Mystery of Pachyrhinosaurus Mass Grave in Canada

Hidden under the slopes of a lush forest in Alberta in Canada is a serious mass on a monumental scale.

Thousands of dinosaurs were buried here, killed in a moment a day of total devastation.

Now, a group of paleontologists has come to Pipepestone Creek – appropriately nicknamed the “Death River” – to help resolve an enigma aged 72 million years: how are they?

Try to determine exactly what happened here begins with the heavy strike from a hammer.

A brute force is necessary to open the thick layer of rock which covers what Professor Emily Bamforth, who directs the excavation, describes as “Palaeo Gold”.

While his team begins the most delicate work to eliminate the layers of dirt and dust, a jumble of fossilized bones is slowly starting to emerge.

“This big drop of bones there, we think, part of a hip,” says Professor Bamforth, looked at by his dog Aster – whose work today is to approach if she spots nearby bears.

“Then we have all these long and lean bones. They are all ribs.

BBC News came to Pipepestone Creek to attend the scale of this prehistoric cemetery and see how researchers bring together the clues.

Thousands of fossils have been collected on the site and constantly generate new discoveries.

The bones all belong to a dinosaur called Pachyrhinosaurus. The species and excavation of Professor Bamforth appear in a new historical series of the BBC – walks with dinosaurs – which uses visual effects and science to give life to this prehistoric world.

These animals, who lived at the end of the Cretaceous, were a parent of the triceratops. Measuring about five meters long and weighing two tonnes, the Forest beasts had big headsAdorned with a distinctive bone steering wheel and three horns. Their decisive feature was a big bump on the nose called a boss.

DIG's season has just started and lasts each year until the fall. The fossils in the small plot of land on which the team works is incredibly well wrapped; Professor Bamforth estimates that there are up to 300 bones in each square meter.

So far, his team has searched an area the size of a tennis court, but the bone bed extends over a kilometer in the hill.

“It's the jaw in terms of density,” she tells us.

“In our opinion, this is one of the largest bone beds in North America.

“More than half of the known species of dinosaurs in the world are described from a single specimen. We have thousands of pachyrhinosaurus here.”

Paleontologists believe that dinosaurs migrate together in a colossal herd over hundreds of kilometers from the south – where they had spent the winter – north for the summer.

The area, which had a much warmer climate than it does today, would have been covered with rich vegetation, offering abundant food for this huge group of plant -eaten animals.

“This is a single community of a single species of an instantaneous animal in time, and it is a huge sample. This almost never happens in the fossil file,” said Professor Bamforth.

And this northwest plot of Alberta was not only at Pachyrhinosaurus. Even greater dinosaurs traveled this land, and studying them is essential to try to understand this old ecosystem.

Two hours on the way, we reach the Deadfall hills. Getting there involves a hike through a dense forest, a paddling pool – or a doggy -storm in the case of Aster – through a quick river and climbing on slippery rocks.

No excavation is required here; The super-valve bones are next to the shore, washed with the rock and cleaned by the flowing water, just waiting to be picked up.

A huge vertebra is quickly spotted, just like pieces of ribs and teeth scattered through the mud.

Paleontologist Jackson Sweder is particularly interested in what looks like a piece of dinosaur skull. “Most of what we find here is a duck beak dinosaur called Edmontosaurus. If it is a skull bone, it is a dinosaur that is large – probably 30 feet (10 m) long,” he said.

Edmontosaurus, another herbivore, has traveled forests like the Pachyrhinosaurus – and helps paleontologists to build an image of this old land.

Sweder is the director of the collection at the Philip J Currie Dinosaur Museum of Grande Prairie nearby, where the bones of these two giants are taken to be cleaned and analyzed. He is currently working on a huge skull of Pachyrhinosaurus which is about 1.5 m long and was nicknamed “Big Sam”.

He points to where the three horns should be at the top of the steering wheel, but the middle of the middle is missing. “All the skulls that are decently complete have a peak there,” he said. “But her pretty little unicorn peak does not seem to be there.”

Over the years, working on the extraordinary site, the museum team has collected 8,000 dinosaur bones and laboratory areas are covered with fossils; There are pachyrhinosaurus bones of all sizes, from young to old.

Having equipment of so many animals allows researchers to find out about the biology of dinosaurs, to answer questions about the growth of the species and the composition of the community. They can also look at individual variations, to see how a Pachyrhinosaurus could stand out from the herd – as can be the case with Big Sam and its missing tip.

All this detailed research, in the museum and on the two sites, help the team answer the vital question: how are so many animals from Pipepestone Creek dead at the same time?

“We believe that it was a herd on a seasonal migration which has been tangled in a catastrophic event which actually destroyed, if not the entire flock, then a good proportion,” said Professor Bamforth.

All the evidence suggests that this catastrophic event was a sudden flood – perhaps a storm on the mountains which sent an unstoppable torrent of water to the herd, tearing the trees of their roots and rock changes.

Professor Bamforth says that the Pachyrhinosaurus would not have had the opportunity. “These animals are not able to move very quickly because of their number, and they are very heavy – and really not very good for swimming.”

The rocks found on the site show the whirlwinds of fast flow water sediment that is triggered. It is as if destruction was frozen in time as a wave in stone.

But this nightmare day for dinosaurs is now a dream for paleontologists.

“We know, each time we come here, it is guaranteed 100%, we will find bones. And each year, we discover something new on the species,” said Professor Bamforth.

“This is why we always come back, because we still find new things.”

While the team packs their tools ready to come back another day, they know that there is a lot of work in advance. They just scratched the surface of what is here – and there are many more prehistoric secrets that are only waiting to be revealed.

The new series of walking with dinosaurs begins on Sunday May 25 at 6:25 pm BST on BBC One, with all the episodes available on BBC Iplayer.