I Discovered Dinosaur Bones!

I’ve always loved dinosaurs. In fact, when I grow up, I want to be a paleontologist. That’s a scientist who studies fossils of dinosaurs and other prehistoric living things. You could say I started my training early!

In July 2020, my dad and I went hiking at a place called Horseshoe Canyon, near where I live in Alberta, Canada. As I climbed up onto a small hill, I couldn’t believe what I had spotted. I yelled, “Dad,you need to get up here!”

There in the rock were four dinosaur fossils.

I wanted to dig out the bones and pick them up, but I knew I might damage them if I did. If the fossils are in a rock, you should leave them where they are and contact a museum.

That’s what we did. My dad and I took pictures of our discoveries and sent them to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, which isn’t far from the canyon. I was pretty excited when we got an email back from a paleontologist. He told us that one of the fossils was of a humerus, or arm bone, from a young hadrosaur. That’s a duck-billed dinosaur that lived in this area about 69 million years ago!

A team of paleontologists from the museum went to the site a few days later and started to carefully excavate the bones. Over the next few months, they found more than 30 others, all from the same hadrosaur. It was just incredible!

My dream is to one day find a bone from a dinosaur that no one has seen before. My advice to other kids is to get outdoors and explore as much as possible. You never know what you’ll discover!