The first reported dinosaur bone in British Columbia was found beside the initial ankylosaur trackway site in 2001.  In 2002 the first accumulation of dinosaur bones in British Columbia was discovered. While not articulated, these included dinosaur bones from a number of groups including theropods, ornithopods and ankylosaurs. Over two hundred bones were removed from this site during the first three years of excavation. These bones were much older than the well–known Alberta material (93 million years as opposed to 65–74 million years) and thus were the oldest known dinosaur skeletal material in western Canada. Being from the Turonian Stage of the Late Cretaceous, they provide a window on vertebrate fossils from this period, which are globally rare.

Subsequent prospecting in younger rocks, 75–73 million years old, has yielded further sites. Several hundred bones have been removed from these localities, including one articulated hadrosaur specimen surrounded by scores of shed juvenile tyrannosaurid teeth. Teeth of the sickle–clawed dromaeosaurs and troodontids as well as hadrosaur jaws, fish scales, and champsosaur vertebrae have also been recovered. At the hadrosaur excavation site there is evidence in the form of microtektites that may represent a significant extraterrestrial event. In 2013 excavation revealed the presence of multiple dinosaurs, indicating a dinosaur bonebed, B.C.’s first.

In these Cretaceous rocks is the final fossil strength of the Tumbler Ridge area: abundant plant life and invertebrate life. In the latter category are crustaceans, oysters, inoceramids and starfish impressions. A great transformation took place during the early part of the Late Cretaceous Period (Cenomanian), from a landscape initially dominated by redwoods, ferns, cycads, seed ferns, horsetails and ginkgo, to one dominated by angiosperms (flowering plants). These are all represented in local rocks.