Man jailed, fined for using sledgehammer to dig up dinosaur fossils in B.C. | 24CA News

A person who dug up fossilized dinosaur footprints from a protected space in northern B.C. has been fined and sentenced to almost a month in jail.

A provincial court docket judgment launched this week stated Bennward Dale Ingram and three others used energy instruments and a sledgehammer for greater than two hours to extract tracks from the Six Peaks Dinosaur Track website close to Hudson’s Hope, round 240 kilometres north of Prince George, B.C., in summer time 2020.

“Large slabs of fossil tracks were either removed, or were damaged by being broken up, and were possibly destroyed. The power tools used included a portable generator, air compressor and air chisel, and heavy-duty hand tools including sledgehammers and pry bars,” learn the ruling. 

“Mr. Ingram was observed using a sledgehammer and pry bar and other excavation tools.”

The ruling stated the “excavation” solely stopped when witnesses confirmed up and the lads deserted the location.

Preliminary research of the Six Peaks Dinosaur Track website, first found in 2008, discovered greater than 500 dinosaur footprints throughout roughly 750 sq. metres of land — a couple of tenth of an acre.

The tracks have been from a variety of dinosaurs that roamed the sandy terrain in the course of the early Cretaceous interval as much as 125 million years in the past — together with some from three of the “major” teams of Cretaceous dinosaurs, the theropods, ornithopods and sauropods. 

The Six Peaks Dinosaur Track website has been protected below the provincial Land Act since 2016, making it unlawful to make use of the land for something aside from conservation and preservation.

Ingram, who’s 39 and lives in Alberta, was charged and pleaded responsible to one rely of unlawfully excavating on Crown land below the Land Act.

Judge Darin Reeves handed Ingram a $15,000 advantageous and sentenced him to 25 days in jail.

He described the location as one of many “most important track sites in North America” for its variety of fossils, and lamented that the stolen tracks haven’t been recovered.

The ruling added that the sandstone broken in the course of the unlawful excavation is now way more more likely to erode quicker.