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Things are getting prehistoric at The Exploration Place in Prince George.
The city’s museum and science centre has been taken over by ancient creatures as it hosts Dinosaurs of B.C., a travelling exhibit from the Royal B.C. Museum.
Front and centre in the exhibit is “Buster,” the only dinosaur known to be unique to British Columbia.
“Buster is his nickname. His formal scientific name is Ferrisaurus sustutensis, that means the iron lizard from the Sustut River,” Royal Museum of B.C. curator of paleontology Victoria Arbour told CBC’s Daybreak North.
“These are little cousins of triceratops. So they’re little horned dinosaurs without horns, basically … Buster is a lot smaller than a triceratops, but not teeny tiny. He’s about the size of, like, a sheep if a sheep had a long tail.”
Buster was discovered when a geologist working on a rail line expansion near the Sustut River, north of Smithers, B.C., discovered a partial set of bones, including toes, shins and shoulder bones in 1971.
It wasn’t until decades later, after he donated them to Dalhousie University, that Arbour helped figure out that it was an entirely new species, one believed to have lived more than 67 million years ago.
Ferrisaurus sustutensis is the first and only dinosaur species so far known to be unique to British Columbia. (The Exploration Place)
Exact replicas of those bones are now on display at The Exploration Place, along with a life-size replica of what scientists believe Buster looked like.
“The skeleton is not super complete, but what we had was enough to figure out that it was a new species of dinosaur in the group of dinosaurs leptoceratopsidae,” Arbour said.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have any of the skull, which is always what people are, I think, like really interested in seeing, because it gives you an idea of the face — but even just from those fragmentary bones, we’ve got a really good idea of what this dinosaur would have looked like.”
The exhibit also includes meticulously preserved marine and other fossils found in B.C., and some items on loan from the museum in B.C.’s dinosaur hotspot, Tumbler Ridge.
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Visitors can see a cast of a real giant tyrannosaur footprint and a replica of the trackway it was a part of that they can actually touch.
The exhibit also details the painstaking scientific work that goes into paleontology, including digs on remote mountainsides and the careful preparation needed to preserve fossils for display.
“The Dinosaurs of B.C. exhibit offers a compelling look at the dinosaurs that once inhabited this region, alongside the ongoing discoveries that continue to shape our understanding of them,” Exploration Place curator Alyssa Gerwing said in a news release.
The exhibit, which has already visited other B.C. communities including Nanaimo and Penticton, will be on display in Prince George through Sept. 13.