A routine dig in northeastern North Dakota may have unearthed an entirely new species of ancient marine reptile that roamed underwater while dinosaurs walked the earth.
Paleontologists with the North Dakota Geological Survey are inching closer to classifying rare skull bones discovered last month during a public dig in the the Pembina Gorge, about 100 miles northwest of Grand Forks. The bones were found in rock formed about 80 million years ago—back when this part of North Dakota was covered in shallow ocean.
Paleontologist Clint Boyd found the bones while digging into rock his team had already fully excavated, or so they thought, the previous summer.
“As I was brushing the back wall of the quarry where the other bones had come from, a little bit of that back wall caved and this bone fell right into my lap,” Boyd said. “We could tell right away as soon as we pulled it out that it was not the same animal we’ve seen elsewhere in the state. The question became what type it could be.”
Boyd’s team is confident the bones belong to a mosasaur, a giant marine reptile known to exist in North Dakota during the dinosaur age. But they do not resemble the bones of the one species of mosasaur previously identified in the state, he said.
The difference was obvious after comparing the animal’s quadrate, an important jaw bone that varies from species to species, with that of the state’s previously known mosasaur, Boyd said.read more
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