Experience Tumbler Ridge
Dr. Buckley with fossil bird trackway Photo Courtesy of Dr. Charles Helm
Future of Tumbler Ridge Museum Unknown In March 2018 the District of Tumbler Ridge denied the Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation’s request for funding. As a result the Foundation, The Peace Region Palaeontology Research Centre and Dinosaur Discovery Gallery were closed. All may not be lost though. The Foundation remains committed to reopening the facilities and were actively seeking funding through grants or corporate donations at the time we went to press. To stay on top of the situation visit the Foundation’s website trmf.ca.
200 km west of Grande Prairie lays the coal mining town of Tumbler Ridge, BC. One footloose and fancy-free summer day in 2000, two local boys, Mark Turner (11) and Daniel Helm (8), were tubing in the rapids of Flatbed Creek near Tumbler Ridge. After falling off their tube, they walked back upstream on bedrock. Noting some unusual depressions on the banks, they became convinced they were dinosaur tracks. Although he was sceptical, Daniel’s father, Dr. Charles Helm, ultimately contacted palaeontologist Dr. Rich McCrea. He confirmed the prints were a trackway of a heavily-armoured ankylosaur. Unlike the body fossils, such as bones or shells, these trace fossils preserve a record of an animal’s activity. Little did any of the players know that this discovery would change their lives and their community forever. Along with other fossil discoveries made by enthusiastic locals, the dinosaur trackway served as the catalyst for Dr. Charles Helm to form the Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation (TRMF). In 2002, the TRMF led a prospecting tour in a deep canyon along Quality Creek. A local prospector showed Dr. McCrea
a bone he’d spotted in a large sandstone slab beside the creek which had slid down from the nearby cliff face. Ribs, vertebrae and a fibula embedded in the block represented a colossal find as the first massive concentration of dinosaur material in BC. The site turned out to be a treasure trove of dinosaur tracks and the bones of theropods, hadrosaurs, ankylosaurs, crocodiles, turtles, fish, a freshwater ray and a smattering of bivalve shells. The bones from this Kaskapau Formation (Turonian; about 90 million years old) proved much older than any others found in western Canada to date. With such an explosion of dinosaur findings, Dr. McCrea spearheaded the creation of the Peace Region Paleontology Research Centre (PRPRC) in 2003. This centre is the only one in BC which excavates, prepares, researches, interprets, exhibits and stores fossils. Since its creation, the PRPRC has carried out many excavations and studies in the Peace Region. In 2016 the PRPRC published the analysis of T. rex trackways found in the region; it provides the first record of the walking gait of tyrannosaurids. That same year, the PRPRC team
46 | Enter our Photo & Selfie Contests
