Latest news with #palaeontologists
The Independent
25-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
The new travel craze sparked by a BBC series
I'm crouched at a bone bed in Alberta, Canada, armed with a hammer, awl, and brush, attempting to unearth a piece of history 73 million years old. It's difficult to comprehend the sheer scale of the 181kg Pachyrhinosaurus skull buried beneath me – the remnants of a creature I've only ever encountered in fiction. Dinosaurs remain one of nature's greatest enigmas. Their sudden extinction continues to baffle scientists, yet evidence of their existence lies scattered across the globe, often just metres below the surface. The skull I'm carefully excavating belongs to a Pachyrhinosaurus, a close relative of the Triceratops, identifiable by its thick boss and ornate frills. Affectionately dubbed "Big Sam", this particular fossil was discovered during the filming of the new six-part BBC series, Walking With Dinosaurs – a reboot of the popular show that first aired 25 years ago. The series aims to breathe new life into these ancient relics, using detailed animatronics and presenting dinosaurs not just as fossils, but as living creatures with emotions and personalities, much like an Attenborough-style nature documentary. By piecing together clues from the past, Walking With Dinosaurs offers a glimpse into a prehistoric world, revealing the lives of these magnificent creatures. Liaising with more than 200 palaeontologists, the BBC settled on six distinct stories and dig sites including Spinosaurus, a fierce carnivore found in Morocco, and a Lusotitan in Portugal. Big Sam's brethren, belonging to one of the largest herding dinosaur species, are the stars of episode five. Known to science for fewer than 50 years, remains of the creatures were first found at Pipestone Creek Provincial Park. A 30-minute drive from the town of Grande Prairie, the bone bed is in a boreal forest close to a public trail and was first discovered by a school teacher walking along the creek in the mid-1970s – although proper excavations didn't take place until a couple of decades later. Guided tours of the site, where work continues, can be arranged by the nearby Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum. ' Alberta is famous for bigger dinosaur sites, but this is one of the most important,' says the museum's curator, palaeontologist Emily Bamforth. 'It's was what put northern Alberta on the map as a palaeontology hotspot.' It's estimated up to 40,000 animals could be buried in an area the size of a tennis court, making it one of the biggest collections of individual dinosaurs in the world. 'Millions of years ago, this area would have been marshy and close to the coast,' explains Ms Bamforth, as I chip away at a mille-feuille of overlapping ribs, hips and femurs – commonly known as a 'bone salad'. 'This would have been a great place to be a dinosaur.' The mass grave resembles a crime scene, with detectives forensically digging for clues in the soil. 'This is a sample size we almost never find in the fossil record,' says Ms Bamforth. 'It is a single snapshot of a community of animals from one period in time.' Theories suggest the animals were moving north as part of seasonal migration, similar to wildebeest following rains through Tanzania's Serengeti or Canadian caribou heading north to find fresh blooms. But an episode of flash flooding likely stopped them in their tracks. 'Everyone was killed – the old ones, the young ones, the fit ones, the weak ones,' says Ms Bamforth. 'We think that the carcasses were lying out on the floodplain for about a year or two, long enough that the bodies started to decay and fall apart. Then the scavengers started to move in – our big Tyrannosaur, our Albertosaurus, our little feather Dromaeosaurs.' Excavation and preparation are the most time-consuming aspects of any dig. Once bones have been sufficiently exposed, they are wrapped in a 'jacket' of bandages to create a protective cast and carefully removed for further work and analysis. Back at the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum in a glass-screened laboratory viewable to public visitors, Ms Bamforth's team are working on another Pachyrhinosaurus skull. I watch as they carefully turn the weighty object – heavier than a motorcycle – in readiness to work on part of the fossil last seen when it was removed from the ground 22 years ago. The amount of information shared by these silent fossils is remarkable. Simply by studying the shape of the skull, Ms Bamforth's team has deduced detailed characteristics about the animals' behaviour. Big eye sockets would have allowed for the eye stabilisation seen in modern herd animals. The purpose of individual frill shapes has also been compared to the unique patterns of zebra stripes used by individuals to recognise one another in a big group. Stretching far beyond our limited mental capacity, imaging life several million years ago is almost incomprehensible. But bare bones can reveal a surprisingly complex story. Fleshed out by careful thought, scientific research and a bit of imagination, the struggles, triumphs and daily lives of these ancient creatures are surprisingly relatable. We are, after all, inhabitants of the same home.
