CFDC opens new field and research station in the Manitoba Escarpment

Tucked away on 110 acres of land in the Manitoba Escarpment is the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre's (CFDC) latest pride and joy, a new field and research station.

Invited guests joined CFDC officials for an official unveiling of the 1,000 sq. ft. facility Thursday afternoon. Construction on the station began in late 2022 and wrapped up in June of this year. 

Adolfo Cuetara is the Executive Director of the CFDC. He says this is a project they'd been pursuing for many years. 

"CFDC was able to purchase these 110 acres in 2004, and almost two decades later we were able to build this field station. So, this is really important for us, for many, many reasons."

The $400,000 field and research station is also the first building owned by the CFDC, with the money gathered in an 18-month period. It's been sponsored by Prairies Can, Travel Manitoba, Manitoba 150, Signature Museums Endowment Fund, Winkler CO-OP, and Décor Cabinets.

It will be used as a base camp of operations for fossil excavations in the escarpment and within the property.

Cuetara addressed the crowd gathered for the ribbon cutting.

Cuetara says the benefits of the station are two-fold. The first, he noted, will be to boost tourism to the area through the CFDC's dig tours.

"So that allows the people to come and to become a paleontologist for a day," he explained, adding participants have the unique experience to dig out a real mosasaur skeleton that is still in the ground. "Thanks to to the purchase of the tractor that we have with the front loader and the backhoe, we are able now to move a lot of shale. This property has plenty of possibilities to find very nice fossils, and we are starting to find those people are helping us to dig out."

The crowd gathered at the latest find at the dig site.

The station will also be home to further research and innovation, complimenting the CFDC's memorandum of understanding with the University of Manitoba.

"What they are doing with us is just bringing students to do field classes with sedimentology and paleontology. And also, they are using our fossils for research. So, they're taking fossils that we have on loan, bringing them to the university where they have a very nice laboratory with very powerful microscopes and all kind of stuff that we don't have. They have the means, and we have the fossils and information. They are converting all of these in scientific publications."

The Field and Research station will offer lunch and washroom facilities for those at the dig site.

The station has created much excitement among staff, researchers and board members, including co-chair, Allison Halstead. She said, not only does the facility allow for the possibility of new specimen discoveries and fossil finds, but also for new connections to be made. 

"People that have never been to the museum before, let alone come out to the location of where these specimens are found and how they are collected and brought in. That's exciting to enable the community. I mean, this has been in Morden for 50-plus years, and it has been part of something called a museum, which was more of a community museum at one time and a lot of people still remember that, but it has not been simply a community museum for a long time. It has been a site in the center of very important scientific paleontological research for some time now, and I think there's a lot of people in the larger community that are not aware of it, not aware of what an incredible opportunity it is to have that (and) to be able to come in and see the new finds and see what's happening, ongoing."

New connections are also being made with students that come to the CFDC for research, added Halstead. 

"Not just (students) that are coming from University of Manitoba. We have someone that has moved here from Portugal, and we'll be starting work through the University of Manitoba. He's going to be studying for four years towards getting his PhD. That is incredible. They should be quite proud of the fact that they're helping with this young person's education and advancing scientific research."

The field and research station is energy sustainable, equipped with solar panels and wind turbine.

With files from Robyn Wiebe.