Canada 2013

DINOSAURS: BATHYGNATHUS BOREALIS

$20 Pure 1 Oz Silver Proof Coin - FIRST in series

One of the first fossil discoveries to capture the Canadian imagination was that of Bathygnathus borealis. In 1845, while digging a freshwater well near New London, Prince Edward Island, a man named Donald McLeod found what appeared to be part of the jaw of an ancient sharp-toothed animal. He gave it to Sir John William Dawson (a father of Canadian geology and paleontology), who later sold it to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, in the care of American paleontologist Joseph Leidy, to be studied. Initially, Leidy incorrectly suggested the bone was part of a dinosaur’s lower jaw. At the time, dinosaurs were known from incomplete skeletons in Europe, but in North America almost solely from footprints, which led to this early misidentification.

It wasn't until 1905 that the bone was correctly identified as part of the upper jaw of a sphenacodontid, a family of “pelycosaur-grade” mammal-like reptiles or synapsids, animals that lived from the Late Pennsylvanian to middle Permian ages. Based on similarities of the jaw bones, experts now believe that the specimen could actually belong to the sail-back Dimetrodon or a similar animal, although fossil evidence of a sail has yet to be found. 

Reverse: A depiction of the dinosaur-like Bathygnathus Borealis, by artist Julius Scotonyi, with design approved by the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology. Obverse: Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II of England by Susanna Blunt, in profile facing right.The coin comes in a typical for RCM maroon clamshell case lines inside with black cloth.