The Independent
23-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Dino-tourism: How TV revival could ignite a new travel craze
I'm crouched at a bone bed in Alberta, Canada, armed with a hammer, awl, and brush, attempting to unearth a piece of history 73 million years old. It's difficult to comprehend the sheer scale of the 181kg Pachyrhinosaurus skull buried beneath me – the remnants of a creature I've only ever encountered in fiction. Dinosaurs remain one of nature's greatest enigmas. Their sudden extinction continues to baffle scientists, yet evidence of their existence lies scattered across the globe, often just metres below the surface. The skull I'm carefully excavating belongs to a Pachyrhinosaurus, a close relative of the Triceratops, identifiable by its thick boss and ornate frills. Affectionately dubbed "Big Sam", this particular fossil was discovered during the filming of the new six-part BBC series, Walking With Dinosaurs – a reboot of the popular show that first aired 25 years ago. The series aims to breathe new life into these ancient relics, using detailed animatronics and presenting dinosaurs not just as fossils, but as living creatures with emotions and personalities, much like an Attenborough-style nature documentary. By piecing together clues from the past, Walking With Dinosaurs offers a glimpse into a prehistoric world, revealing the lives of these magnificent creatures. Liaising with more than 200 palaeontologists, the BBC settled on six distinct stories and dig sites including Spinosaurus, a fierce carnivore found in Morocco, and a Lusotitan in Portugal. Big Sam's brethren, belonging to one of the largest herding dinosaur species, are the stars of episode five. Known to science for fewer than 50 years, remains of the creatures were first found at Pipestone Creek Provincial Park. A 30-minute drive from the town of Grande Prairie, the bone bed is in a boreal forest close to a public trail and was first discovered by a school teacher walking along the creek in the mid-1970s – although proper excavations didn't take place until a couple of decades later. Guided tours of the site, where work continues, can be arranged by the nearby Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum. ' Alberta is famous for bigger dinosaur sites, but this is one of the most important,' says the museum's curator, palaeontologist Emily Bamforth. 'It's was what put northern Alberta on the map as a palaeontology hotspot.' It's estimated up to 40,000 animals could be buried in an area the size of a tennis court, making it one of the biggest collections of individual dinosaurs in the world. 'Millions of years ago, this area would have been marshy and close to the coast,' explains Ms Bamforth, as I chip away at a mille-feuille of overlapping ribs, hips and femurs – commonly known as a 'bone salad'. 'This would have been a great place to be a dinosaur.' The mass grave resembles a crime scene, with detectives forensically digging for clues in the soil. 'This is a sample size we almost never find in the fossil record,' says Ms Bamforth. 'It is a single snapshot of a community of animals from one period in time.' Theories suggest the animals were moving north as part of seasonal migration, similar to wildebeest following rains through Tanzania's Serengeti or Canadian caribou heading north to find fresh blooms. But an episode of flash flooding likely stopped them in their tracks. 'Everyone was killed – the old ones, the young ones, the fit ones, the weak ones,' says Ms Bamforth. 'We think that the carcasses were lying out on the floodplain for about a year or two, long enough that the bodies started to decay and fall apart. Then the scavengers started to move in – our big Tyrannosaur, our Albertosaurus, our little feather Dromaeosaurs.' Excavation and preparation are the most time-consuming aspects of any dig. Once bones have been sufficiently exposed, they are wrapped in a 'jacket' of bandages to create a protective cast and carefully removed for further work and analysis. Back at the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum in a glass-screened laboratory viewable to public visitors, Ms Bamforth's team are working on another Pachyrhinosaurus skull. I watch as they carefully turn the weighty object – heavier than a motorcycle – in readiness to work on part of the fossil last seen when it was removed from the ground 22 years ago. The amount of information shared by these silent fossils is remarkable. Simply by studying the shape of the skull, Ms Bamforth's team has deduced detailed characteristics about the animals' behaviour. Big eye sockets would have allowed for the eye stabilisation seen in modern herd animals. The purpose of individual frill shapes has also been compared to the unique patterns of zebra stripes used by individuals to recognise one another in a big group. Stretching far beyond our limited mental capacity, imaging life several million years ago is almost incomprehensible. But bare bones can reveal a surprisingly complex story. Fleshed out by careful thought, scientific research and a bit of imagination, the struggles, triumphs and daily lives of these ancient creatures are surprisingly relatable. We are, after all, inhabitants of the same home.
