Where will the Courtenay and District Museum and Palaeontology Centre take you?  On a voyage of discovery through the worlds of palaeontology, geology, geography and culture, that’s where.  You can even travel 80 million years back in time as you venture on a fossil tour.

So What’s an Elasmosaur?

This most famous resident of the Courtenay and District Museum and Palaeontology is a giant marine reptile known as an elasmosaur.  It’s the largest marine reptile fossil ever discovered in British Columbia and the first of its kind west of the Canadian Rockies.  Vancouver Island residents Mike Trask and his 12-year-old daughter Heather found the fossil along the banks of the Puntledge River in November 1988, and since then a few other specimens have been recovered from other Upper Cretaceous sites, most notably from exposures along the Trent and Englishman Rivers.

A Discovery, A Transformation

The Trask’s discovery not only rocked the quiet world of palaeontology, it transfixed the community and transformed the Museum.  The once-small county museum made the Elasmosaur location a provincial heritage site, organized the excavation of the remainder of the fossil and responded to the community’s interest by supporting further fossil research.

Other large extinct reptiles have been discovered in the area, including the crocodile-like mosasaur, a marine lizard.  Material attributed to a number of different mosasaur has been recovered from several sites along the Puntledge River and from Maastrichtian marine deposits on the North Coast of Hornby Island.

Fossil Tour, Anyone?

Experience the thrill of digging for extinct dinosaur relatives firsthand, on a docent-led tour of leafy fossil sites along the Puntledge River.  The tour, which must be booked in advance, is a short ten minute drive and an easy five minute forested walk from the Museum.

Your tour guide will describe the site’s history and explain proper collection techniques; then you get to dig in.  They supply a limited number of hammers, chisels and goggles, and here’s the best part: you get to keep any fossils that you find!  If the species is of scientific value, you may be asked to donate the fossil to the museum collection, with the finder’s name attached.

Learn more http://www.courtenaymuseum.ca/pro_tour.html

Courtenay Accommodations

There are a number of hotels, motels and bed & breakfasts to pick from including our sponsors, Best Western:

The Best Western PLUS Westerly Hotel & Convention Centre in Courtenay, British Columbia is the only full-service hotel in the Comox Valley. Its Convention Centre offers meeting space and banquet facilities for 225.  This full-service property features 142 well-appointed guest rooms; two on-site restaurants, the Greenhouse Restaurant and Snookers Lounge; free high-speed Internet and more.

Contact info: Best Western PLUS Westerly Hotel & Convention Centre , 1590 Cliffe Avenue, Courtenay, British Columbia, V9N 2K4. Toll Free: (800) 668-7797 Telephone: (250) 338-7741 Fax: (250) 338-5442.

Enjoy all that Courtenay has to offer and please tell your friends.

Re-published from www.amazingvancouverisland.com under creative commons license.