Meet the Dinosaur Canada Kept Hidden for 100 Million Years

Title: Meet the Dinosaur Canada Kept Hidden for 100 Million Years

Date of publication: April 16th/2025

Author: Melissa Ait Lounis

Article Link: Meet the Dinosaur Canada Kept Hidden for 100 Million Years


Tracks left by the Ruopodosaurus Clava, in Canadian Rockies.

Summary of Article: In the Canadian Rockies, specifically in Tumbler Ridge BC ,and Northwestern Alberta, some three toed Ankylosaurid tracks were discovered in North America for the first time. Traditional, Ankylosaur tracks are typically know to have four toes, not three. These specific tracks are believed to have dated back roughly 84-100 million years, during the Cretaceous period. These new tracks have provided scientists with new insights, as there have been "no skeletal fossil evidence of ankylosaurids in North America," before these tracks were found. 

The absence of these fossil records have previously lead paleontologists to believe that these dinosaurs had eventually disappeared from this continent during this period. These footprints prove that tail-clubbed ankylosaurs were "alive and well in North America during this gap in the skeletal fossil record." This new discovery has lead the team to purpose a new species: the Ruopodosaurus Clava, which basically interprets to the tumbled-down lizard with a club. 

Scientists don't know what the dinosaur would look like, but it's thought to be approximately 5-6  meters long, spiky, and armored, paired "with a stiff tail or full tail club." The research team includes scientists from Tumbler Ridge Museum, Tumbler Ridge, the Royal BC Museum, UNESCO Global Geo Park, and the Late Martin Lockley from the University of Colorado.


c journal of vertebrate paleontology. 

My Thoughts: I think the fact that we humans are learning more about prehistoric beings is an incredible feat. I love that we have technology available to us to learn about the discoveries that we make. The fact the we have the ability to figure out what time period a fossilized track is from is absolutely mind blowing. It is really interesting that we have recently found tracks from an animal that wasn't thought to have existed in North America. 

Every day we expand on our knowledge of the beings before us, and this instance is a great example of that, I think it would be very fascinating to learn even more about not just the dinosaurs, but the other species before us as well. There is so much that we don't know, and little things like fossil records are like little pieces of a much larger puzzle. Little discoveries like this really make me ponder about how the living things before us that drank the same water and roamed the same earth. It makes me even more curious about thousands of years from now, and if there will be humans or a different species looking back and trying to piece our lives together the same way we do now.

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