Mosasaur fossil found south of Lethbridge in June 2019 (Supplied by Royal Tyrrell Museum)

By David Opinko

Fossil of Jurassic World’s “sea monster” found south of Lethbridge

Jun 25, 2019 | 12:33 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – When crews with the Enchanted Mine were looking for ammonite on June 12th, they found something entirely different, the fossil of a Mosasaur.

When they made the discovery, they immediately gave Dan Spivak, the Head of the Resource Management Program at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, a call.

It took about a week for Spivak and his personnel to make the trek to an area along the Old Man River, extract the fossil, and bring it back to their lab.

“It’s a type of marine reptile that lived in the shallow, warm sea that covered much of Alberta about 72-million years ago.”

Although there are no species alive today that are the direct descendents of the Mosasaur, Spivak believes that varanidae reptiles like the Komodo dragon could be distant relatives.

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He says he is particularly excited about this find because it appears as though parts of the animal’s head is still intact. This allows researchers to look more closely into how it lived, what it ate, and what other species it might be related to.

If the name Mosasaur sounds familiar, that is because the Jurassic World blockbuster movie from 2015 featured it prominently.

It was not only used for a feeding demonstration in front of an excited crowd, but also helped in defeating the genetically-altered indominus rex.

Mosasaur featured in the Jurassic World movie. (Supplied by Universal Studios)

“The Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies have a habit of making their dinosaurs really big compared to how they would have been in real life. The one in the movie was significantly bigger than a Mosasaur would have been in real life when it was alive. The one we found, if intact and in life, would have been somewhere in the neighbourhood of about seven meters long.”

Workers at the Royal Tyrrell Museum are still working to prepare the sample for testing.

It will be available for other paleontologists to study, but depending on the significance of the sample and how well it was preserved, it could be put on display for anyone to view.

A Mosasaur fossil on display at Royal Tyrrell Museum. (Supplied by Royal Tyrrell Museum)

Tylosaurus, an animal similar to the Mosasaur. (Supplied by Royal Tyrrell Museum)