The hunt for marine reptile fossils on western Ellesmere Island

Abstract

AbstractAn expedition of the Canada/China Dinosaur Project collected several large marine-reptile fossils on western Ellesmere Island in the summer of 1989. They were led to the area by a 1939 report that a large fossil skeleton had been seen north of Trold Fiord by a member of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police patrol in 1926. This paper examines the events of the original discovery and an unsuccessful attempt by David Haig-Thomas to locate the fossils in 1937–38. Haig-Thomas had visited the area in 1935 as a member of the Oxford University Ellesmere Land Expedition. His party had reached a fiord variously identified as Trold Fiord or Vendomc Fiord, but a study of his probable route suggests that it was neither. This inaccurate identification misled Haig-Thomas' later search. In 1989, pieces of fossil bone from a large marine reptile were collected at a site compatible with the 1939 description.