makes an epic journey north as the seasons change,' says a BBC press release. 'Along the way, he will encounter clashing bulls, tyrannosaur predators, and freak weather events.' According to the BBC, the visual effects teams built up the skeleton, musculature, and finally, the skin in a process that took about 2.5 years. Bamforth says the BBC initially contacted her in 2023 when the show was scouting for various sites worldwide to feature. 'All of the sites in the world, and all the big museums doing big research, they chose us as one of six sites in the world featured for this series, so it really is an incredible honour,' she said. Bamforth and the paleontologist team at PJCDM have been busy: Just last year they made the most significant find to date: a 1.6 metre-long, 461-kilogram skull. It made international headlines and now the museum is once again in the global spotlight thanks to the BBC. 'I think it's bigger than we sort of expected it to be,' said Bamforth, who said she's done over 11 media interviews in the past week from outlets in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. 'It is a very special site; it's like no other in the world, like no place I've ever worked has been like this.' The Pipestone Creek bonebed is one of the densest dinosaur bonebeds in North America. 'I think the community of Grande Prairie and the surrounding communities should be really proud of the fact that this is here and that we have the PJCDM that is helping tell that story, and now we have people from around the world that are interested in coming here,' said Bamforth. 'This is something that's ours, and we can really showcase the amazing paleontology that we have up here, which hasn't really been well appreciated in the past.' She hopes it will bring more international and local visitors to the site to discover what it offers. Walking with Dinosaurs premiered in the UK on May 25 and will premiere on PBS in Canada on June 16. By Jesse Boily, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Town & Country News
Telegraph
19-05-2025
- Science
- Telegraph
‘River of Death' wiped out thousands of dinosaurs in one day
An ancient riverbed in Canada has been dubbed the 'River of Death' after more than ten thousand dinosaur bones were found at the site. Skulls, hips, ribs and femurs are often unearthed at the location of the dig on a hillside in Alberta, and studies show they all date back to a single moment 72 million years ago. It is thought that more than 10,000 dinosaurs perished in one day as a consequence of freak weather, which probably flooded a popular migration route. Every bone found at the site is from a species called pachyrhinosaurus, a smaller and older relative of the triceratops that has the trademark neck frill of its relative, but a large bony mass on its nose instead of a horn. The site and dig is the focus of an episode of the BBC's new Walking With Dinosaurs television programme, which will use visual effects to retell the story of the prehistoric event. Pachyrhinosaurus measured up to 20 feet in length and could weigh more than two tons when fully grown, but the specimens found at the River of Death are of all ages, including juveniles and infants. Prof Emily Bamforth, a palaeontologist and curator at the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum in Alberta, told Science Focus magazine: 'There are upwards of 10,000 individuals preserved here. 'It's one of the densest bone beds in North America – we're talking 100 to 300 bones per square metre, and the site stretches back into the hill for at least a square kilometre. It's a hugely dense bone bed that is very, very large – and that makes it tremendously significant.' She added that the fossilised remains of the herd of dinosaurs revealed a tragic tale. 'We know they all died at once in some kind of catastrophic event, and we know that whatever killed them wiped out almost every member of the herd indiscriminately – big, little, old and young,' said Prof Bamforth. The scientists at the site believe a flash flood, possibly caused by a monsoon or a hurricane, may have triggered a deluge that trapped the vast herd of animals which were on their way northwards for the summer. The large, heavy animals would have been ill-equipped to survive such a rapid downpour. 'We believe that this was a herd on a seasonal migration that got tangled up in some catastrophic event that effectively wiped out, if not the entire herd, then a good proportion of it,' Prof Bamforth told BBC News. 'These animals are not able to move very fast because of their sheer numbers, and they're very top heavy – and really not very good at swimming at all.' Stones at the site also captured evidence of turbulent water, indicating the power and destruction of the flood. North America is a rich area for palaeontologists, and scientists working on fish fossils in North Dakota have recently found evidence that the Chicxulub meteorite which wiped out almost all dinosaurs 66 million years ago probably hit Earth in the springtime of the northern hemisphere.
