Trove of dinosaur fossils found high in B.C. mountains

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-researchers-fossil-trove-1.7325926

by curmudgeon22 • 2 years ago

96 64 2 years ago

blueflow2• 2 years ago

TIL: "B.C" stands for British Columbia, which despite the name, is neither part of Britain nor near Columbia, but in Canada.

cryptoegorophy• 2 years ago

They did add “Beautiful” before British Columbia on the license plates, so that there is at least one word that gives the best description of the province.

lostemptations52• 2 years ago

"Sure! I'll call you next week!" -- never to be heard from again.

Everyone seems very unhappy there socially.

arresin• 2 years ago

Was it represented as an acronym on the license plates?

arcticbull• 2 years ago

It was a British Crown Colony, hence the British — and the Columbia part is a reference to the [edit] Columbia River Basin which I believe was part of the territory before it ended up in Washington. You may be thinking of Colombia.

[edit] just to drive home the British part the Union Jack is still an official, ceremonial flag of Canada.

themadturk• 2 years ago

If I remember right, the Columbia River has its source in British Columbia.

PeterHolzwarth• 2 years ago

"Columbia" was a word used to refer to the New World. It's use shifted over time (sometimes just the tropics, sometimes both continents, sometimes just America, etc).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(personification)

thangalin• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Langley#History

[Fort Langley] dates from a time when the boundary between British and American possession of the trans-mountain west, known as the Columbia District had not yet been decided.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_District#Hudson's_Bay...

With the creation of the Crown Colony on the British mainland north of the then-Washington Territory in 1858, Queen Victoria chose to use Columbia District as the basis for the name Colony of British Columbia, i.e. the remaining British portion of the former Columbia District.

bee_rider• 2 years ago

The dinosaur is from B.C. geographically, and from extremely B.C. temporally.

seabrookmx4• 2 years ago

We typically don't use the periods, and abbreviate it like any other Canadian province or US state like BC, AB, WA, NY etc.

Are you American? I'm surprised to hear some people don't know we exist!

blueflow2• 2 years ago

I'm from Saxony.

freeslave• 2 years ago

These days B.C. seems to be preferred due to the colonial connotations of "British Columbia".

https://tnc.news/2024/02/21/stop-saying-british-columbians/

dkga• 2 years ago

It's really interesting to have so many fossils close to the surface, especially in an area with a considerable amount of seismic activity. I always thought earthquakes & the such would serve to disperse fossils rather than pool so many together.

dredmorbius2• 2 years ago

Mountains tend to erode more quickly than lowland areas, for fairly obvious reasons.

Somewhat related: the current peaks of the Appalachian mountains are the former valleys of the original range. Presumably of more consolidated material.

alex_young• 2 years ago

  She said finding dinosaur fossils at a high elevation — in this case, 2,000 metres above sea level — is unusual because it means they would have been living there.

No indication of geological age, but presumably more than 65mya, so maybe it wasn’t that elevation when they were left there?

Tagbert2• 2 years ago

The Cascade Range did not exist during the Cretaceous era. Those mountains arose through subduction and volcanism starting around 37 Mya.

Even if there were mountains around, 2K meters is not that high. I used to live in a town at 2500 meters elevation in Colorado.

jeff_carr• 2 years ago

Black rock around white bone could be volcanic ash or mud buried the bones, then pushed down into the mantle just right, heated it under lots of pressure and cooked it all into rock like a kiln?

cgh• 2 years ago

I might be misinterpreting your comment, but the mountains of Spatzizi and BC in general are not part of the Cascades, other than a small area near the border around Chilliwack.

birriel• 2 years ago

I'm not a geologist, but 2000 m in 37 million years is ~0.05 millimeters per year. Is that about the right rate of growth for mountains formed through subduction and volcanism?

tracerbulletx• 2 years ago

Yeah that whole paragraph is nonsensical...

sethammons• 2 years ago

"It probably didn't look a lot different than it does today, except the mountains would have been even taller," she said.

Is that true? I would expect upheaval more than erosion there.

mmooss• 2 years ago

FTFA: "Arbour estimates the fossils are 66 to 68 million years old."

baxtr• 2 years ago

"It probably didn't look a lot different than it does today, except the mountains would have been even taller," she said.

ZunarJ5• 2 years ago

Most fossils we know about come from wetland and marine environments. It's extremely rare to find things for mountains and jungles. Fossils require quick deposition and the right conditions... Exciting stuff.

throwaway918299• 2 years ago

My grandfather told me about this yesterday. He said something along the lines that they needed helicopters to get where they are to retrieve them.

To which I said: this is the most important discovery about dinosaurs, who would’ve thought they had helicopters!

Didn’t quite land like I had hoped. My transition to Full Dad is complete.

nativeit3• 2 years ago

I hereby award you three knee-slaps and a yuk-yuk. Congratulations!

xyproto• 2 years ago

What were they smoking?.

robofanatic• 2 years ago

Potosaurus?

edm0nd• 2 years ago

smoking on that dinosaur pack

dukeofdoom• 2 years ago

Does anyone know what it might be? When I was a child I would go fishing in this one spot. And somehow come across or split one of the stones. And inside was a worm like imprint, and I later split a few stones and found more. This was close to Toronto.

Mabusto• 2 years ago

Of course they were high, it's British Columbia.

Trove of dinosaur fossils found high in B.C. mountains

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