Dinos, meet drones: How new technology could reshape the fossil record

Rukhsar Ali · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 01, 2025 7:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 5 hours ago

A caller survey is challenging a long-standing method of dating dinosaur fossils successful Alberta's Dinosaur Provincial Park — utilizing drone technology.

Previously, 1 of the methods paleontologists person utilized to day fossils successful the UNESCO World Heritage Site is by measuring however precocious oregon debased skeletons were recovered supra a chiseled bound wherever 2 large stone layers meet. That bound serves arsenic a clip stamp that fossils are dated successful narration to.

But this method gives lone a unsmooth property estimate, according to Alexandre Demers-Potvin, the study's pb writer and PhD pupil astatine McGill University's Redpath Museum.

He and his squad utilized drones to seizure implicit 1,000 high-resolution images of a conception of the parkland and recreated it arsenic a 3D model.

The findings, published successful the diary Palaeontologia Electronica, amusement that the bound utilized to day fossils successful the parkland really fluctuates successful elevation by arsenic overmuch arsenic 12 metres successful comparatively abbreviated distances.

WATCH | A virtual circuit of the 3D model: 

That means the notation constituent itself varies and could beryllium throwing disconnected the estimated ages of fossils measured against it. The drone method, however, brings a caller level of precision to fossil dating successful the park.

"This is easy 1 of the studies of which I'm proudest," said Demers-Potvin. "It feels large due to the fact that this is the benignant of enactment that takes years to complete," helium said, citing the collaborative effort betwixt researchers and students who contributed to the study.

He said drone-assisted 3D modelling "might beryllium a promising mode to amended recognize which dinosaur fossils are really older than others successful that portion of Alberta."

"If you're capable to instrumentality a measurement backmost by looking astatine a larger country from the air, it's easier to announcement those tiny differences."

Taking to the sky

In 2018, Demers-Potvin began exploring a cardinal fossil tract successful the parkland called "Bonebed 190," alongside a unit of McGill's vertebrate paleontology tract people researchers.

This peculiar section proved to person a affluent biodiversity and precocious preservation prime of fossils, which sparked a semipermanent task to further probe the area.

Demers-Potvin and his squad introduced drones to the premix successful 2021, taking pictures from above, portion a crushed squad placed down markers utilizing a GPS successful bid to amended geolocate the last 3D rendering.

Using a method called structure-from-motion photogrammetry, they stitched the photos unneurotic to conception a elaborate 3D exemplary of the terrain.

"The prime of the images of that exemplary enabled america to fundamentally divided each those hills into overlying stone layers … which means that we fundamentally divided this full conception [into] antithetic clip zones, and this is thing that hasn't been done precise often for that benignant of stone outcrop before," Demers-Potvin explained. 

The researchers accidental this exertion of 3D modelling whitethorn beryllium a much reliable instrumentality to day fossils, correcting erstwhile estimates and filling successful the gaps that beryllium successful the existent timeline.

Drones assistance portion unneurotic much close fossil record

Emily Bamforth, a paleontologist and curator astatine the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum successful northwestern Alberta, said drone usage is becoming progressively communal successful her field.

She is not affiliated with the study but said McGill's probe is important to understanding the fossil grounds with accuracy and placing fossils successful some a spatial and temporal context.

"In the past 2 decades, determination has … been a displacement successful dinosaur paleontology distant from isolated specimens and towards knowing the broader environments and ecosystems successful which these animals lived and however they changed implicit time," she said. 

"In this, the stratigraphic discourse successful which a fossil is recovered is critical, to the constituent that wherever a fossil is recovered is arsenic important arsenic the fossil itself."

Although Dinosaur Provincial Park is simply a well-researched site, Demers-Potvin hopes to proceed refining what they already cognize with drone exertion — perchance gaining much penetration into the biodiversity of an past world.

"I deliberation we're getting distant from that older method [of dating], and I deliberation present we're conscionable filling the gaps betwixt 1 information constituent and different information constituent and that full stack of sedimentary stone layers that you tin find successful the badlands," Demers-Potvin said.

"This is lone the archetypal measurement arsenic portion of a overmuch bigger task wherever we anticipation to screen the full park."