2013 1oz $20 - DINOSAURS OF CANADA: BATHYGNATHUS BOREALIS - FINE SILVER COIN

Theme:
The first coin in the Royal Canadian Mint’s exciting new series featuring portraits of prehistoric animals discovered in Canada!

Description:
This fine silver coin is certified to be 99.99% pure silver with a diameter of 38 millimetres and a metal weight of 31.39 grams. The reverse image by Canadian artist Julius Csotonyi features an interpretation of what Bathygnathus borealis may have looked like. The scientific accuracy of the depiction was verified by palaeontologists of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology.

Viewed from its front left side, Bathygnathus borealis appears to approach the viewer, displaying the large, powerful, tooth-filled maxilla whose discovery first brought Bathygnathus borealis into the limelight. Depicted here as similar to Dimetrodon, we see the mammal-like reptile’s powerful, low-slung body. Its muscular, claw-tipped front limbs bow slightly to the sides of its squat body, its front left claw raised as it walks forward. Its hind left leg is similarly bowed and its hind right foot is just visible beneath the low belly, raised in unison with the front left limb in a lizard-like walking motion. The animal’s long tail curves behind it, toward the left side of the image. From the animal’s back rises one of the key Dimetrodon features: the tall, spiny, skin-covered dorsal sail used to regulate body temperature. The reverse is engraved with the word “CANADA,” the date “2013,” and the face value of “20 DOLLARS.” The obverse features the effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II by Susanna Blunt.

Special Features:

• A Royal Canadian Mint first! The first pure silver Royal Canadian Mint coin to feature a full, non-skeletal portrait of a prehistoric animal.

• First coin in a series of silver coins featuring finely engraved, lifelike representations of prehistoric animals discovered in Canada.

•  A limited mintage of 10,000 coins and highly popular subject matter, combined with exceptional engraving and design, mean that this coin is sure to be a favourite among collectors and gift-givers alike.

Product Specifications:
Face Value: 20 dollars
Mintage: 8,500
Composition: 99.99% pure silver
Weight (g): 31.39
Diameter (mm): 38
Edge: Serrated
Finish: Proof
Certificate: Serialized
Artist: Julius Csotonyi

Packaging:
Coin is encapsulated and presented in a Royal Canadian Mint branded maroon clamshell case lined with flock and protected by a black sleeve.

Finished Size: 67 mm x 67 mm
Advertising Date: June 4, 2013
Launch Date: June 11, 2013

Complete Certificate Text:
The Mysterious Bathygnathus borealis
Though the current Canadian landscape is geologically recent, the landmass has teemed with life for hundreds of millions of years. Clues to the life story of our land and the creatures that once lived here lie encased in rock and earth. Solving the mystery of how they lived and died has captivated Canadian researchers and laypeople for over a century.

One of the first fossil discoveries to capture the Canadian imagination was that of Bathygnathus borealis. In 1845, while digging a freshwater well near New London, Prince Edward Island, a man named Donald McLeod found what appeared to be part of the jaw of an ancient sharp-toothed animal. He gave it to Sir John William Dawson (the father of Atlantic Canada geology and paleontology), who later sold it to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, in the care of American paleontologist Joseph Leidy, to be studied. Initially, Leidy incorrectly suggested the bone was part of a dinosaur’s lower jaw. At the time, dinosaurs were known from incomplete skeletons in Europe but almost solely from footprints in North America, which led to this early misidentification. It wasn’t until 1905 that the bone was correctly identified as part of the upper jaw of a sphenacodontid, a family of “pelycosaur-grade” mammal-like reptiles or synapsids, animals that lived from the Late Pennsylvanian to middle Permian ages. Based on similarities of the jaw bones, experts now believe that the specimen could actually belong to the sail-back Dimetrodon or a similar animal, although fossil evidence of a sail has yet to be found. If Bathygnathus was similar to Dimetrodon, the large “sail” on its back could have helped regulate its body temperature.

Though exact details about the appearance and lifestyle of Bathygnathus borealis remain elusive, palaeontologists have been able to glean considerable information from this single fragment of upper jaw bone and its discovery site. They know the creature lived between 290 and 260 million years ago, when what is now Prince Edward Island lay near the equator. Its teeth suggest it was a large carnivorous synapsid that could have reached 2-3 metres in length. To this day the Bathygnathus borealis jaw bone remains the highest-quality specimen of the Permianperiod ever found on Prince Edward Island.

With its early mis-identification as a dinosaur, Bathygnathus was long considered the first Canadian dinosaur discovery but its revised identity does not diminish its scientific and historical significance, making it the first pelycosaur ever discovered in the world.