Syncrude Canada is celebrating 25 years since the first fossil was found on their site.
The Ichthyosaurus was discovered on April 1, 1992 by Operator Willie Brevant. The Ichthyosaurus lived in the inland sea, which covered much of northern and central Alberta during the Cretaceous Period about 140-165 million years ago.
After finding this fossil Syncrude put in a protocol because they knew they would encounter more.
“We really wanted to understand, what do we do at three in the morning on a Sunday. A part of that is a key link with us and the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, those are our experts we fall on,” said Greg Fuhr, Vice President of Production, Mining and Extraction.
“We immediately stop digging, isolate the area and call them.”
In 1994 Greg Fisher found another fossil called a Plesiosaur. Both of these fossils were found in the same area on the Syncrude site, two years apart.
“The layer of shale I found it in, which is like limestone, was about a metre and a half thick. It was in the middle and seemed odd to me,” said Greg Fisher.
“It was night shift and when I got closer to it I could see the segments in it and could see it was bone.”
A plan was put together and three large pieces of rock were taken down.
“The middle rock was the centre of this marine reptile, it was the torso up to a good part of the neck and close to the tail,” said Fisher.
“We said we better get the other two as well. One piece had the head and a small part of the neck and the other side had the rest of the tail and the rear flipper.”
This is the oldest and one of the most complete Plesiosaur found in North America and took seven years for the Tyrrell Museum to remove it from the rock.
A mould of the Ichthyosaur and Plesiosaur hangs in the Oilsands Discovery Centre.
Since 1992, Syncrude has found 11 fossils on their site with the latest being discovered on May 11, 2012.
