By justin Parohl - CJXX Radio - Pattison Broadcasting Grande Prairie with files from The Canadian Press

Scary New Dinosaur Discovered Near Grande Prairie

Mar 17, 2016 | 7:50 AM

GRANDE PRAIRIE:  A new species of dinosaur has been uncovered at the Pipestone Creek bonebed, about 20-kilometres south-west of Grande Prairie.

Assistant Curator at the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum Derek Larson says the bones of the Boreonykus were actually uncovered through a number of excavations in the 1980’s.

“It was a small meat eating dinosaur, probably around the size of a small dog. It would have looked sort of like a Velociraptor from Jurassic Park.”

Larson says there is still plenty to learn about the Boreonykus.

“It’s not a full complete skeleton, we just have a small handful of bones and some teeth. It’s rather hard to say exactly what it looked like, but because we have much better preserved relatives of it we know that it was this type of dinosaur.”

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According to Larson, the discovery is significant because before this there were no known meat eating dinosaurs in the area.

The bones of the dog-sized Boreonykus were found among thousands of other dinosaur bones by Australian paleontologist Phil Bell.

He says the dinosaur would have been a savage predator about two metres long and tall as a dog, with large “killing claws” on its hands and feet.

Bell says the dinosaur was a raptor and that its skin was likely feathered to keep it warm in the cold, dark winters of north Canada.