Dig into B.C.’s past: Okanagan Heritage Museum hosts dinosaur exhibit

Dino fever has come to B.C.’s Southern Interior.

From now until the end of September, the Okanagan Heritage Museum in Kelowna is hosting a travelling exhibit that digs into B.C.’s prehistoric past.

The stars of the show are dinosaurs that once roamed the province.

Victoria Arbour of the Royal BC Museum is the paleontologist who did all the genus work on Buster, the star of the show. She is also the curator of the exhibit, which opened Thursday.

“Buster’s scientific name is Ferrisaurus sustutensis and that means ‘the iron lizard from the Sustut River,’” Arbour said. “That’s in reference to the specimen being found along what was a railway line.”

A smaller and hornless relative of the triceratops, Buster is estimated to have lived about 68 million years ago during the Cretaceous period (65 to 145 million years ago).

The Sustut River is a tributary of the Skeena River in northwestern B.C.

It’s also thought that Buster, which belongs to the Leptoceratopsidae group, is a dinosaur species unique to B.C.

Now, Alberta normally gets all the dinosaur glitz and glory. This exhibit, though, gives British Columbians a chance to see what may have roamed in our backyards millions of years ago.

Dinosaurs of B.C. promises to turn back time by digging up and exposing just how many ancient creatures once called prehistoric B.C. home

“This is our chance to actually showcase what has been discovered here in the province,” Amanda Snyder of the Okanagan Heritage Museum said.

From Kootenay sauropods to Tumbler Ridge tyrannosaurs and fossilized denizens of the deep, Dinosaurs of B.C. leaves nothing unearthed

“What I hope people take away from the exhibit is the fact that, first of all, we have dinosaur fossils in British Columbia,” Arbour said.

“We don’t have as many as our neighbours in Alberta, but we have them and are actively looking for more.”

Dinosaurs of B.C. runs until Sept. 30 at the Okanagan Heritage Museum.