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A previously unknown species of dinosaur may have been discovered after a new study of seven bones found in northwestern B.C. nearly 40 years ago revealed a "mystery" about the creature's identity.
The partial skeleton, estimated to be 70 million years old, was recovered in B.C.'s Sustut River region but went unexamined for decades before researchers in Alberta and Nova Scotia recently probed the bones and were unable to match them to any recorded species.
"There are similarities with two other kinds of dinosaurs, although there's also an arm bone we've never seen before," said University of Alberta paleontologist Victoria Arbour.
University of Alberta paleontologist Victoria Arbour examining the bones of a dinosaur, found in northern BC nearly 40 years ago. A new study of the bones - estimated to be 70 million years old - has led to the conclusion that they may belong ot a previously unknown species of dinosaur. The partial skeleton, was recovered along B.C.'s Sustut River region but went unexamined for decades before researchers in Alberta and Nova Scotia recently probed the bones and were unable to match them to any ex University of Alberta.
"The Sustut dinosaur may be a new species, but we won't know for sure until more fossils can be found. It's very distinct from other dinosaurs that were found at the same time in southern Alberta."
She hopes to lead an expedition to the discovery site in search of more evidence.
In a research paper published in the latest edition of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, Arbour and co-author Milton Graves, a Dalhousie University scientist, describe how the bones were unearthed in 1971 by Kenny Flyborg Larsen, a geologist searching for uranium deposits near the confluence of Birdflat Creek and the Sustut River, northeast of Terrace.
Larsen kept the fossils until 2004, when he donated them to Dalhousie's earth sciences department.
The bones were moved to the Royal British Columbia Museum in 2006.
Other dinosaur finds have been made in B.C. in the past three decades, but the belated documenting of the 1971 find makes it "apparently the first dinosaur body fossil ever discovered in British Columbia," the authors note.
In a statement released Wednesday by the University of Alberta, the Sustut bones are described as "the most complete dinosaur specimen found in B.C. to date."
"The seven shin, arm, toe and possible skull bones were found nestled in a dip between mountains" in the rugged B.C. northland, the release states, "and while the fragments resemble those from a small two-legged, plant-eating dinosaur, the rest of the creature's identity is a mystery."
Analysis of the bones has been made difficult because the precise location where they were found is no longer known, the authors stated in their study.
But the researchers have so far classified it as an unknown species of ornithischian dinosaur -- named for the bird-like structure of their rear-pointing pelvic bones. Others in that broad grouping include triceratops and stegosaurus.
The researchers have tentatively named the Sustut dinosaur Cerapoda incertae sedis, "pending the discovery of additional
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