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Eastend’s Discovery Centre features World’s Largest T-Rex Skeleton
If you’re interested in learning more about the creatures that roamed southwest Saskatchewan millions of years ago, then the T-Rex Discovery Centre near the Town of Eastend is your dinosaur destination. The palaeontological centre — an hour away from the scenic Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park — is a world-class venue that opened in 2001. This natural history museum showcases the rich fossil record of the Frenchman River Valley and Cypress Hills, including “Scotty,” the world’s largest Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Scotty’s skeleton is one of the most complete in the world at 75 per cent. The skeleton is almost always being studied in a fossil and paleontological laboratory on-site, but a replica is also housed in the museum where visitors can see all the bones that have been discovered so far. Originally discovered by a Royal Saskatchewan Museum research team in Saskatchewan’s Frenchman River Valley on Aug. 16, 1991, the fossilized remains of Scotty were painstakingly removed — almost completely by hand — over two decades from the rock in which they were embedded. The skeleton was finally revealed in 2011. Admission to the Discovery Centre includes a 30-minute documentary called “The Dinosaur Hunters,” which details the discovery and excavation of Scotty in the nearby hills. Guided tours of the building are offered at no extra charge, but visitors are also welcomed to wander its halls on their own, where they can learn about the rich fossil history of this area of Saskatchewan. Another exhibit, “Saskatchewan After the Dinosaurs,” contains a full-scale diorama that displays the animals and environments that would have been found in the immediate area about 60 million years ago, right after the expected extinction of the dinosaurs. The exhibit includes a six-foot-long Borealosuchus, or northern crocodile; a five-foot Champsosaurus, or fish-eating reptile; and Ptilodus, a small mammal known as a multituberculate. A Cretaceous Gallery explores the geologic sediments deposited to create the Bearpaw Formation and the Frenchman Formation and their fossils. This includes invertebrates from the Bearpaw Formation like ammonite and baculite, fish, shark, turtles and marine reptiles, and fossils from the Frenchman Formation like Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops and Hadrosaurus. Hands-on learning activities, children’s activities, prehistoric mammal galleries, a 98-seat theatre, a fossil lab, natural history-themed gift shop and tourist information are all available. The T-Rex Discovery Centre is located at 1 T-Rex Drive in the Town of Eastend. The venue will open to the public on May 22 and closes the Labour Day long weekend in September. For more information, call 306-295-4009.
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