300-million year old fossil uncovered by beach-going family
Posted Aug 16, 2012 03:23:12 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Patrick Keating was simply walking the family dog, Kitty, on the shore in the Tatamagouche area, when among the rocks, shells and other beachy debris, he found something rather special.
It turns out he and Kitty had stumbled upon what would later be identified as the fossilized remains of a sail-back reptile.
But, not really knowing what it was, Patrick brought it back to the family cottage and left it on the kitchen counter.
Keating’s wife Susie and their son went back to the beach a week later, where she says they made another shocking discovery.
“I picked up a rock, and I jokingly said to my son, ‘this is the head.’ And it was! It was the head! And then he found the rib cage, and then we looked up on the cliff, and there was an imprint of where it actually fallen right out and bones were still in the bank,” she says.
Patrick gave the remains to his brother Peter, who, with his children, brought the rock reptile into The Museum of Natural History to be identified. The entire Keating family has been commended by The Museum of Nova Scotia for bringing the fossils in, and in return, have involved the younger members of the family in the excavation of the site. If the remains are in fact, a new species of reptile, it could be named after the Keating family.
Until then, the remains have been nicknamed Superstar by the geological team. Superstar is believed to be almost 300-million years old, having lived during the late Carboniferous or early Permian period.
Curator of Geology at The Nova Scotia Museum, Deborah Skilliter, says they have 40 per cent of Superstar’s remains and it was probably a baby when it died.
“We think this is baby. Probably two and a half to three feet in length including tip to tail and maybe around 30 possibly 40 pounds. But some of these guys could grow up to 4.7 meters in length and some of them were up to 300 pounds,” she says
Superstar is a mammal-like reptile, which ate meat, and had a giant fan on it’s back to regulate the cold-blooded reptiles body temperature. From what the team has seen, Skilliter says they believe it could potentially be a new species of sail-back.
” There are some really unique features on this critter. It has something called a ‘sclerotic ring’ which is a ring of bony support inside the eye socket, and there is only a couple of sail-back reptiles that have that. So we need to do more preparation, reveal more of the bone.”
The remains were found in what is now a fossilized river bed and the team has also uncovered one of five known prehistoric dragon fly wings found in the province along with other fossilized vegetation.
Superstar is on display The Museum of Natural History for the next two weeks. Then the team will chip away at the rock surrounding the fossil to reveal more details about what kind of reptile it is, what its life was like, and discover for more information about Nova Scotia’s prehistoric past.
