Workers and dignitaries look at the prognathodon fossil discovered at the Enchanted Designs mine south of Lethbridge on July 13, 2022. (Photo: Enchanted Designs)

By David Opinko/LethbridgeNewsNOW

‘100 per cent of it’s there’: prognathodon fossil found near Lethbridge

Jul 14, 2022 | 12:33 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – A significant fossil has been discovered at a mine south of Lethbridge.

Enchanted Designs mine manager Michael Shideler says it was a fairly normal day of work on June 29, as crews were looking for ammonite when they came upon something incredible.

They found what turned out to be a fossil of a prognathodon, a large aquatic lizard that lived in the late Cretaceous period. It is a species of mosasaur.

It is far from the first dinosaur discovery in the area, but Shideler says this one is particularly well preserved.

“Normally in the past, like we’ve found different species of mosasaur and it’s either like we find the skull or we find the tail or we find a couple of the vertebrae or something like that, right, or we only have half of it, but this one, the whole thing’s there,” says Shideler. “The Royal Tyrrell [Museum] said that it’s probably the best sternal plate and skull of that species that they’ve ever found.”

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The fossil, comprising many parts of the prograthodon’s body, measured about 20 feet in length.

Shideler says his staff are used to finding fossils, but many are virtually indistinguishable from the shale rocks covering much of the mine site. In this case, it was clear as day that it was a fossil.

“Most of the time, everything’s disarticulated, like it’s all, you know, like the head’s with one of the legs or the vertebrae is 50 feet away and, you know, like sometimes they die in a ball, right? Then they’re all like jumbled up – it’s just a big pocket of bones almost. But this thing, it’s like it’s just it was completely laid out and fully intact,” says Shideler.

“This is the first one where we’re like, the guys were scraping and they, literally, the fracture from the ground came right off the top of this specimen,” describes Shideler. “So the whole thing was like the tail, the vertebrae, the skull, you could just see everything. So it was pretty awesome that we were able to save the whole specimen.”

A couple of local dignitaries were invited to see the fossil, including Lethbridge Mayor Blaine Hyggen and Cardston County Reeve Randy Bullock.

Shideler described Hyggen as being like a kid in a candy store, fascinated by everything he was seeing and wanting to learn as much as he possibly could.

Paleontologists from the Royal Tyrrell Museum have been at the scene for nearly two weeks, carefully working to extract every single piece while keeping it preserved. Shideler told LNN that he expects them to keep working for at least another week before taking the specimen back to the museum for further analysis.

Workers and dignitaries look at the prognathodon fossil discovered at the Enchanted Designs mine south of Lethbridge on July 13, 2022. (Photo: Enchanted Designs)

Workers and dignitaries look at the prognathodon fossil discovered at the Enchanted Designs mine south of Lethbridge on July 13, 2022. (Photo: Enchanted Designs)