BBC News
19-05-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Solving the mystery of a dinosaur mass grave at the 'River of Death'
Hidden beneath the slopes of a lush forest in Alberta, Canada, is a mass grave on a monumental scale. Thousands of dinosaurs were buried here, killed in an instant on a day of utter devastation. Now, a group of palaeontologists have come to Pipestone Creek - appropriately nicknamed the "River of Death" - to help solve a 72-million-year-old enigma: how did they die? Trying to work out exactly what happened here starts with the hefty strike of a sledgehammer. Brute force is needed to crack open the thick layer of rock that covers what Professor Emily Bamforth, who's leading the dig, describes as "palaeo gold". As her team begins the more delicate job of removing the layers of dirt and dust, a jumble of fossilised bones slowly begins to emerge. "That big blob of bone right there is, we think, part of a hip," Prof Bamforth says, watched on by her dog Aster - whose job today is to bark if she spots any nearby bears. "Then here, we have all of these long, skinny bones. These are all ribs. And this is a neat one - it's part of a toe bone. This one here, we have no idea what it is - it's a great example of a Pipestone Creek mystery." BBC News has come to Pipestone Creek to witness the sheer scale of this prehistoric graveyard and see how researchers are piecing together the clues. Thousands of fossils have been collected from the site, and are constantly generating new discoveries. The bones all belong to a dinosaur called Pachyrhinosaurus. The species, and Prof Bamforth's excavation, feature in a new landmark BBC series - Walking With Dinosaurs - which uses visual effects and science to bring this prehistoric world to life. These animals, which lived during the Late Cretaceous period, were a relative of the Triceratops. Measuring about five metres long and weighing two tonnes, the four-legged beasts had large heads, adorned with a distinctive bony frill and three horns. Their defining feature was a big bump on the nose called a boss. The dig season has just started and lasts each year until autumn. The fossils in the small patch of ground that the team are working on are incredibly tightly packed; Prof Bamforth estimates there are up to 300 bones in every square metre. So far, her team has excavated an area the size of a tennis court, but the bed of bones extends for a kilometre into the hillside. "It's jaw dropping in terms of its density," she tells us. "It is, we believe, one of the largest bone beds in North America. "More than half of the known dinosaur species in the world are described from a single specimen. We have thousands of Pachyrhinosaurus here." Palaeontologists believe the dinosaurs were migrating together in a colossal herd for hundreds of miles from the south - where they had spent the winter - to the north for the summer. The area, which had a much warmer climate than it does today, would have been covered in rich vegetation, providing abundant food for this enormous group of plant-eating animals. "It is a single community of a single species of animal from a snapshot in time, and it's a huge sample size. That almost never happens in the fossil record," says Prof Bamforth. Bigger beasts offering clues And this patch of north-western Alberta wasn't just home to Pachyrhinosaurus. Even bigger dinosaurs roamed this land, and studying them is essential to try and understand this ancient ecosystem. Two hours drive away, we reach the Deadfall Hills. Getting there involves a hike through dense forest, wading - or doggy-paddling in the case of Aster - across a fast-running river, and clambering over slippery rocks. No digging is required here; super-sized bones lie next to the shoreline, washed out from the rock and cleaned by the flowing water, just waiting to be picked up. A huge vertebra is quickly spotted, as are bits of ribs and teeth scattered across the mud. Palaeontologist Jackson Sweder is particularly interested in what looks like a chunk of dinosaur skull. "Most of what we find here is a duck-billed dinosaur called Edmontosaurus. If this is a skull bone, this is a dinosaur that's large - probably 30ft (10m) long," he says. The Edmontosaurus, another herbivore, roamed the forests like the Pachyrhinosaurus - and is helping palaeontologists build up a picture of this ancient land. Sweder is the collection manager at the Philip J Currie Dinosaur Museum in nearby Grande Prairie, where the bones from both of these giants are taken to be cleaned up and analysed. He is currently working on a huge Pachyrhinosaurus