Pipeline Digger Accidentally Unearths Huge Dinosaur Tail in Alberta, Canada

A huge dinosaur tail fossil was accidentally unearthed by a Canadian worker when his backhoe, used for digging a trench for an oil pipeline, hit a dinosaur fossil.  

The 32-foot-long fossilized dinosaur tail was discovered in a town in northern Alberta, Canada. CNN reports that on Tuesday the worker was digging a trench for an oil pipeline for the Tourmaline Oil Corp, a Canada-based crude oil and natural gas company, when he accidentally hit against the fossilized dinosaur tail with his backhoe.

The construction work was immediately put to a halt as they waited for an expert on dinosaurs. The site was inspected by paleontologist Mathew Vavrek, who was stunned on seeing the fossil of a rare dinosaur that dated back to some millions of years.

What surprised him most was that the dino tail was intact unlike other fossils that usually remained crushed, broken and spread over a massive area. This fossil was a complete piece.

"As we walked around it, we saw this whole part of a tail of a dinosaur. To see something like that is pretty incredible.  The last time I've seen something like that was in a museum. I've never found something like this before," palaeontologist Vavrek told the CNN.

The fossil of the dinosaur tail is very fragile because the chunks of the fossil that stuck to the backhoe quickly crumbled to pieces. Noticing this, the worker stopped the digging work. The entire dino tail fossil will shatter if not handled carefully.

Vavrek along with the workers from the oil company are racing against time to carefully pick the fossil before heavy snow fall freezes the ground.

"We don't know for sure that the rest of the animal is there," Vavrek said. "Sometimes, all you get is what you see."

The process can take months for the team. They plan on lifting the fossil along with its surrounding soil and transfer it to a place where they will use tiny jackhammer like machines to remove the dirt covering the fossil and further study the specimen.

Looking at the size of the tail, Vavarek predicts that it was a mid-size dino and belonged to a hadrosaur, a plant-eating dinosaur that existed more than 65 million years ago.

The fossil will either be transferred to the Tyrrell Museum or the University of Alberta, according to the Edmonton Journal.