Dinosaur fossils discovered in a box at a Calgary Goodwill

Fossils discovered in a box at the Goodwill Calgary Impact Centre.

Employees at a Calgary Goodwill were shocked when they discovered dinosaur fossils among donated items.

The staff members at the Goodwill Calgary Impact Centre made the unique find in mid-January.

“We came across a box that was filled with rocks,” Daoud Abbasi, a brand coordinator for Goodwill Industries of Alberta, said.

“The manager that works here, basically we both were kind of looking at these rocks and we’re like ‘okay, what is this?’”

Trips to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alta., as a kid made Abbasi suspect that they weren’t just regular rocks.

After some internet research, they contacted the museum.

Joseph Sanchez, the head technician at the museum, was able to verify five of the seven fossils’ authenticity, based on images and information provided by Goodwill.

The museum traced pieces of petrified wood back to the Cretaceous Period (145 million – 66 million years ago).

The fossils include a fragment of Ordovician tabulate coral and a piece of an ornithischian dinosaur bone, possibly from a hadrosaur or ceratopsian.

Goodwill will be delivering the fossils to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller.

Goodwill will be sending the fossils to the Royal Tyrell Museum for further analysis in the next week.

“Being an Albertan, I think I would be devastated if this ended up in the landfill,” Abbasi said.

Abbasi said it's one of the most unique and fascinating discoveries he’s come across at Goodwill.