It’s a dinosaur that roamed Alberta’s badlands more than 70 million years ago, sporting a big, bumpy, bony head the size of a baby elephant.
On Wednesday, paleontologists near Grande Prairie pulled its 272-kilogram skull from the ground.
They call it Big Sam.
The adult Pachyrhinosaurus is the second plant-eating dinosaur to be unearthed a dense bonebed belonging to a herd that died together on the edge of a valley that now sits 450 kilometers northwest of Edmonton.
“We have hundreds of juvenile bones in the bonebed, so we know that there are many babies and some adults among all of the big adults,” said Emily Bamforth, a paleontologist with the nearby Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum.
She described the horned Pachyrhinosaurus as the smaller, older cousin of the triceratops.
This species of dinosaur is endemic to the Grande Prairie area, found nowhere else in the world.
The head alone is about the size of a baby elephant.
The bonebed was first discovered by a high school teacher about 50 years ago.
It took a decade to get anyone from southern Alberta to take a look.
When paleontologists eventually got to the site, they learned it’s one of the densest dinosaur bonebeds in North America, containing about 100 to 300 bones per square meter.
Sixteen years ago, they discovered a large skull of an approximately 30-year-old Pachyrhinosaurus, which is now at the museum.
About a year ago, they found the second adult, Big Sam.
Bamforth said the extraction was difficult because Big Sam was intertwined in a cluster of about 300 other bones.
The skull was found upside down but was well preserved. The excavation process involved putting plaster on the skull and wooden planks around it for stability.
From there, it was lifted out carefully with a crane and shipped to the museum for study.
“I have extracted skulls in the past. This is probably the biggest one I’ve ever done though,” said Bamforth.
“It’s pretty exciting.”
