A discovery unearthed in our province is shining a light on a relative of Canada’s most recognizable rodent.
A jaw of the now extinct giant beaver, or Castoroides, was found in a gravel pit in Southeast Manitoba by someone extracting gravel for commercial purposes.
That fossil was handed over to the Manitoba Museum, where Graham Young works as the curator of paleontology and geology.
“If we are very fortunate and if people are aware that these are important heritage objects then they will set them aside,” Young said.
“And we’ve had quite a few people in the gravel industry set things aside.”
Young believes the jaw could be between 50,000 to 100,000 years old, belonging to an animal that lived long before a glacier melted across much of Manitoba and created Lake Agassiz.
The giant beaver was a member of the beaver family that lived during the ice age — a relative much bigger than the beaver now iconic in our country,
“A beaver the size of a bear, and it’s the size of a pretty good-sized black bear, but not a huge bear,” Young said.
“We’re looking at something 200 to 300 pounds.”
And while the giant beaver would appear similar to beavers we know, Young told CTV News there are some physical differences, including one of the creature’s defining features.
“It did not have a flat tail like the modern beaver, so perhaps it looked a bit more like a muskrat in some regard,” said Young.
Although the giant beaver became extinct more than 10,000 years ago, Young said the fossil is an important piece of history for Manitobans.
“Where we get windows into the ice age, and this seems to occur quite a few spots in southeast Manitoba, it really tells us about this place being a very different place,” Young said.
“We’re finding these creatures that tell us these little stories.”
This discovery marks the fourth area in all of Canada where giant beaver pieces have been found: fossils have also been found in the Toronto area, New Brunswick and in Yukon.
