FEATURE The Iron Lizard

The Iron Lizard A New Dinosaur for British Columbia

By Dr. Victoria Arbour, Curator of Palaeontology

Almost 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

undergraduate thesis and quickly realized that these were some of the only dinosaur bones that had ever been found in British Columbia—many of the incredible fossils we now know about from the Tumbler Ridge area had yet to be discovered! At that stage of my career, I was able to figure out that the bones belonged to some kind of small, two-legged, plant-eating dinosaur, perhaps something a bit like the domeheaded pachycephalosaurs or the fleetfooted plant-eaters called parksosaurids. But I couldn’t nail down a precise identification with the few bones I had to work with. Without a scientific species name to use for this little dinosaur, I took to calling it ”Buster.” I also realized that Buster should make its way home to British Columbia, and arranged to have the fossils transferred to the Royal BC Museum, where they became part of the museum’s palaeontology collection.

Many years later, after finishing graduate school at the University of Alberta, I headed to Toronto to begin a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. David Evans at the Royal Ontario Museum. I had always wanted to find a way to get to the Sustut River and look for more of Buster’s skeleton. With David’s support I was able to secure funding from the National Geographic Society to lead an expedition to northern British Columbia in the summer of 2017. We didn’t find more of Buster’s skeleton, but we think we got pretty close to the spot where it was originally collected. We found part of an extinct turtle and more than 100 fossil plants. We were also able to collect data that showed that Buster lived about 67–68 million years ago.

Around the same time as I was planning the Sustut River expedition, David and I started to take a fresh look at Buster’s old bones. Could we figure out what specific kind of dinosaur was represented by these bits and pieces of skeleton? Using our combined knowledge and experience, we realized that Buster wasn’t a pachycephalosaur or parksosaurid like I had originally thought—it

was a leptoceratopsid. Leptoceratopsids are close cousins of horned dinosaurs like Triceratops. They had parrot-like beaks and knobs on their cheeks, but they didn’t have the nose or brow horns of their bigger cousins, and the frill at the back of the skull was much smaller.

Over the past few years I’ve travelled to many different museums to study leptoceratopsid skeletons, in order to figure out exactly what species of leptoceratopsid Buster might be. I visited the collections of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis in Indiana and the Museum of the Rockies in Montana, taking photographs, making sketches and notes about what I saw, and measuring everything I could with my trusty digital calipers. As I looked at more specimens, it became apparent that Buster didn’t match any of the species of leptoceratopsids that we already knew about—the proportions of the arm and toe bones were distinct. David and I could make the case that Buster was a new species and should be given a unique name.

British Columbia may not have as many dinosaur bones as our neighbour Alberta does, but we now have our very own unique species of dinosaur! And the

1. Dr. Arbour examines the bones of Ferrisaurus in the palaeontology collections at the Royal BC Museum. Photo courtesy of Brandy Yanchyk.

2. Ferrisaurus was a leptoceratopsid dinosaur, a sheep-sized, parrot-beaked relative of dinosaurs like Triceratops. Image courtesy of Raven Amos.

DINO TRAILS The Royal BC Museum’s palaeontology research program is featured in the newly released second season of the documentary series Dino Trails! Filmmaker Brandy Yanchyk travelled to significant fossil sites in western Canada, including the McAbee Fossil Beds and Six Peaks Dinosaur Tracksite in BC. Watch the entire series at tinyurl. com/ztzfmmj or catch them on the inflight entertainment system on your next WestJet flight!

search for BC dinosaurs doesn’t end with Ferrisaurus—in fact, this is just the beginning. Last summer I travelled to Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Provincial Park, an area that has rocks of the same age and type as those along the Sustut River, where Ferrisaurus was found. After a few days spent hiking around without finding anything too exciting, we found a spot that had several dinosaur bones in large boulders! The Royal BC Museum will return to the park this summer, hopefully coming home with even more fossils of the ancient inhabitants of northern British Columbia.

Exciting discoveries like Buster’s bones can be made by anyone enjoying the great outdoors of our amazing province. In BC, fossils found on public land are considered Crown property, and rare or unusual specimens should make their way to places like the Royal BC Museum where they can be cared for, studied and shared with the public. If you find an interesting fossil, contact the Heritage Branch’s Fossil

Help Find Buster’s Friends

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Management Office, the Royal BC Museum, or your local museum or university for more information.

See more photos, videos and 3D models of Ferrisaurus at rbcm.ca/ferrisaurus.

External funding for this research was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the National Geographic Society, L’Óreal-UNESCO for Women in Science, the Dinosaur Research Institute and BC Parks.

Field research sites are located on the traditional territories of the Gitxsan and Tahltan peoples, whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.

1. Dr. Arbour led a team of palaeontologists to the Sustut River during the summer of 2017 to search for more fossils. Left to right: Thomas Cullen, David Evans, Jade Simpson and Dr. Arbour.

2. Toe bones, including the claw, from the foot of Ferrisaurus.

We need your help to make palaeontology field work possible.

The work to find fossils, release them from their rocky tombs and examine them is time consuming and requires meticulous attention to detail.

The Royal BC Museum hopes to return to Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Provincial Park this summer to search for more dinosaurs (like Buster) and discover even more about the ancient inhabitants of northern British Columbia. By donating to this work, you can help Dr. Arbour find more BC dinosaurs.

“And the search for British Columbian dinosaurs doesn’t end with Ferrisaurus—in fact, this is just the beginning.” – Dr. Victoria Arbour

Did you know that only about 50 per cent of the Royal BC Museum’s budget comes from the Province? The rest is raised through admissions, memberships and donations. Please consider donating to new BC discoveries today at rbcm.ca/donate.