Rare dinosaur footprint found near Tumbler Ridge, B.C.

A university student discovereda large andrare dinosaurfootprint,in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.,from the same family of top predators as the T.Rex.

Carina Helm, a 20-year-old UBC student, was out repairing some local boardwalks in the area when her father pointed out the area was rich in fossilized specimens.

"Before that I had never realized the area we're in is the right age for bearing fossils," she told CBC.

She realized that she might have stumbled across a dinosaur trackearlier that summer when she was out berry picking with her friends, so the pair decided to take a short detour back to that site.

"The very first rock I looked at had this hugetrack-shape," she recalled. "At first, I thought it wasn't anything because it was so big and I had never seen anything like that before, but after looking at it for a bit, I felt you could definitely see three toes there," she said.

They called the local paleontologist who examined the specimen and determined it's one of 14 raretyrannosaurs worldwide.

"It's pretty big. It's a single footprint and it's fairly large, nearly 60 cm in lengthand from its shape, it's easy to tell it's from a large meat-eating dinosaur," saidRichardMcCrea, a palaeontologistat the PeaceRegion Palaeontology Research Centre in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.

"It can sometimes be a challenge to identify the maker of a single print,especially one that has been weathered by the elements. Even with the tips of the digits eroded away, the footprint found by Carina Helm still possessescharacteristics that make it identifiable as the product of a meat-eatingdinosaur."

He speculated the trackmight have even been largeras the tip and claw of the longest toe have been eroded away.

He says the research centre plans to recover the specimenand bring it back to the museum for safeguarding, and go back to the area for further exploration.

"If Carina could find this track... we might find a lot more footprints or trackways in the area, which would be interesting," he said.