DINOSAUR FROM CANADA

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3495, 3 November 1926, Page 7

DINOSAUR FROM CANADA

PORTION OF ARMOURED SKIN. FOSSIL FOR BRITISH MUSEUM. There was recently placed on exhibition in the gallery of fossil reptiles at the Natural History Museum, London, the fossilised remains of a dinosaur, believed to be the finest specimen of its group. The fossil was obtained by the late W. E. Cutler from the Belly River formation on the Red River in Alberta, Canada, in 1915. It was extracted from the rook in two large masses and two smaller ones, the whole weighing about two tons. It was no easy task to transport such weights from the cliff heights to the rail. Then came the Atlantic passage with the danger of submarines, and finally the erection of special gear to enable the huge blocks to be handled. When the plaster wrappings had.been removed the chiselling away of the hard sandstone matrix began. For two reasons this was a work of much delicacy. The bones were soft and friable, so that they had to be hardened; and then it was soon found that the skin of the back was wonderfully preserved and had to be exposed with the greatest care. Tile mounted fossil is 16ft. long. The back is almost entirely covered with the skin, in which are a number of small bony plates and a few larger plates which bear great spines. Some of these were on the shoulder; a row runs down each side of the back, one between every two ribs: and two large spikes near the end of the tail complete the defences. Where tail and neck join the trunk the plates are reduced to mere specks and the skin is thrown into wrinkles. On the other side the rock has been removed as far as is safe, to expose the internal skeleton. of which nearly every important part is preserved.

This reptile was one of the plated dinosaurs or Stcgosauria. The importance of the specimen lies partly in the unusually fine preservation of tlie skin armour and partly in the near approach to completeness of the body skeleton. No other fossil Stegosaur is so well ropresnted in a single steelmen.