Curators at the Royal Tyrrell museum near Drumheller have welcomed over 50,000 pounds of rock to their collection.
Fossils of a Hadrosaurid (duck-billed dinosaur) discovered in Spirit River were delivered to a secret location Friday.
“We know there is probably a nearly complete skull inside,” senior technician at the museum, Darren Tanke, told CTV News.
The discovery could be an entirely new species of the Hadrosaurid curator Francois Therrien explained.
“The big difference between each species is in the head. Some species have a big crest or big helmet on top of their heads, others don’t,” he said.
He added that the bones were those of an adult duck bill and estimated them to be about 75 million years old.
Therrien also said even if it was a species that has already been identified the fossil will provide new information to those in the industry.
“It is going to tell us, basically, that those species that we find here in southern Alberta could actually move farther north.
“We think they were capable of doing large migrations but it has never been demonstrated.”
Museum staff will be using special tools to carve through the blocks and get to the bones, something officials said could take years.
With files from Amanda Anderson
