Drumheller, Alberta – Canada

For as long as I can remember I have been obsessed with dinosaurs, – I mean I did want to become a palaeontologist for the longest time. Now imagine my excitement when I found out that we were going to Drumheller, a small town in the middle of Alberta, and more importantly the dinosaur capital of the world! The main tourist draw in Drumhelller is the Royal Tyrell Museum, but they also have the world’s largest dinosaur and the Hoodoos rock formations.

 

 

 

We arrived in the evening and the first thing I noticed while driving around town were all these little dinosaur sculptures, some looking like the actual dinosaurs and some painted in bright colors. We also drove past the world’s largest dinosaur to have a look, and desperately tried to take some photos in the darkness. We returned the next morning to climb to the lookout point at the top of the dinosaur. The walk up to the top of the dinosaur is painted with different cartoon scenes from the dinosaur age. As this area of Alberta is super flat, the view from up top was impressive.

 

 

 

 

After discovering some more of the dinosaur statues in town, we headed out to the Royal Tyrell Museum, a massive palaeontology museum and research facility with more than 130000 fossils. Safe to say I was in dinosaur heaven. The museum starts off with a big room with dinosaur sculptures, depicting how the area could have looked when the dinosaurs were alive. It then goes on to explain how fossils are made and how they are discovered.

 

 

 

Then comes the most fascinating areas of the museum, the research facility. It first explains how they go about finding the fossils, and how they transport them. Fossils weighing several tons are often covered in gypsum for safe transportation to the Museum. There is also a big glass wall into a room where researchers work on cleaning the fossils and preparing them for further research. One researcher sits out in the exhibition area working on a smaller piece of fossil, so you can see the work they do up close.

 

 

 

The next exhibit was also cool, and I only found out later how unique it was, namely the only nodosaur ever found. It was found in an oil sand mine at Fort McMurray in 2011, and was only ready to be exhibited in May 2017. In addition to the skeleton, also the keratin sheaths and the overlaying skin has been preserved; –  they have even managed to bring out a reddish skin tone. Unfortunately, it was impossible to get any good pictures of the fossil because it is displayed in a massive glass case.

 

 

 

Next up you go through a tunnel depicting all the different time periods, and which fossils belong to which period. This was neat, and a great way to see the impact of evolution. This exhibit ends in my favourite room at the entire museum, the Dinosaur Hall, with more than 40 different dinosaur skeletons. There was lots of information about the different dinosaurs, and they did an amazing job explaining which parts were real fossils and which were casts of an actual fossil. The mounted fossils were really impressive, as you could get a good feeling of just how massive these animals were.

 

 

 

 

The last exhibit was from more “recent” history with mammoths and sable tooth tigers. It almost seemed like I stepped into the movie Ice Age. Again, it was interesting to see how evolution has made some of the animals into animals we know today. That being said, it was not as interesting as the dinosaurs.

 

 

After we left the museum, we headed out to the Hoodoos, these impressive rock formations. They form when the softer rock and mud below wash away over the years, leaving the stronger rock laying on top of the formation. The landscape of the surrounding valley was also really impressive, with so many layers and cracks in the rock.

 

 

 

 

 

This was definitely a fantastic day for my inner palaeontologist self!