Experience The Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum
Photo Co urtesy Tra vel Albert Dinosaur a, Philip J. Museum Currie & Sean T rostem
Photo Courtesy Travel Alberta & Mike Seehagel
What does the Stay-puft Marshmallow Man, the paranormal monster from the 1984 movie Ghost Busters, have to do with dinosaurs near Grande Prairie? The Canadian-born movie star Dan Aykroyd has hunted them both. Inspired by his 2010 participation in a dig in the area with his dinosaur-obsessed daughter, Danielle, and wife, Donna Dixon, Aykroyd became an ardent supporter of the museum. The hunt for dinosaurs in Wembley, AB, about a 20-minute drive west of Grande Prairie, starts back in 1974 when school teacher Al Lakusta discovered the Pipestone Creek dinosaur bone bed. Today, Pipestone Creek is shallow, and often dries up in the heat of the summer. However, 75 million years ago it was a different story. Pipestone Creek was a turbulent torrent racing through a land of active volcanoes and hulking dinosaurs. A flash flood swept thousands of these giants down river; their carcasses jammed up in a bend in the river, eventually becoming fossilized skeletons melding into the landscape. While out for a walk one day with a friend, Lakusta noticed rib fragments in the creek bed. Clambering up the bank, he
discovered a seam of fossilized bones, including the remains of what was eventually recognised as a new species of dinosaur, officially christened Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai in honour of his find. At the time of Lakusta’s discoveries, northwestern Alberta was not known for its dinosaur bones. After he sent specimens to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Dr. Philip J. Currie, Alberta’s, and arguably Canada’s pre-eminent paleontologist, began an official excavation of Pipestone Creek in 1986. The density of bones, up to 100 bones/m2, established the site as one of the richest in Canada. In addition to unearthing thousands of Pachyrhinosaurus bones, Dr. Currie and his colleagues at the UofA discovered bones from flying pterosaurs, armoured nodosaurs, predatory tyrannosaurs, marine plesiosaurs, and duck-billed hadrosaurs. Given the bone bed is almost football-field size, many more dinosaur fossils and their mysteries have yet to be discovered. One well-preserved hadrosaur fossil caused a stir in 2013 as it contained “mummified” head crest skin impressions from the duck-billed Edmontosaurus regalis - this fossil confirmed
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