Manitoba is not particularly well known for its fossils because it does not produce any dinosaurs. Popular museums in the province of Alberta boast massive skeletons of dinosaurs like Albertosaurus and Pachyrhinosaurus. The small Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, Manitoba, instead displays many marine fossils, which despite their scientific significance, draw far fewer visitors than a massive Tyrannosaurus. The reason for Manitoba’s aquatic bounty is because in the Late Cretaceous, Manitoba was completely underwater, so far offshore that not even the few dinosaurs that washed out to sea could float out that far.
Ancient marine reptiles are not uncommon in the rock formations of Canada. The marine sediments of Alberta and British Columbia have provided numerous fossils of plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, turtles, and birds, many of these incredibly large. The massive Shastasaurus sikanniensis represents the largest ichthyosaur known. The largest specimen of this species, measuring a massive 21 meters (69 feet), was excavated in the shales of British Columbia.
Mosasaurs are another group of plentiful marine reptiles found in Canada. These aquatic lizards were among the last of the marine reptiles that lived before the end-Cretaceous extinction that also killed the dinosaurs. The first mosasaurs found in Canada were actually found in Manitoba, discovered in 1934 by Charles M. Sternberg, of the legendary Sternberg fossil-hunting family. Most of these mosasaurs were small, however, barely larger than five meters (15 feet), and certainly didn’t measure up to the giants discovered in Europe and the United States.
And then, in the 1960s, reports in scientific journals began mentioning a massive specimen, known only from partial fossils, discovered in rocks from the Manitoba portion of the Pierre Shale Formation. In 1988, this monster was named as a new species of the European genus Hainosaurus, which would last until 2010, when it was moved into an American genus, now to be known as Tylosaurus pembinensis. This fossil was displayed in the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre and nicknamed “Bruce”, and in 2014, it was placed in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the largest fossil mosasaur on public display.
