Nathan Hrushkin, a 12-year old boy from Calgary, found a partially excavated dinosaur fossil while hiking with his dad at Horseshoe Canyon’s conservation site in Alberta, Canada. His noteworthy discovery was a humerus bone from the upper limb from a juvenile “hadrosaur” — a herbivorous dinosaur with flat jaws like the bill of a duck, that lived 69 million years ago. In their previous hike, Nathan and his dad, Dion found some bone fragments in the location. Thinking these bones may have washed down, Nathan climbed uphill which then led to the discovery. They sent the GPS coordinates and fossil images to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, a research facility dedicated to studying fossils and prehistoric life. The facility sent a team of paleontologists to the place where the bone was found.

The Nature Conservancy of Canada cautions people not to disturb or unearth any fossils they may find. These fossils are protected by the law. Until now, 30 – 50 bones have been found all coming from one hadrosaur.” This young hadrosaur is a very important discovery because it comes from a time interval for which we know very little about what kind of dinosaurs or animals lived in Alberta,” the Royal Tyrrell Museum’s curator of dinosaur palaeoecology François Therrien, said. The discovery will add more knowledge about dinosaur evolution.