A close look at the research projects at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum

The Royal Saskatchewan Museum held a behind-the-scenes event this week to give a peek into some of the research the public doesn’t usually get to see.

Researchers showcased everything from dinosaur fossils and ancient sea turtles to endangered rats and rare insects.

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Ryan McKellar, the museum’s curator of paleontology, showed off some carefully excavated fossils recently unearthed in Grasslands National Park near Val Marie.

He said the museum is especially proud of a vertebra belonging to an Edmontosaurus, a long-extinct duck-billed dinosaur commonly found in Alberta. He said that it was an especially rare find for Saskatchewan.

“Duckbill dinosaurs are surprisingly rare in Saskatchewan, so we only have two skulls that we’ve ever recovered in the province,” said McKellar.

“The rock layers we’re dealing with in Saskatchewan are a little bit higher up or further along in time, so they become a little bit more rare.”

In 2023, researchers were also able to recover the skeleton of a large soft-shelled turtle around a meter in length.

The soft-shelled turtle fossil is now on display in the museum.

Fossils on display at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. (Roman Hayter/980 CJME)

It’s not just long-extinct animals that researchers are studying. Ryan Fisher, the museum’s curator of vertebrate zoology, said he and his team have been working on research surrounding the great horned owl, as well as the kangaroo rat.

Great horned owls are among the most common owls in Saskatchewan, and historically the birds were limited to treed valleys and small aspen forests.

The great horned owl is one of the most common owls in Saskatchewan. (Roman Hayter/980 CJME)

The research is focused on understanding the locations where owls have recently expanded their range, and what features of the landscape have allowed them to be successful.

Fisher explained that while some species are struggling due to human interference, that’s not the case for the owls.

“Great horned owls are one of the species that we have here in Saskatchewan that have done extremely, extremely well because of things that people have done to the landscape,” Fisher said.

“They nest in trees that have been planted by people, either as shelter belts or around old homesteads. They love to hunt for small mice and things like that in things like wheat fields and crop fields.”

The Ord’s kangaroo rat is an endangered species in Canada and only lives in open sand dunes, including those in southwestern Saskatchewan. Fisher said the museum’s research program was developed to help understand the population structure of kangaroo rats across Canada and what characteristics make for good quality sand dune habitats.

The Ord’s kangaroo rat is found in open sand dunes, including those in southwestern Saskatchewan (Roman Hayter/980 CJME)

“You can only find it in two places in Canada, one in southeastern Alberta and in southwestern Saskatchewan around the Great Sand Hills,” he said. “They actually need open sand to live, so the Great Sand Hills area they love.”

Because the kangaroo rat is an endangered species, Fisher said that there aren’t very many living here.

“The estimates are that there are less than 1,000, so pretty small pockets. There’s only about 13 or 14 kinds of sand dune complexes in Alberta and Saskatchewan where you can find them,” said Fisher.

And when it comes to the last exhibit, you don’t really need a team of researchers to find it – you can just look in your own yard.

Researchers highlighted insect specimens collected over the past few years and showed some of the newly recorded species of bees, wasps, and other insects found around the province.

Cory Sheffield, the museum’s curator of invertebrate zoology, said Saskatchewan is a great place to discover new things.

Insect specimens on display at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. (Roman Hayter/980 CJME)

“Coming to Saskatchewan about 13 years ago, I was quite excited about the prospects that there had not been a lot of previous work done on the diversity of certain groups,” Scheffield said.

“And pretty much every year, when we go out, we find things that are either new records for the province, sometimes new records for Canada, sometimes undescribed species.”

Saskatchewan is home to close to 300 different species of bees, and many of them are important pollinators of crops and wild plants in the province.

Scheffield said that due to a lack of historical data on some of those species, it makes the chance of finding something new all the more exciting.

“There’s been lots of entomological work in this province. There’s a great history of it, but in the groups that I work on, bees and wasps were sort of in their infancy, so the chances of finding first records, even in your backyard or even undescribed species, are still quite high,” Scheffield explained.

Last spring, the Royal Saskatchewan Museuem opened the Take a Closer Look Exhibit, focusing on tiny invertebrate animals such as insects and spiders, bringing them a little closer for visitors to see.

(Roman Hayter/980 CJME)