For years, it was known as the Puntledge River fossil. From its discovery in 1988 by a father-daughter duo, right up to the provincial Legislature's declaration that it was B.C.'s official provincial fossil, the long-necked swimming reptile went without a real name.
In May, that was finally remedied, after a new scientific paper dubbed the critter Traskasaura sandrae.
Traskasaura had a long journey from discovery to naming, but it isn't actually that unusual for the science of paleontology to require a little time to sort things out.
Films like Jurassic Park show paleontologists gently brushing sand away from complete fossilized skeletons, every bone in its correct place.
In real life, it's seldom that simple.
When an ancient animal (or fish, crustacean, or even a plant) dies, and is buried in silt, sand, or mud, it can become a fossil. The soft bits (usually) rot away, and minerals leech into the bones, turning them to stone, trapping them in a new rock formation. Then, millions of year later, erosion exposes the fossils again, and if that happens at the right time, a curious human might happen along and spot them.
But the fossils might be a single bone or tooth, perhaps an incomplete part of a skeleton, or it might be a jumble of many bones from many animals. A large number of dinosaurs are known from fossils that don't include a head 鈥� or in some cases, only include a head.
Even after fossilization, there can be all sorts of complications. Fossils can sit under millions of tons of rock, they can be squeezed, bent, and flattened out of their original shape. When they begin to erode out of the ground, big chunks of the skeleton can vanish before it's discovered. Fossils can be as hard as iron 鈥� or as soft and brittle as chalk, depending on when, where, and how they formed.
In the case of Traskasaura, the first fossil was a remarkably complete skeleton 鈥� but the shape of the bones left much to be desired. Prof. F. Robin O'Keefe, who was part of the team that named it, said they "looking like melted ice cream."
But that discovery, by Michael Trask and his daughter, Heather, piqued the interest of scientists. A 2002 scientific paper tried to sort out exactly what the creature was and where it fit into the evolutionary tree. Later discoveries, including one of a young Traskasaura, helped complete the picture and led to the official name.
Traskasaura was an elasmosaur, a sea dwelling, air breathing reptile that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. It had a rounded body and four broad flippers, looking something like a shell-less sea turtle, but with a long tail and an even longer neck, topped with a head filled with large teeth. It likely snatched up ammonites 鈥� shelled molluscs similar to modern nautiluses 鈥� for its meals.
The researchers say it's unusual for its kind, hard to classify. Which probably makes it a pretty good fit for the provincial fossil of Canada's westernmost province, which is a little bit unusual for its kind, too.
