"This thing would be many tens of metres (from) the surface" of the earth, said Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology curator Donald Henderson, who was at the site Thursday. "If it wasn't for the digging, we would never see this."

Heavy equipment operator Maggy Horvath was shovelling ore at the oilsands company's Mildred Lake mine site on Nov. 14 when her shovel exposed the neck and upper vertebrae of a plesiosaur.

A team from the Drumheller-based Royal Tyrrell was called in. But removing the fossil from its resting place, where it is now pushing through the face of a cliff about five metres above the mine pit's base, is a tricky job that hasn't even started.

"The rock is really crumbling and there's lots of fractures," said Henderson, noting there are safety and equipment issues. At this point, researchers have only begun to comb through the rubble removed from the cliff face in search of the plesiosaur's head and more of its neck.