TRASKASAURA DECLARED A NEW SPECIES

A strange dinosaur fossil first found in 1988 along the Puntledge River, flowing from Comox Lake through Courtenay on Vancouver Island (first described in 2002 and declared the Provincial Fossil of BC in 2023), was just now identified as novel genus, unlike other elasmosaurids.

Imagine something like a penguin-whale hybrid but with the neck of a giraffe (only six of those long, unlike the image above) and with the head of a komodo dragon, or something. Maybe a turtle the size of a bus and missing its shell paired with a python. Something along these lines. That's Traskasaura sandrae. It's a real air-breathing, sea-dwelling dragon from the Late Cretaceous. It's wild.

With its curious pairing of distinct traits, unlike anything researchers had seen before, the fossil find stumped the experts. Only when pieces of more individuals of the same species were found nearby did the picture become clearer. In the latest paper, they tell us the species has a "strange mosaic of features." Along with its extremely long neck, it has a unique, narrow head with an abundance of very heavy, sharp teeth (something like that of a killer whale), likely making it a top predator in Earth's ancient oceans. It also has a highly unusual shoulder bone, unlike that found in any other sister species and bird-like swimming paddles, probably suited for very specialized hunting.

The name Traskasaura comes from the pair who found the first fossils, Mike Trask and his daughter Heather. Sadly Mike died only days ago, before publication of these new findings. Below is Trask sharing his discovery and the Courtenay and District Museum and Palaeontology Centre:

For an abundance of dino-related goodness check out the fabulous Fossil Huntress blog, by Heidi Henderson, found at: https://fossilhuntress.blogspot.com