030 Grizzlies Meet Bison and new Dino Discoveries

Story 1 - Grizzlies Meet Bison This is one of the most amazing stories to hit the parks in decades, and the first large-scale reintroduction of a large hoofed animal in this area. In February of 2017, 10 pregnant females and 6 young bulls were reintroduced to a remote area of Banff National Park. Just yesterday, on June 7, 2017, Parks announced that the 10th calve had been born. That makes it 10 for 10 which is a great success for bison reintroduction Well it seems like someone else has also taken notice…master bruin. Park officials have reported that the fence around the paddock had grizzly tracks all around it on one particular morning. As a biologist and naturalist, I'm always trying to teach visitors to the mountains about the importance of understanding the seasonal foods of bears. Bears have to know when and where to find a variety of foods throughout the course of the season and every bear's habitat will have a slightly different seasonal palate. For this particular grizzly, as Marie-Eve Marchand of Bison Belong told the Calgary Eye Opener: "so the bear went to bed in the fall and there were no bison and he woke up with them right in the middle of his valley. It must have been pretty exciting to see them looking at each other." This new herd in Banff will be only one of 5 herds of wild bison in all of North America. Story 2 - Dino Discoveries Dinosaur discoveries can happen in the most unexpected ways. Take for example the recent announcement of the most well preserved dinosaur ever found. March 21, 2011, began as just another day for Alberta Suncor worker Shawn Funk as he worked an excavator at the Millennium Mine located 27 km outside of Fort McMurray, Alberta. Just like he did every day for the previous 12 years, his shovel bit into gravels saturated with bitumen. This combination of thick oil and sand is known as Alberta's oil sands. The oil itself is made up of the remains of long dead organisms. Most of them are thought to have been tiny marine creatures called zooplankton, although larger creatures may have also been a part of the organic soup as well. As this material was buried under deeper and deeper overlying deposits, heat and pressure transformed the organic material into petroleum. The oil sands in northern Alberta represent the world's third largest reserve of oil. Funk had been excavating oil sands bitumen for years and, in all that time, had previously only turned up the odd petrified tree stump or other pieces of fossilized wood. On this particular day, that would all change. At around 1:30 pm, his bucket hit something that seemed harder than the surrounding material. As he emptied his shovel, he noticed a larch chunk of rock with a diamond pattern and a texture that struck him as unusual. After calling in his supervisor, Mike Gratton, they realized tht this was no ordinary rock. Both realized that experts needed to examine the find. When Donald Henderson, a paleontologist with the Royal Tyrell Museum arrived, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He was quoted in Alberta Oil Magazine as saying: "I couldn't believe my eyes - it was a dinosaur. When we first saw the pictures we were convinced we were going to see another plesiosaur. The fossil instead turned out to be one of the best preserved ankylosaurs in the world. All the armor is in place; we've got skin and other soft tissues, and probably stomach contents as well." This wasn't the first dinosaur to be discovered in the oil sands, but it was the first to be found in the Millennium Mine. Every company operating in the oil sands needs a permit under the provincial Historical Resources Act. Before any work is done, a paleontologist is hired to do a baseline study of the area to get an idea of where any current fossil deposits may be located. Once the permit to begin excavation is granted, they're still required to report all fossil discoveries. It's up to operators like Funk to keep a close look on what his shovels are unearthing. If a fossil is found, the rules are very strict. The area has to be cordoned off and equipment has to be moved at least 20 metres away. Once a geologist verifies that a fossil has been found, the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology gets a call and head right out to the site. The vast majority of Alberta's oil sands are found in a deposit known as the McMurray Formation, which dates from 145 to 66 million years ago. These dates encompass the entirely of the Cretaceous Period - or the age of the dinosaurs, so the area is perfect for their discovery. Sooooo…what exactly did they find? It is a dinosaur known as a nodosaur…a whatasaur? Well depending on how well you know your dinosaurs, this is a low, plant eating dinosaur which is part a group known as ankylosaurs. The ankylosaurs are kind of like a huge armadillo (without the ability to curl up into a ball), but they had a huge bony club at the end of their tail. They are like a tank, low to the ground with heavy armor plate and body spikes to protect them. Nodosaurs represent a family within the ankylosaurs and are imilar except that they lack the tail club and have a somewhat narrower head. They were very formidable. If you've visitied the Royal Tyrell Museum, you may have seen a display of an Edmontonia which was closely related to this currently un-named nodosaur. I'll leave a link in the shownotes to a great article on the National Geographic site that will give you a great look at this amazing new dinosaur