In 1988, Guy Plint, a geologist and professor emeritus at Western University in Canada, was exploring British Columbia when he found fossilized tracks at the site known as Tumbler Ridge. Access to the site was difficult, only possible by helicopter, and Plint decided to postpone the study of the area. Thirty-four years later, in 2022, he resumed the research alongside Charles Helm, a researcher at Nelson Mandela University.
The partnership between the two geologists resulted in a publication in the journal Historical Biology, four years after resuming the studies. The research revealed that the tracks found in Tumbler Ridge belong to dinosaurs from the Coniacian period, a phase of the Mesozoic Era considered a "forgotten period" in the planet's history, poorly documented in the fossil record.
