[ISL] "Canada's 1st dimetrodon solves P.E.I. fossil mystery"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC News' Emily Chung reports on how, after a century and a half, what is by far the most prominent fossil found on Prince Edward Island has finally been identified.

A fossil dug up in P.E.I. in 1854 has finally been identified.

The fossil turns out to be that of a dimetrodon — the first and only one ever found in Canada, reported a team of Canadian scientists this week in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

Dimetrodons are well-known huge, ancient reptiles related to modern mammals that had giant spiny "sails" on their backs. They were top predators that stalked and ate giant salamanders in the steamy, swampy forests of the early Permian period, around 290 million years ago, before the age of dinosaurs. Their fossils have previously been found in Germany and the United States.

The P.E.I. fossil — part of an upper jaw, including several sharp, curved teeth — was discovered by a farmer as he was digging a well in the French River district south of Cape Tryon, near the island's north coast, 166 years ago.

The farmer sold it to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia so it could be studied by Joseph Leidy, one of the only paleontologists studying animal fossils in North America at the time. Leidy thought the fossil was the lower jaw of a dinosaur and named the species Bathygnathus borealis. (Bathygnathus means "deep jaw" and borealis means "of the north.")