Miners Unearth Valuable ‘Artifact’ That Solves A 100 Million-Year-Old Mystery

The day started just like any other. One afternoon, on March 21, 2011, a man named Shawn Funk was about to have his whole world rocked. He didn’t know it that morning, but he was about to make a huge discovery at work. Of course, he knew something was down there.

It’s just that Shawn didn’t expect his worksite to contain anything other than petroleum deposits. The Millennium Mine is a large pit of oil sands about 17 miles north of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, and it’s run by a company called Suncor. They knew the mine provided a tall order.

As an official “heavy equipment operator,” that day Shawn was tasked with digging a large hole through the earth. Little did he know, he was about to discover another kind of heavy equipment.

Shawn hit the ground running, and the job was taking hours. It hit ancient sand and marine remains on the way, but most of it was so different from the original form that it wasn’t worthwhile. But that would soon change.

Around 4 hours into the job, Shawn hit something in the earth, and it hit back. Not literally, but it was much harder than anything else around, including rock!

Something unusual was in Shawn’s path. On top of being harder than rock, when Frank prodded further, strangely shaped lumps came out of the area. Shawn called for help.

It didn’t take long for Shawn’s boss, Mike Gratton, to come down to the scene. He looked at the lumps carefully. They were brown and came in strips. Could they have been ribs? Maybe, but they were just so huge.

As if that wasn’t mysterious enough, when Mike and Shawn turned the bits over, they revealed a strange pattern of brown rows. Each of them was outlined by a shiny gray stone.

It almost looked like skin, but even fossilization never preserved that outer layer of the body. Not yet, at least. “We gotta get this checked out,” said Mike. “It was definitely nothing we had ever seen before.” And so began the investigation that would change the history of nature as we know it.

One way or another, this thing was going to be figured out. But these guys knew nothing about ancient remains or fossils, so they decided to seek the help of dino-professionals.

After reaching a breaking point, Mike and Shawn contacted the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta. The rest was history, and the government was about to step in. Right away, officials were intrigued.

Realizing the gravity of the situation, the Royal Tyrrell Museum arranged for the Albertan government to take control of the situation. They seized the specimen and took it to the labs.

The Royal Tyrrell Museum arranged for scientist Donald Henderson and senior technician Darren Tanke to bring the specimen back to their headquarters. The two were about to put their heads together and figure out what the heck this thing was.

Based on high-detail photographs of the specimen, the scientists concluded that the specimen was a complete set of animal remains! That was shocking, especially after learning more about the animal.

The remains belonged to a plesiosaur, which is a kind of marine reptile that ruled the oceans with a unique four-flippered body. Their findings sounded straightforward enough, so why the frenzy? Well, something else just wasn’t adding up.

The remains were impressive in part because they were largely intact. Most times, fossils only come in fragments. But it also had to do with the fact that no land animals had ever been discovered in the oil sands before. The scientists admitted their initial theory might have been incorrect.

After a closer look, scientists were shocked to find out that this wasn’t a marine reptile at all. It was a dinosaur! Specifically an ankylosaurus called a Borealopelta. It was a fierce, armored beast that swung its spiked tail like a club. But how’d it get here?

It turns out that this dinosaur used to live on land, but at some point was washed out into the ocean after it died. From there, the fossilization process began, and it just so happened to be in the ocean at the time.

Now that this dinosaur was correctly identified, its team was hellbent on securing as many parts of the body as they could. It took them 14 days, and by the end, it was almost all there!

Today, this big fella lives at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta. Thousands of curious minds visit every year, and they’re often shocked to learn it was reportedly a vegetarian! Shawn, meanwhile, went back to work, where he would be forever famous as the dinosaur hunter. In fact, he inspired other ordinary people to chase after lost fossils.

As an aspiring paleontologist, Nathan wants nothing more than to be knee-deep in the dirt at Horseshoe Canyon, where ancient bones are believed to be hidden beneath the surface. It takes a lot of patience if you want to find something special.

Luckily for Nathan, he has patience to spare. Still, when he arrived at Horseshoe Canyon with his dad (left) one special day, he thought the most he’d find would be a few rocks and a lizard or two. The Canada natives had no idea he was about to stumble upon something much more rare.

Like a lot of kids, Nathan loves learning about some of the oldest known creatures to have walked the earth — dinosaurs. Prehistoric times were crawling with all kinds of creatures we’d find monstrous today, but all that remains of this time period are bones.

Believe it or not, Nathan had encountered a few chunks of prehistoric life in the past. He and Dion had found multiple bone fragments at Horseshoe Canyon, but never anything substantial enough to identify. Still, if fragments exist, an intact bone could be anywhere.

Searching for dinosaur bones is like participating in a weird, dusty scavenger hunt: You follow the fragments, unsure if you’re being led to or away from your ultimate goal. Ancient history was waiting beneath Nathan’s feet, but he just didn’t know where exactly to start digging.

But there was something different about that particular day, when Nathan and Dion decided to hike through a conservation site in Horseshoe Canyon. They were near the place they’d found the bone fragments, which gave the aspiring paleontologist an idea.

Nathan realized that the bone fragments, which they had found at the bottom of a hill, may have washed down from farther up the hill. If that was true, then there could be more fragments at the top of the hill, and perhaps even something intact.