HUGE MARINE REPTILE FOSSIL FOUND AT LAKE DIEFENBAKER

Released on July 18, 1995

The Royal Saskatachewan Museum today announced that a huge 73 million
year old tylosaur was recently excavated near Herbert Ferry on Lake
Diefenbaker.

This specimen is the first tylosaur to be found in Saskatchewan. The
skull measures more than four feet (1.2 metres) in length, and the entire
animal might have been 40 feet (12 metres) long.

Tylosaurs were lizard-like reptiles that swam in shallow seas in the Late
Age of Dinosaurs. They had small flippers but large jaws, teeth and
vertebrae.

"This is the youngest tylosaur fossil found and extends the record of
tylosaurs several million years later than previously thought. It is by
far the most northerly record of tylosaurs," said Dr. John Storer,
Provincial Paleontologist at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.

Tylosaurs lived in the Bearpaw Sea, an inland waterway that stretched
from western Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

Many people assisted Museum staff in the dig including landowner Orlando
Martens, the Siemens family of Rush Lake, Oliver Johnson of Outlook, who
originally discovered the fossil in 1993, and volunteers from the Royal
Saskatchewan Museum. Excavators removed up to 17 feet (five metres) of
overburden to reveal the fossil.

The fossil is being prepared at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina.
This involves removing rock from the bone and repairing and strengthening
any damaged bone. A display featuring the Tylosaur can be seen at the
Museum throughout the summer.

The tylosaur is the latest in a series of fossil finds for the
Museum that includes a Tyrannosaurus Rex near Eastend, a Teleorhinus
crocodile near the Pasquia Hills, and a long-necked plesiosaur near
Pontieux.

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For more information contact:

Maureen Boyle
Municipal Government
Regina
Phone: (306) 787-5959