A high school teacher walking her dog on the shores of Prince Edward Island, Canada, discovered fossilized remains of an unknown animal that lived on Earth 300 million years ago – about 50 million years before the dinosaurs.
Lisa St. Coeur Cormier, 36, spotted something sticking out of the reddish dirt and on closer inspection she realized it was a rib cage – and then she saw the attachment and skull.
The fossil has not yet been identified, but John Calder, a geologist and paleontologist working on the case, suspects it might be a species of lizard or a close relative.
Calder told CBC that discoveries like this come every “50 or 100 years” and this “could be a unique fossil in the tree of life … the evolution of amphibians, reptiles, mammals for us,” he continued.
High school teacher Lisa St. Coeur Cormier, 36, spotted something sticking out of the reddish earth, and on closer inspection she realized it was a rib cage — and then she saw the attached skull. The discovery was made in eastern Canada
Dinosaurs are believed to have lived around 245 million years ago and then died out 66 million years ago.
The creatures that previously roamed the earth were mostly sharks, bony fish, arthropods, amphibians, reptiles, and synapsids.
The fossil found on the beach is small, more than 60 cm long, but still contains incredible details that allowed researchers to determine that it lived long before dinosaurs.
“This is early in the evolution of reptiles from amphibians, and they’re branching out,” Calder told CBC.
The fossil has not yet been identified, but John Calder, a geologist and paleontologist working on the case, suspects it might be a species of lizard or a close relative
The fossil is small, measuring just over two feet, but still contains incredible detail. Shown are the creature’s ribs
“And so it becomes a real mystery. It’ll probably take a good year to figure out the identity of this thing.
Very few fossils from before the dinosaurs have been discovered, so what’s on the beach could end up being an entirely new species.
Cormier is excited about this rare discovery as it is her chance to make a mark in the history of science.
Researchers carefully removed the fossil from the dirt and will conduct a test to identify the animal
Cormier (right) said she was excited about this rare discovery as it was her chance to make a mark in the history of science.
“To think I’ve found something that could be 300 million years old is incredible,” she said.
“I think it will be a one-off [thing]but I will continue my walks and keep looking for sea glass and maybe I will find something else.”
Another set of fossilized ribs was found in someone’s backyard in Portugal, but the remains were much larger and belonged to a dinosaur.
After examining the skeleton, scientists determined that it belonged to an 82-foot brachiosaurus that lived 160 to 100 million years ago.
Another set of fossilized ribs was found in someone’s backyard in Portugal, but the remains were much larger and belonged to a dinosaur. After examining the skeleton, scientists determined that it belonged to an 82-foot brachiosaurus that lived 160 to 100 million years ago
The fossils were discovered in 2017, but it wasn’t until earlier this month that the Portuguese and Spanish paleontologists announced what they had found — a sauropod dinosaur about 39 feet tall and 82 feet long.
So far, elements of the axial skeleton have been uncovered, including vertebrae and ribs, suggesting it was a brachiosaurid.
The Brachiosauridae group lived from the Upper Jurassic to the Lower Cretaceous.
Unlike other sauropods, they have longer front legs than their hind legs, resulting in a longer torso and proportionally shorter tail.
Elisabete Malafaia, a researcher from the University of Lisbon, said: “It is not common to find all of an animal’s ribs like this, let alone in this position, while retaining their original anatomical position.
“This type of preservation is relatively uncommon in the fossil record of dinosaurs, particularly sauropods, from the Upper Portuguese Jurassic.”