skull that's about 1.5m long and has been nicknamed "Big Sam". He points to where the three horns should be at the top of the frill, but the one in the middle is missing. "All the skulls that are decently complete have a spike in that spot," he says. "But its nice little unicorn spike doesn't seem to be there." Throughout years working at the extraordinary site, the museum team has collected 8,000 dinosaur bones, and the surfaces of the lab are covered in fossils; there are bones from Pachyrhinosaurus of every size, from young to old. Having material from so many animals allows researchers to learn about dinosaur biology, answering questions about how the species grows and the make-up of the community. They can also look at individual variations, to see how one Pachyrhinosaurus could stand out from the herd – as may be the case with Big Sam and his missing spike. A sudden devastating event All of this detailed research, in the museum and at the two sites, is helping the team to answer the vital question: how did so many animals in Pipestone Creek die at the same time? "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 says. All the evidence suggests that this catastrophic event was a flash flood - perhaps a storm over the mountains that sent an unstoppable torrent of water towards the herd, ripping trees from their roots and shifting boulders. Prof Bamforth says the Pachyrhinosaurus wouldn't have stood a chance. "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." Rocks found at the site show the swirls of sediment from the fast-flowing water churning everything up. It's as if the destruction is frozen in time as a wave in the stone. But this nightmare day for the dinosaurs is now a dream for palaeontologists. "We know, every time we come here, it's 100% guaranteed we'll find bones. And every year we discover something new about the species," says Prof Bamforth. "That's why we keep coming back, because we're still finding new things." As the team packs up their tools ready to return another day, they know there's a lot of work ahead. They've only just scratched the surface of what's here - and there are many more prehistoric secrets just waiting to be revealed. The new series of Walking With Dinosaurs starts on Sunday 25 May at 18:25 BST on BBC One, with all episodes available on BBC iPlayer. Dinosaurs Science & Environment
BBC News
19-05-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Walking with dinosaurs: Mystery of Pachyrhinosaurus mass grave in Canada
Hidden beneath the slopes of a lush forest in Alberta, Canada, is a mass grave on a monumental of dinosaurs were buried here, killed in an instant on a day of utter a group of palaeontologists have come to Pipestone Creek - appropriately nicknamed the "River of Death" - to help solve a 72-million-year-old enigma: how did they die?Trying to work out exactly what happened here starts with the hefty strike of a force is needed to crack open the thick layer of rock that covers what Professor Emily Bamforth, who's leading the dig, describes as "palaeo gold".As her team begins the more delicate job of removing the layers of dirt and dust, a jumble of fossilised bones slowly begins to emerge. "That big blob of bone right there is, we think, part of a hip," Prof Bamforth says, watched on by her dog Aster - whose job today is to bark if she spots any nearby bears."Then here, we have all of these long, skinny bones. These are all ribs. And this is a neat one - it's part of a toe bone. This one here, we have no idea what it is - it's a great example of a Pipestone Creek mystery."BBC News has come to Pipestone Creek to witness the sheer scale of this prehistoric graveyard and see how researchers are piecing together the of fossils have been collected from the site, and are constantly generating new discoveries. The bones all belong to a dinosaur called Pachyrhinosaurus. The species, and Prof Bamforth's excavation, feature in a new landmark BBC series - Walking With Dinosaurs - which uses visual effects and science to bring this prehistoric world to animals, which lived during the Late Cretaceous period, were a relative of the Triceratops. Measuring about five metres long and weighing two tonnes, the four-legged beasts had large heads, adorned with a distinctive bony frill and three horns. Their defining feature was a big bump on the nose called a dig season has just started and lasts each year until autumn. The fossils in the small patch of ground that the team are working on are incredibly tightly packed; Prof Bamforth estimates there are up to 300 bones in every square metre. So far, her team has excavated