Inside the Paleontology Museum at the University of Alberta, past the giant fish skull at the entrance, you’ll find a relic from the time of the dinosaurs.
The 65 to 75 million-year-old petrified tree stump is the latest addition to the museum, and is a point of pride in this small room in the basement of the university’s Earth Sciences building.
But what impresses museum curator Lisa Budney most is the discoverers of the stump, Mike Lees and Jeff Penney, who went on a costly, arduous, month-long adventure to retrieve it.
“Their willingness to go the extra mile is exceptional,” said Budney. “But also their willingness and acceptance of going through the proper channels in order to make sure they’re collecting things properly.”
“That makes them great citizen scientists.”
The two friends stumbled on the rare find in the middle of Edmonton during a canoe ride down the North Saskatchewan River in October 2019.
The experts were excited, but didn’t have the resources to collect it.
If these hockey dads didn’t move it, it was likely to wash away down the river by the following spring.
“I don’t think I would have ever forgotten if I just left it there and let it go downriver,” Penney said.
Once the two men made it their mission to extract the fossilized tree, they refused to be stumped.
Excitement over find
The day of the discovery, Lees asked Penney to join him for an after-work paddle.
An hour down the river, and a few drinks later, Penney needed to pull over for a pee break.
The spot they chose is on a narrow muddy bank along the river. A steep cliff about 30 metres tall separates it from any walking trails.
Lees liked this place because he would often find shells or fish skeletons here. A minute after they pulled over, he realized he was standing on top of something.
Mike Lees and Jeff Penney stumbled upon an 800-pound fossilized tree stump while canoeing down the North Saskatchewan River. They made it their mission to move it — but how? 1:22
“I was really excited at the time,” Lees said. “You could tell that there was a difference between what was on the outside of the tree and the inside of the tree. It looked like bark, but it was stone bark.”
They sensed this could be a major discovery, so they sent pictures of it to the University of Alberta.
Based on its fossilization and location, scientists were able to estimate the age of the stump: the tree was a conifer from the cretaceous period.
A paleontologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alta., called Penney to tell him the news.
“I was thinking it’s like two million years old. He goes, ‘Jeff, it’s estimated it’s probably around 65 million years old. It’s a tree stump with the roots and the bark,'” Penney recalled.
A close-up of the petrified tree stump on the day Lees and Penney discovered it. (Submitted by Mike Lees)
Even though the tree had barely moved from its original place for millions of years, the area around the river is continuously changing in small ways.
By spring 2020, a large section of the muddy bank where the stump stood was largely washed away, which is why Lees and Penney feared it might have been lost if they didn’t move it before winter.
The university couldn’t secure any funds to collect the stump without a clear research objective, but Budney, the curator they consulted with, was eager to put it on display at the museum.
“I’ve never seen anything this big come out of our river valley since I’ve been working here,” she said.
University of Alberta museum curator Lisa Budney built a display in the paleontology museum for Penney and Lees’s Edmonton discovery. (Ariel Fournier/CBC)
No stone unturned
After hours of paperwork and e-mails between researchers at the university, paleontologists in Drumheller and Alberta Environment and Parks, they received permission from the province to move it, if they wanted to.
To make sure the stump was still retrievable, Penney and Lees did some reconnaissance work.
They found a path through the woods that led to the top of the cliff over the stump, which was faster than taking a canoe.
On a sunny fall day, the two of them rappelled down the 30-metre bank, using extension cords from Penney’s truck. The stump was still there — as glorious as when they found it.
On the first attempt to remove it, they borrowed a hunting boat. But even with several men to lift the stump, it was too heavy. They also worried the weight of the stump could sink the back of the boat.
Lees even called Edmonton Fire Rescue Services, but ultimately, they weren’t able to help either.
Then, Lees and Penney recruited some friends to build their own barge. They took a half-dozen 50-gallon plastic drums and strapped them to a deck they built over a few hours. But they worried that the barge would not be sturdy enough either.
“We were using our best creative ideas to make it work, but it just wasn’t happening,” Penney said.
By this time, it was November, and they were brushing snow off the stump. They realized they needed to bring in professionals.
Penney called a company that did on-the-water and underwater repairs.
“Usually when we’re picking something up, it’s a man-made problem, someone’s dropped a truck, people go out and sink boats,” said Bill Stark, a marine operations manager at Northern Underwater Systems. “It’s not someone who lost a rock.”
“Once they explained what they had and the situation, it became more intriguing,” he said.
Penney spent his own money to pay Stark and his crew to remove the rock.
A professional crew hired by Jeff Penney moves an ancient fossilized tree stump onto an industrial boat to transport it to the University of Alberta. 0:28
When the conditions were perfect, right before the river froze over, they loaded it onto an industrial boat and brought it to the museum.
A day later and the river would have been filled with too much ice for the boat to travel on.
A place in history
At around 800 pounds, there are very few petrified trees from this era that are this large and well-preserved, on display anywhere in the world, according to Budney.
University paleobotanist Eva Koppelhus was able to take samples from the core of the tree and find evidence of pre-historic ferns growing on its base.
“It’s a great find because it’s often that people find just smaller pieces of wood, but this was a stump and it looked like it was nearly in situ,” she said.
Mike Lees looks at the downtown view from the water where he and Penney found the petrified stump. He still goes for a paddle whenever he can, whether or not there’s something to discover. (Ariel Fournier)
It’s a signpost of a time back when this wintry city was a hot muggy swampland along a seaway.
The stump still sits on the pallets it was dragged in on since it’s too heavy to move without a lift.
Lees and Penney have both brought their kids to see it in person.
“I’ll be satisfied for a long time knowing that people are going to be able to appreciate this thing long beyond my life,” Lees said.
(Submitted by Ariel Fournier)About the producer
Ariel Fournier is an associate producer at CBC Edmonton. She’s produced radio documentaries about a 70-year-old wrestler with a flashy hat, adult adoption and the lasting influence of autotune.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
