Ferrisaurus

During 1971 Canadian geologist Kenny F. Larsen discovered dinosaur remains while exploring the Sustut Basin in north-central British Columbia while prospecting for Thorium, the first found in the province. The fossils were discovered because they were slightly radioactive, from a talus deposit along a railway cut near the confluence of Birdflat Creek and Sustut River. Larsen's imprecise field notes and lack of a field map complicate identification of the exact stratigraphic unit the fossils came from. Matrix remaining on the bones is a dark grey sandy siltstone, the area around the fossil discovery is multiple beds of sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate and shale, with slightly radioactive bitumen seams. These deposits are part of the Sustut Group, and Canadian palaeontologists Victoria Arbour and Milton Graves interpreted their characteristics in 2008 as suggesting that the fossils were found in the Lower Laslui Member of the Brothers Peak Formation. Larsen originally held onto the fossils until 2004, when he donated them to Dalhousie University before being accessioned by the Royal BC Museum in 2006 as RBCM.EH.2006.019. ==Classification==

Despite the initial identification of the fossils of Ferrisaurus as either a thescelosaurid or pachycephalosaurid, reidentification of bones shows that it has proportions that exclude it from either group, with preserved anatomy being much more similar to leptoceratopsids such as Cerasinops or Leptoceratops. Ferrisaurus shares a bent with Cerasinops and Prenoceratops, a fused and with Montanoceratops, and proportions of the foot with Udanoceratops. Arbour and Evans recovered Ferrisaurus within Leptoceratopsidae with a phylogenetic analysis, though its incompleteness hindered resolution. }} ==References==