Scientists say they have discovered a fossil track in northeastern British Columbia that is about 95 million years old.
Paleontologist Charles Helm and geologist Roy Rule authored a paper that says they discovered a track known as Magnoavipes last year that dates back to the late Cretaceous period.
Magnoavipes, which translates in Latin to big bird foot, is a genus classified based on fossilized footprints rather than bones.
Helm told CBC News the track was likely left behind by either a “very big bird or else a bird-like dinosaur.”
“It’s difficult to know for sure which of those two, but if it was a bird, I mean, it was big,” he told CBC’s Daybreak North.
Helm said only three Magnoavipes tracks have been discovered in Canada, all within the District of Tumbler Ridge. The first was found in 2010, while two others were discovered in 2023. The largest track was 25 centimetres in length and 28 centimetres in width.
Helm said he and Rule discovered one of the tracks last year, thanks to a bit of good luck.
The track was spotted in a loose slab of rock following a cliff collapse. Helm says it was fortunate that the slab didn’t shatter in the collapse and that it landed upside down, revealing the track. Low water levels on the Wolverine River during a dry summer season meant the slab was exposed for a prolonged period of time.
“It was just lying there, you know, next to the riverbank,” he said.
He said a team of four transported the 150-kilogram track-bearing slab by canoe across the Wolverine River and then by truck to the Tumbler Ridge Museum, where it currently resides.
Derek Larson, collections manager and researcher in paleontology with the Royal Museum of B.C., says the fossil track appears to be quite a bit older than a lot of the other fossils seen in Canada. It dates back to the Cenomanian age, which he described as “a very interesting time period that we don’t know a lot about.”
“The most interesting thing about this print to me is that we still don’t know exactly what it is,” Larson said.
“There might be a giant winged bird in the Cretaceous that we have no bones of because we just don’t know enough about the fossils of that time … but we have these very tantalizing footprints that are showing that there is something here that’s leaving these footprints. That encourages me as a paleontologist to go out and find it.”
Helm feels the same way. He said he plans to return to the area and continue exploring.
“The Tumbler Ridge area, you know, things are coming and going all the time,” he said. “Cliffs collapse, floods open things up or take things away,” he said. “Things are ephemeral here, so we have to keep our eyes open.”
He said they would love to find a Magnoavipes trackway, which could help identify a new species.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually find a trackway of two, three, four, five tracks in a row, and then we can work out the stride length and the pace length …That’s the Holy Grail.”