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The hunt for marine reptile fossils on western Ellesmere Island

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2009

Randall J. Osczevski
Randall J. Osczevski
Affiliation:
Protective Sciences Division, Defence Research Establishment Ottawa, Ottawa, OntarioCanada, K1A 0Z4
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Abstract

An expedition of the Canada/China Dinosaur Project collected several large marine-reptile fossils on western Ellesmere Island in the summer of 1989. They were led to the area by a 1939 report that a large fossil skeleton had been seen north of Trold Fiord by a member of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police patrol in 1926. This paper examines the events of the original discovery and an unsuccessful attempt by David Haig-Thomas to locate the fossils in 1937–38. Haig-Thomas had visited the area in 1935 as a member of the Oxford University Ellesmere Land Expedition. His party had reached a fiord variously identified as Trold Fiord or Vendomc Fiord, but a study of his probable route suggests that it was neither. This inaccurate identification misled Haig-Thomas' later search. In 1989, pieces of fossil bone from a large marine reptile were collected at a site compatible with the 1939 description.

Type
Articles
Information
Polar Record , Volume 28 , Issue 165 , April 1992 , pp. 105 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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