As a child growing up in Medicine Hat, Andre Mueller was obsessed with dinosaurs — and now the McGill University master’s student has made a discovery that’s leading to new insights on the prehistoric era.
Mueller helped find a fossilized dragonfly wing in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park, about 220 kilometres east of Calgary and 125 kilometres northwest of Medicine Hat, which has been identified as a new species and the first such fossil from Canada’s dinosaur-aged rocks.
The find came in 2023 when Mueller, then an undergraduate student at McGill, was doing a paleontology field course at the park led by Prof. Hans Larsson.
While the student team was focused on finding plant fossils, Mueller asked his peers to keep an eye out for any strange shapes. Halfway through the season, he was handed a rock the size of a toonie.
“I have a look at it and my heart skips a beat,” Mueller told CBC News in an interview last week.
“I suddenly realized, oh my goodness, this is not a leaf.”
Mueller and the team weren’t expecting to find a prehistoric insect.
Dinosaur Provincial Park — part of Alberta’s Badlands — gets its name from the many diverse dinosaur fossils found there over the last century. More than 40 different dinosaur species have been found in the park, made up of about 80 square kilometres of land.
Until now, no other prehistoric insect evidence had been uncovered in the area with the exception of a microscopic aphid trapped in amber a few years ago, according to Mueller.
Watch | What to know about the 75-million year old dragonfly fossil:
A McGill University undergraduate uncovered the fossil in 2023 during a digging expedition in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park. The finding sheds light on a 30-million-year gap in the evolution of dragonflies.
Mueller’s find has since opened the doors for more insect research.
“As soon as we found that wing, we started realizing: ‘OK, we have insects now.’ So, we started looking for more and we have found more,” Mueller said.
“Now I can’t say too much about them, but we do have more insects on the way, thanks to the discovery of this dragonfly.”
‘A tasty raptor snack’
Mueller was the lead author who, along with his colleague Alexandre Demers-Potvin and Prof. Larsson, wrote the article on the find, which was published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences on Aug. 1.
The trio named the new dragonfly species Cordualadensa acorni.
Cordualadensa — meaning densely packed chordalid — was chosen because of the dragonfly’s wings, which had more veins than its modern equivalent. The team chose acorni for the species name to honour University of Alberta lecturer John Acorn, who promoted the province’s natural history to the public for decades.
They even created a new family called Cordualadensidae due to the insect’s distinct anatomy.
Mueller said the dragonfly was about the width of a human hand and, while small, was an important part of the dinosaur ecosystem.
“Just a little fella, large on Canadian standards, but it’s a fairly-sized dragonfly,” said Mueller. “This guy would have inevitably been a tasty raptor snack.”
Internationally renowned Alberta paleontologist Philip Currie, who has spent over 40 years researching dinosaurs, said the dragonfly wing helps to paint a clearer picture of what life was like 75 million years ago.
“At one time we had this really skewed version of what the environment must have been like with these big dinosaurs running round,” Currie, a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, said Tuesday.
“But in fact, it’s very similar to a modern environment where the majority of animals and plants and things are maybe not all that foreign to us.”
30-million-year gap in history
Larsson, who led the 2023 excavation team, said Mueller’s find also helps to fill a 30-million year gap in history.
“People have been discovering all these dinosaurs, and fishes and turtles and crocodiles but no insects,” Larsson told Daybreak Montreal.
“So this is really a first.”
The fossil reveals more about how dragonflies evolved over time, Larsson said.
“The wing anatomy tells us this species was adapted for gliding; a trait associated with migratory dragonflies today and possibly a key to their success,” he said in a news release.
Currie, who helped to found Canada’s only museum dedicated to the study of ancient life, the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alta., about 135 kilometres northeast of Calgary, said Larsson and his students have laid the groundwork for more discoveries.
“Once you realize that if you look in the right levels, the right sites, the right kind of combination of rock and fossils associated with it, then you have a good chance that you will find insects,” Currie said.
“Hopefully what this will do is encourage more people to look in those beds specifically for insects, and I think once you get people specifically looking for a type of fossil, then you start to find them.”
Meanwhile, Mueller is continuing the hunt for more at the same site in Dinosaur Provincial Park where he found the first insect fossil.
