Experience Drumheller Photos Courtesy of The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology
Nodosaur
Pantodont
It’s surprising what you’ll discover beneath your feet, and the Royal Tyrrell Museum at Drumheller, Alberta has an amazing collection of fossils to prove that point. The extensive displays throughout the museum are both real and incredulous as they raise awareness of the vast array of the strange looking flora and fauna once covering this region. The Grounds for Discovery exhibit, which opened in 2017, features some of the best examples of fossils unearthed during routine construction and industrial activities right here in the province Alberta. As fossils were accidentally discovered during an oil and gas development, road construction, and even home bilding, palaeontologists worked with companies to excavate and preserve scientifically important specimens. The nodosaur Borealopelta markmitchelli, the oldest known dinosaur found in Alberta, is an amazing example. A fossil of
Hadro Block
this armored dinosaur, believed to be 112 to 110 million years old, was found at a Suncor mine site in northern Alberta in 2011. It is the best-persevered specimen of an armored dinosaur in the world. It includes skin and armor complete from the snout to the hips. But there is much more. A fossil of a pantodont, a large plant-eating mammal that roamed Alberta about 60 million years ago is also on display. This fossil was found during road construction east of Red Deer in 2001. It’s hard to believe that most of western North America was once covered by the Western Interior Seaway. This occured about 112 million years ago — at least until you see the fossil of a Nichollssaura borealis, a marine reptile that once swam in these waters. It is the oldest and most complete fossil of a plesiosaur found in North America. It was uncovered near Fort McMurray at a Syncrude mine site.
How It All Started In 1884 a geologist by the name of Joseph Burr Tyrrell (pronounced TEER-uhl), working for the Geological Survey of Canada not only came across coal in the Red Deer River valley, but he also stumbled across the skull of a 70-million-year-old dinosaur near Kneehill Creek, not far from the site of the present museum. It was the first of its species ever to be found. A few years later it was identified and named Albertosaurus sarcophagus (“flesh-eating lizard from Alberta”). The find launched a 132-year, and counting, era of a palaeontology study, investigation and discovery in Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan among other locales.
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Circa 1904
