'Flea market for fossils' yields treasures Final Edition 1

• Published in: The Ottawa citizen (1986)
• Main Author: Kampouris, George
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ottawa, Ont Postmedia Network Inc 16.04.2003
• ISSN: 0839-3222

In early February, paleobiologist Steven Cumbaa and collections manager Kieran Shepard boarded a plane for Tucson, Arizona, their pockets bulging with Canadian dollars. Their mission: to find and buy the best mammal fossils available at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show to fill a gap in the museum's new fossil gallery. "Hoplophoneus was most likely an ambush predator that sprang on its prey from a concealed position," Mr. Cumbaa said. "It wasn't built for pursuit, more for sneak and jump." Mr. Cumbaa says this species of cat is known from fragmentary evidence to have lived in Canada during the tertiary period some 35 million years ago, but that traditional methods of fossil hunting just weren't a workable way to get the cat the museum wanted.