Leduc's dinosaur playground 68 million years in the making

Today, it's a playground. Last year, it was just a hole in the ground.

And for millions of years before that, it has been the hiding place of a very rare paleontological treasure.

Saturday saw the grand opening of the Meadowview Dinosaur Playground in Leduc, Alta.. The new park rests on the very spot where the complete skeleton of a hadrosaur (also known as a duck-billed dinosaur) was found last year.

We knew from the first pictures that this was something special- Don Brinkman, Royal Tyrrell Museum

The land was originally destined to become a residential development. But Qualico communities, the company building the development, changed the plan after one of their workers found the hadrosaur skeleton.

"The first thought was obviously 'oh, what does this mean?'" said Brad Armstrong, Qualico's vice-president of community development.

"All of a sudden, we realized this is actually really cool."

Construction was halted while paleontologists came to carefully remove the skeleton. Armstrong said that once Qualico was allowed to resume construction, they decided to do something special to mark the discovery.

"What other neighbourhoods in the Edmonton region have a 68-million-year-old dinosaur fossil that they can lay claim to?"

The playground was built instead. Aside from dinosaur-themed slides and climbing equipment, it also includes a sandbox where kids can reveal (fake) dinosaur bones.

'I found a dinosaur'

The hadrosaur skeleton was discovered while crews were installing a storm drain.

"I found a dinosaur," said Ryan Eschak, the worker who first spotted the creature's vertebrae half buried in the ground.

"I looked up at my hole operator and he was a little miffed, because he knew things would be shut down for a little bit."

Eschak spends a lot of time underground. In the past, he's found old plants or bits of amber. But he immediately recognized the significance of what he found.

"It's not every day you find a dinosaur."

The find was a rare one, according to Tyrrell paleontologist Don Brinkman. He said it is the only time a "complete, fully-articulated" dinosaur skeleton has been found in the area.

The dinosaur also left behind fossilized impressions of its skin in the soil around it, which can help scientists learn more about what the hadrosaur was like when it was alive.

"We knew from the first pictures that this was something special," he said.  

"It's the first time a dinosaur was collected in this area with skin impressions. So it doesn't get much better than that."