Canada's oldest dinosaur bones revealed. Here's where

Saturday, November 14, 2015, 4:07 PM - Massive waves brought on by a storm surge several weeks ago in the Bay of Fundy,  have uncovered dinosaur fossils dating back 200 million years ago to the Triassic and early Jurassic era.

Staff from the Fundy Geological Museum found the fossils buried in red sandstone on the northern shore of Nova Scotia and say they likely belonged to the hip or shoulder of a prosauropod dinosaur.

If it hadn't been for the museum's close proximity to cliffs in the town of Parrsboro, the bones would have likely eroded within a month or two, noted Tim Fedak, the director and curator for the museum. Staff check the cliffs for freshly uncovered fossils on a regular basis.

"The Bay of Fundy is producing the world's highest tides and eroding these cliffs very quickly," Fedak told CBC. "Our museum is here and we're down at the beach very frequently. We can see the bones immediately."

The pink sandstone made it easy for the mostly-white bones to spot.

Researchers discovered similar bones in the same location in 1997 and 1998, including a femur, back bone and leg bones. The area is popular for containing bones of many dinosaurs in which survived a mass extinction around 200 million years ago when the giant continent Pangaea broke a part into the continents we know today, Fedak told CBC.

As the tectonic plates shifted, the area what is now known as the Bay of Fundy sank. Sand covered the dinosaurs and helped to protect them, which are now in red cliffs that stretch 100-metres high.

As the Bay of Fundy continues to erode, the museum team expects to find more bones in the future.

"These are Canada's oldest dinosaurs. They basically start the dawn of the dinosaurs."

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Meanwhile, Bruce, a mosasaur on display at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, Manitoba, has secured a spot in 2016's Guinness World Records book.

The 13-metre long marine reptile is the longest publicly exhibited mosasaur on Earth.

"It was an amazing honour," executive director Peter Cantelon, told The Canadian press. "Knowing that millions of people all over the world are going to read about us, Morden, Manitoba and Canada makes us incredibly proud."

Only 4,000 make the book's cut out of over 65,000 records submitted each year.

Source: CBC | The Canadian Press