Paleontologists and amateur fossil hunters welcome at Alberta symposium

For 28 years, the Alberta Paleontological Society has hosted an annual event to connect amateur dinosaur hunters with professional paleontologists.

The Paleo 2025 Symposium is an opportunity for amateur fossil hunters to connect with professional paleontologists to learn about prehistoric life in Alberta that dates back millions of years.

This is the 28th year the Alberta Paleontological Society is hosting the event that’s described as family-friendly and free.

Mona Trick, Paleo 2025 Symposium committee chair, says the society is for anyone passionate about dinosaurs.

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“We call ourselves a meeting place for amateurs and professionals,” she said. “So, we have families that are members with kids as young as six years old, we have retired people, seniors, people who are working and we have professional paleontologists.”

Trick says the society has more than 120 members and aims to showcase paleontology to everyone interested because Alberta is one of the best places in the world to discover fossils.

“Dinosaur Provincial Park is a very rich area of late Campanian (period) dinosaurs, probably among the richest in the world,” she said.

“Then we also have things like Burgess Shale and Mississippian (period); we really have a large range of fossils right from the very beginning, all the way up to the Pleistocene (period) to the more recent fossils.”

In addition, Trick says the province has valuable resources with the Royal Tyrrell Museum, the Royal Alberta Museum and the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum.

3D imaging

Many of the speakers at the Paleo event are from these facilities, but one of the youngest presenters this year is 15-year-old Atharva Roy from Calgary. He’s been a member of the society for two years and has done some digital work for it.

“I made these 3D-photogrammetry scans of their fossil collection,” he said. “So, photogrammetry is just essentially taking a bunch of pictures from many different angles of an object and then you put it into a software and (the) software spits out a very nice and pretty accurate 3D scan.”

That led Roy to be invited to co-host a workshop with Dr. Emily Bamforth and Jackson Sweder from the Philip J. Currie Museum on 3D imaging of fossils.

“We’re going to be taking a look at 3D surface scanning and photogrammetry, and both of these are techniques that the museum is using to supplement and hopefully replace traditional quarry grid mapping,” Roy said.

“That should reduce the amount of human error in quarry mapping.”

Roy says the technology can also be used by members of the public to scan a fossil they’ve discovered and send the 3D scan to paleontologists to determine its significance.

‘An iconic building stone’

Tako Koning, a consulting geologist and member of the society, is passionate about Tyndall stone that contains a variety of fossilized sea creatures.

“Tyndall stone comes from outcrops close to the village of Tyndall just northeast of Winnipeg and it’s almost a half billion years old,” he said.

“This rock is Ordovician in age, and so it’s very, very old, so the dinosaurs are about 70 to 100 million years old, but the Tyndall is much older.”

Koning says the stone can be found as decorative cladding on buildings all over Calgary, so people don’t have to go far to see some of the oldest fossils.

“It’s an iconic building stone, but a decorative building stone,” he said. “It clads the outside of the Royal Bank on the building at Stephen Avenue Walk; the Banff Springs Hotel is full of Tyndall; the John J. Bowlen building and the Arts Common building is all clad by Tyndall.”

Koning likes to share his knowledge through city tours he hosts and speaking at the symposium. He also helps the public evaluate rocks and fossils they’ve collected.

“Some of the kids bring rocks and we have a table set up where we have some guys who know what they’re talking about, including me, more or less,” he said. “Then the kids ask, ‘What is this, a fossil, a rock, how old is it?’ You know.”

The symposium takes place Saturday, March 15 and a workshop will be held on Sunday, March 16, co-hosted by Roy on his 3D fossil scanning.

Learn more about the event on the Alberta Paleontological Society’s website.