A 72-million-year-old sturgeon fossil has been discovered in Edmonton's North Saskatchewan River Valley, the first fish material of any kind found from that time period and in that geographical area.
A couple of hikers came across a sturgeon skull near Capilano Park last February, believing it might be a fragment of dinosaur skin. They took it to the University of Alberta's star paleontologist, Phil Currie, who confirmed it was indeed part of an ancient fish.
Currie passed the fossil on to fish paleontologist Alison Murray, who identified it as a sturgeon - a North American temperate freshwater fish still in existence, a species of which lives in the North Saskatchewan River - estimated to be about two metres long when it was alive. Murray and her team named the new species Boreiosturion labyrinthicus.
