The clues were admittedly “scrappy” but a paleontologist says there's evidence dinosaurs walked the foothills near Sundre and Bottrell as early as 70 million years ago.
"When people think of dinosaurs being found in Alberta, they usually think of places like (Dinosaur Provincial Park) or the Red Deer River around Drumheller and all of those deposits out that way are coastal floodplain deposits,” said Jordan Mallon, a paleontologist for the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.
During a recent expedition in the region, Mallon's team confirmed that duckbilled dinosaurs, horned dinosaurs, tyrannosaurs, lizards, turtles and some mammals lived in the upland foothills during the last 15 million years of the Cretaceous Period.
However, his group did not find enough material to comment on their species and population – they mostly dug up plant and marine fossils.
“The general flavour isn't too dissimilar to what you get in those coastal environments but it's still early going to be able to say about the relative abundance,” he said.
During June 10 to 12, Mallon led a small expedition in the foothills, trying to discover what kind of animals used to live there and also sampling the site for future exploration.
Mallon, who completed his PhD at the University of Calgary, said the trip was mostly spent driving around looking for road and river cuts, which point to potential fossil deposits.
Geological maps, which indicate the age of rocks, are also used in the hunt.
But searching for fossils still relies on the grunt work of the researcher, picking and examining the rock by hand.
“There's really no way of knowing until you drive up to that rock, take out maybe your hand lens or pick a piece out with your rock pick and see for yourself whether or not that actually contains a fossil or not,” he said.
“It's still very much low tech as far as having to be on the ground and looking with the naked eye.”
The process in this part of the province can involve driving around, searching endlessly and it's one that can be frustrating.
“It's exasperating at times for sure, especially in those foothills. You can go to (Dinosaur Provincial Park) and you don't have to look for longer than two minutes and you can pick up a dinosaur bone,” he said.
Mallon said researchers cannot expect to visit the foothills and uncover large yields. That's why he might return.
In the meantime, he is hoping to hear from people who know of potential fossil locations.
“If anyone out there knows of any good dinosaur material coming out on their land, I would love to be in touch with them so I could maybe go out to the site and visit it,” he said.
“It's going to be leads like that, that I'm going to rely on in order to get a better understanding (of) what the biodiversity was like out in the foothills.”
