Comox Valley elasmosaur to celebrate its 80,000,038th birthday

A very special birthday party is being held at the Courtenay and District Museum and Palaeontology Centre on Nov. 14.

It’s for the Puntledge River elasmosaur, Traskasaura sandrae, which will be turning 80,000,038 in the company of community members and cake.

Technically, the party is a celebration of the 38 years since the discovery of the 80 million-year-old elasmosaur fossil, but Courtenay Museum curator of natural history Pat Trask said it’s all about the fun. 

“It’s a celebration of discovery,” he said. “I thought, well why don’t we have a birthday party for the day it was found?”

‘A catalyst’ for paleontology in the area

The Discourse has previously reported on these ancient marine reptiles which swam in the oceans of the late Cretaceous period, around 85-million years ago. The animals resembled the Loch Ness monster, with a small head and a neck as long as its bulbous body.

The specimen that is now at the Courtenay Museum was the first of its kind found west of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and Trask describes it as a catalyst for paleontology on Vancouver Island.

“It was a spark that started a cascade of discoveries,” Trask said. “I mean, hundreds and hundreds of discoveries. Things that have never been seen before by science. New names, new creatures, unknown things.”

Trask’s late brother, Mike Trask, alongside his brother’s daughter, Heather Trask, discovered the fossil in November 1988. Pat Trask said although he’d always enjoyed looking for fossils as a kid in Ontario, his brother and niece’s discovery sparked an even greater passion.

Pat Trask has now been collecting fossils and educating the public for 33 years. 

“My job is to go fossil collecting just about every day, lead tours of classes of kids or the general public and teach them about the fossil record in the local area,” Trask said. “I love my job.”

In 1992, the Vancouver Island Paleontological Society was formed, sparked by the discovery of the elasmosaur. The society was the first of its kind in the province. 

In October 2023, the elasmosaur was designated B.C.’s official fossil.

After Pat Trask found another elasmosaur specimen to join his brother’s, the new genus and species was officially scientifically named in 2025: Traskasaura Sandrae, with the Trask honouring Mike, Heather and Pat Trask. 

F. Robin O’Keefe, an associate professor of biology from Marshall University in West Virginia, was the lead author of the scientific paper naming the elasmosaur. Pat Trask was among the co-authors of the paper.

It was both an exciting and sad time for Trask because his brother died eight days before the scientific paper officially naming the elasmosaur came out. 

However, Trask did get to tell his brother the news beforehand. 

Trask now sports a proud elasmosaur tattoo on his arm with its scientific name.

Courtenay museum brings in worldwide researchers

Trask said the paper, as well as many of the other fossil discoveries around the Comox Valley, have drawn scholars to the area. 

The museum has had visitors from the University of Tokyo to study the abundance of cephalopods in the area. They found a commonality to the fossils on Japan’s north island of Hokkaido. 

“We have an open door policy. [A few] weeks ago we had a researcher from Warsaw, Poland,” he said. “He spent many hours with me going through one specific fossil in our collection.” 

But to Trask, the elasmosaur is still a one-of-a-kind specimen because of what it represents. 

“It represents the science of paleontology in the province of B.C.,” he said. 

“That’s why it’s the provincial fossil. The same [provincial] status as the dogwood and the Western red-cedar.”

The museum has been hosting a birthday party since 2008, every Saturday after Remembrance Day. 

This year, the party takes place from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 14. Admission is by donation and the event is open to the public. 

Trask said the whole place will be decorated like a giant birthday party with cake, crafts and balloons.

“It’s all about the fun and the sugar,” he said, adding that last year the turnout was about 300 people, but they have had 500 before. 

“I expect [this year’s] to be big because it’s going to be rainy all week, the kids are going to want to get out of the house,” he said. 

Trask said seeing children so excited to celebrate the elasmosaur is his favourite part of the birthday. 

“And singing happy birthday to a skeleton,” he laughed, adding that everybody — including the elasmosaur — gets birthday hats. 

– With files from Dave Flawse