an area the size of a tennis court, but the bed of bones extends for a kilometre into the hillside."It's jaw dropping in terms of its density," she tells us."It is, we believe, one of the largest bone beds in North America."More than half of the known dinosaur species in the world are described from a single specimen. We have thousands of Pachyrhinosaurus here." Palaeontologists believe the dinosaurs were migrating together in a colossal herd for hundreds of miles from the south - where they had spent the winter - to the north for the area, which had a much warmer climate than it does today, would have been covered in rich vegetation, providing abundant food for this enormous group of plant-eating animals."It is a single community of a single species of animal from a snapshot in time, and it's a huge sample size. That almost never happens in the fossil record," says Prof Bamforth. Bigger beasts offering clues And this patch of north-western Alberta wasn't just home to Pachyrhinosaurus. Even bigger dinosaurs roamed this land, and studying them is essential to try and understand this ancient hours drive away, we reach the Deadfall Hills. Getting there involves a hike through dense forest, wading - or doggy-paddling in the case of Aster - across a fast-running river, and clambering over slippery digging is required here; super-sized bones lie next to the shoreline, washed out from the rock and cleaned by the flowing water, just waiting to be picked up.A huge vertebra is quickly spotted, as are bits of ribs and teeth scattered across the mud. Palaeontologist Jackson Sweder is particularly interested in what looks like a chunk of dinosaur skull. "Most of what we find here is a duck-billed dinosaur called Edmontosaurus. If this is a skull bone, this is a dinosaur that's large - probably 30ft (10m) long," he Edmontosaurus, another herbivore, roamed the forests like the Pachyrhinosaurus - and is helping palaeontologists build up a picture of this ancient is the collection manager at the Philip J Currie Dinosaur Museum in nearby Grande Prairie, where the bones from both of these giants are taken to be cleaned up and analysed. He is currently working on a huge Pachyrhinosaurus skull that's about 1.5m long and has been nicknamed "Big Sam". He points to where the three horns should be at the top of the frill, but the one in the middle is missing. "All the skulls that are decently complete have a spike in that spot," he says. "But its nice little unicorn spike doesn't seem to be there."Throughout years working at the extraordinary site, the museum team has collected 8,000 dinosaur bones, and the surfaces of the lab are covered in fossils; there are bones from Pachyrhinosaurus of every size, from young to material from so many animals allows researchers to learn about dinosaur biology, answering questions about how the species grows and the make-up of the community. They can also look at individual variations, to see how one Pachyrhinosaurus could stand out from the herd – as may be the case with Big Sam and his missing spike. A sudden devastating event All of this detailed research, in the museum and at the two sites, is helping the team to answer the vital question: how did so many animals in Pipestone Creek die at the same time?"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 the evidence suggests that this catastrophic event was a flash flood - perhaps a storm over the mountains that sent an unstoppable torrent of water towards the herd, ripping trees from their roots and shifting boulders. Prof Bamforth says the Pachyrhinosaurus wouldn't have stood a chance. "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."Rocks found at the site show the swirls of sediment from the fast-flowing water churning everything up. It's as if the destruction is frozen in time as a wave in the stone. But this nightmare day for the dinosaurs is now a dream for palaeontologists."We know, every time we come here, it's 100% guaranteed we'll find bones. And every year we discover something new about the species," says Prof Bamforth."That's why we keep coming back, because we're still finding new things."As the team packs up their tools ready to return another day, they know there's a lot of work ahead. They've only just scratched the surface of what's here - and there are many more prehistoric secrets just waiting to be new series of Walking With Dinosaurs starts on Sunday 25 May at 18:25 BST on BBC One, with all episodes available on BBC iPlayer.
ABC News
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Angela Heathcote
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