The Estevan area is proving to be a key site in understanding what life looked like after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Royal Saskatchewan Museum curator of paleontology Ryan McKellar and his team spent part of their summer working along coal seams near Estevan, uncovering tiny pieces of amber, fossilized tree resin, that date back roughly 60 to 62 million years.
“Those coal seams are ancient swamp deposits, and they contain fossil tree resin, which is amber,” explained McKellar. “The amber is really tiny stuff, maybe five to ten millimeters across, but it preserves the same sort of thing as larger amber deposits do. The insects inside tell us a little bit about ancient ecosystems.”
Unlike jewelry-grade amber, Estevan’s finds are fragile droplets that need to be stabilized in the lab before they can be studied under a microscope. Despite their size, they hold big scientific value. “The insects we’re finding are mostly less than a millimeter long,” said McKellar. “They belong to groups that are still around today, so we can do some pretty detailed comparisons.”
The discoveries are particularly significant because they help fill a gap in the global fossil record. “There’s a worldwide shortage of amber deposits between about 78 million and 50 million years ago,” McKellar noted. “The material we’re working with around Estevan fits right in the middle of that gap, so it gives us our first chance to see what was happening with insects and ecosystems right after the extinction event.”
By studying the amber’s chemistry and the insects trapped inside, researchers can also piece together what types of trees once grew in the region and how ancient coal seams connect across southeastern Saskatchewan.
McKellar said the Estevan findings, combined with fossil work in other parts of the province, are helping scientists map out what happened before, during, and after the dinosaurs’ extinction. “It’s about filling in those missing pieces of the puzzle,” he said.
Beyond Estevan, McKellar and his colleagues also spent much of the summer in Grasslands National Park, where they continue excavating a large duck-billed dinosaur skeleton and uncovering other significant finds, including Triceratops fossils and traces of the meteorite impact that ended the dinosaur era. These discoveries, paired with the Estevan amber, allow scientists to piece together both the final days of the dinosaurs and the ecosystems that emerged afterward.