Up close with a sea monster… in Manitoba
ne cloudy a ernoon early this past May found us driving across the rich farmlands of southern Manitoba to meet Bruce. De nitely the most imposing Bruce I’ve ever run across, being as he’s about 13 metres (43 feet) long and has a huge skull and jaw. Altogether not the best-looking guy and a bit scary, to be frank. But then, what should I expect from a mosasaur – a humongous marine reptile from prehistoric times. Easy to see why he and his fellow mosasaurs were the most feared animals of the seas some 80 or so million years ago, and that’s saying something, given the saltwater ocean he hails from was home to turtles the size of cars and toothed birds and aquatic lizards longer than a bus. I met him at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, Manitoba, a pretty little city 120 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg. Agriculture and several light industries are central to the economy here, but the CFDC – home to the largest collection of marine vertebrate fossils in Canada – has done its bit to put Morden on the map. And no doubt Bruce, the largest mosasaur in the country, has helped a lot in that department.
So what’s with sea creatures in Manitoba? Well, millions of years ago this landlocked prairie province lay in the heart of an enormous body of water called the Western Interior Seaway. at meant many kinds of marine reptiles swam alongside the dinosaurs.
(Note: marine reptiles are not considered dinosaurs. e limbs on marine reptiles evolved into ippers while dinosaurs are land reptiles with standing upright limbs from the body.)
Flash forward eons and eons to the summer of 1972 when word spread from miners working for Pembina Mountain Clays Incorporated that fossils were found in the nearby Pembina Hills. Morden residents Henry Isaak and Don Bell checked out the story. Finding it to be true, Isaak soon a er became curator of the Morden and District Museum (later re-named the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre), which had opened the previous year in the old post o ce building. Isaak acquired government grants to hire summer students, and with their help and that of the mining company and CAT operator Roy Friesen, 30 mosasaur and 20 plesiosaur (another group of marine reptiles) specimens were excavated. Bruce was discovered north of ornhill, Manitoba in 1974. His huge skeleton took almost two full eld seasons to excavate. Originally the fossil nds were stored in the basement two oors down from the museum. However, the collection outgrew its quarters as more and more fossils were discovered each year with the help of professionals and volunteers from across the country. So in 1979 the museum moved to its present location in the Morden Access Event Centre (which is also home to the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame Museum), although the paleontological displays were not completed until 1982. Located in the lower reaches of the event centre, the museum is well-lit with well-presented displays accompanied by concise explanations. Galleries include a new interactive Nintendo Wii exhibit, a mosasaur skull, bird (hesperonis) and sh fossils and recent fossil nds. ere’s also a diorama of a scene from a sea during the Cretaceous Period, the time from whence Bruce and his contemporaries emerged. Wanna-be palaeontologists take note of the exhibit showing a palaeontologist working in the eld. e 28 or so items on display are the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of the museum’s entire collection of more than 1,000 pieces, museum administrator Trevor Fehr says. e museum oversees 30 active dig sites along the Manitoba Escarpment; new nds are studied and researched, so it’s awhile before most of them make it to the display cases. Each year from May to early October the CDFC runs Fossil Dig Adventure Tours for children, families and earth science enthusiasts of any age. For children there’s also Dino Day Camp and school visits that include searching for fossils at a dig site. On average the CFDC sees 15,000 visitors a year. Attendance keeps increasing – “we hope to have 16,000 this year,” Fehr says. Most are from Manitoba – about 80 per cent from Winnipeg – with some visitors from abroad, including the UK and a lot from Asia.
As for the signi cance of the CFDC to Morden, Chaley Voth, communications co-ordinator for e City of Morden, says a recent study of visitors to the museum showed that for the vast majority the museum was the reason for coming to Morden. Considering the CFDC’s annual attendance, “the signi cance is quite high and is growing.” In recent years the CFDC aspired to build a new museum to the west of Morden, along with a new eld station along the Manitoba Escarpment. Fehr says that push is on hold for now while the board of directors looks further into matters such as capital and operating costs of a separate building.