Family’s rare ammonite to be exhibited at museum
The cold winter temperatures were no deterrent for amateur fossil hunters Jon Ganshorn, his six-year-old daughter Lily and the other members of the Dino Hunter Gang.
After uncovering a treasure trove of 75-million-year-old fossils scattered throughout the rocks on the shore of Lake Diefenbaker last summer, Jon planned to take a break over the winter. The kids, however, still wanted to get outside searching for fossils and Jon knew the winter would actually give them a bit of an advantage — which led to a major discovery set to take up residence at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.
“The water level lowers at Diefenbaker every winter,” Jon said. “So, this boulder in particular for most of the season is sitting under 15 to 20 feet of water, so I wanted to get out and explore during the winter months because it exposes all this other stuff we wouldn’t otherwise be able to explore.”
Jon and Lily came across the boulder at the end of a long, fruitless day of fossil hunting. Half covered in ice and massive in size, it took around 10 minutes of hammering — Jon with his sledge hammer and Lily filling in with her own much smaller hammer while he took a few rest breaks — until they managed to break off a chunk.
For the next hour they pulled nearly 50 clam-like inoceramid fossils out of the boulder.
Figuring they had gotten pretty lucky — and with the remainder of the boulder frozen solidly to the ground — the pair decided to call it a day even though they could see it hadn’t been emptied of its fossils quite yet.
Two weeks later they returned. After some delicate chipping, Jon saw a spiralled shell that was very different from the other fossils and he immediately knew they had found something special. Paleontologists at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum were quick to agree.
“I think my heart skipped a beat. I was so excited ... I was a lot more excited than Lily. She was just like, ‘Oh that’s cool we found another awesome fossil, lets go show Grandma,’ ” he said, laughing.
But after sending a picture to the museum, his hunch they had found something special was confirmed. Jon was quickly put in touch with Ryan McKellar, the museum’s curator of invertebrate paleontology, and was asked “very politely” to donate the fossil.
It was a bittersweet moment for Jon, who was excited about the find, but well aware the Heritage Property Act would require it to be turned over.
The fossil turned out to be a rare, and fully intact, eutrephoceras ammonite — an especially uncommon find in Saskatchewan.
“It’s one of those great examples of the public making a really meaningful contribution,” McKellar said. “Eutrephoceras is a very uncommon specimen. There are only about 12 of them in the museum collections and the last one to come in was in 1963.”
Although a lot of the finds in the museum’s collections are brought in by enthusiasts such as Jon and Lily, McKellar said if you find something, the best idea is to note its location, leave it on the ground and contact the museum for guidance.
“Our big fear with this sort of stuff is that someone picks up the snout of a marine reptile, or something like that, and the remainder of it stays out in the field never to be discovered,” he said.
Though they didn’t get to keep the fossil, Jon and Lily didn’t exactly walk away from the experience empty-handed. McKellar invited them and the rest of the Dino Hunter Gang down to Regina for a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum. He showed the kids what to keep an eye out for while out on their next fossil hunt and, at the end of the tour, every kid was gifted a piece of amber.
McKellar also noted Jon Ganshorn’s name will be permanently attached to the fossil’s specimen information.
With one big find already under their belt, Jon said the Dino Hunter Gang has no plans to start slowing down anytime soon. They are already planning expeditions to the more remote areas of the lake and have finished the modifications on their ATV, which will not only pull a trailer but also make the treks more accessible to one of the newest and most enthusiastic members of the group, Dylan, who has cystic fibrosis.
“We’ve only covered a few kilometres of beach and we found something this special right out in the open,” Jon said. “But we still have a lot of beach left to search.”