Photo Courtesy Phillip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum

By Tanner Smith

Paleontology

Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum extracting “Big Sam”

Sep 25, 2024 | 6:00 AM

The Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum will extract a rare 600lb fossil on Wednesday, September 25.

Paleontologists and crews have been working in the Pipestone Creek bonebed for the last two summers, removing over 300 bones jammed around the fossil to extract a Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai skull.

A species of dinosaur named after a retired Grande Prairie science teacher Al Lakusta, who first discovered their remains while on a field trip with his class at the Pipestone Creek bone bed in 1986.

Nicknamed “Big Sam,” the fossil belongs to a distant, older cousin of the triceratops that featured a bony dense pad on its nose instead of a horn.

This discovery marked multiple significant milestones for the museum and paleontology in the province; as it is one of the largest skulls ever found in northern Alberta measuring over a metre long, and it’s the first skull found in the bonebed in more than a decade.

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It is also preserved upside-down with it’s head frill still attached, “a preservation style that has not been previously recorded,” according to the museum

PJCDM says “Big Sam” will now move on to the next phase of its journey, the preparation process, before going on display at the museum.

Residents are invited to visit the Phillip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum themselves, and see “Big Sam, in all it’s glory.”

Photo of a Pachyrhinosaurus (CC: Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum)

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