FEATURE
The Iron Lizard A New Dinosaur for British Columbia By Dr. Victoria Arbour, Curator of Palaeontology
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lmost 50 years ago, a geologist named Kenny Larsen was looking for minerals along the BC Rail line that follows the Sustut River in northern British Columbia. He picked up some old bones, including a mysterious pointed claw.
In 2019 those bones were identified as British Columbia’s first unique dinosaur species, Ferrisaurus sustutensis. The name, which means “Iron Lizard from the Sustut River,” references its discovery along the abandoned railway line.
In 2005, Kenny donated a shoebox containing those old bones to the Earth Sciences Department at Dalhousie University, where I was an undergraduate student. I jumped at the chance to work on some real dinosaur fossils for my
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What’s inSight
