66-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton found in Saskatchewan

Research confirms that a partial skeleton discovered in Saskatchewan is a new species of plant-eating dinosaur, the provincial government announced Monday.

The new species has been named Thescelosaurus assiniboiensis, after Saskatchewan’s historic District of Assiniboia in which it was found.

The 66-million-year-old specimen was collected from the Frenchman River Valley near Eastend, Sask., in 1968 by an employee of the Saskatchewan Museum of Natural History, which is now the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.

Nearly 40 years after it was collected, the specimen was studied and identified as a new species as part of a Masters thesis by a student at the University of Calgary and a supervisor and co-author. The new species is described in the December edition of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Although similar species have been found south of the border, Thescelosaurus assiniboiensis has a number of unique traits that distinguish it from its relatives. It lived alongside Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops at the very end of the age of dinosaurs and is notable for its small size.

The dinosaur’s partial skeleton can be seen at the T.rex Discovery Centre in Eastend (www.trexcentre.ca) and an exact cast is on display at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina (www.royalsaskmuseum.ca).