1.5 hours away from Calgary is Drumheller, Alberta, internationally recognized for its rich abundance of dinosaur fossils and home of the world-renowned Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology.
I would assume most of the tourists come here to see the dinosaur museum. Everywhere you look in the town, you will find a dinosaur.
You do have to drive a little bit into town to get to the museum, but the view is amazing. The town is in a valley, so you will see all the different layers of sediments that were there.
What makes this museum so special is that the Royal Tyrell Museum has Canada’s largest collection of dinosaur fossils. If you want to go to the ultimate dinosaur museum, this is the place to go. To this day, they are still discovering new dinosaur fossil in and around the area. Pretty awesome.
The museum is situated in Midland Provincial Park, 6KM northeast of Drumheller, Alberta
There is plenty of free parking and museum entrance for an adult is $15. Pretty decent price I would say. M and I spent about 1.5 hours here looking at all the exhibits.
They has been voted one of the world’s top dinosaur museums by CNN, National Geographic, USA Today, and Smithsonian Magazine several years in a row.
There are definitely a lot of opportunities to take photos and do some fun poses.
At the beginning of the museum, you will find recreation of what the dinosaurs look like.
But, I think everyone is interested in the cool fossils.
In the Lords of the Land exhibit, you won’t miss the enormous 13.7-metre long Tyrannosaurus rex!
The Preparation Lab is where the fossils that they find from the field gets transport them back to the Museum and then the technicians begin to meticulously remove the surrounding rock in order to expose the fossils so that they can interpret and record their findings.
The Cretaceous Garden is a small area where you will find the recreation of the ancient Alberta landscape- a lush, coastal environment dotted with swamps, ponds, and marshes. Look at the room filled with plants found in the fossil record.
Some things you will find in there are:
- A fossilized dinosaur footprint found only steps from the Museum
- A three-tonne fossilized tree stump, Alberta’s provincial stone
- Two Gingko trees, often called living fossils because they have barely changed in over 270 million years
The Dinosaur Hall has fossils everywhere in the room.
Some highlights are:
- Triceratops with its large bony frill and three horns, is one of the most recognizable of all dinosaurs
- Euoplocephalus, meaning “well-armoured head”, was one of the largest ankylosaurs—about the size of a small elephant.
- Not everything in Dinosaur Hall is a dinosaur—check out the Bearpaw Sea exhibit with mosasaurs and elasmosaurs; some of the largest marine reptiles that ever lived
Overall, it was great to spend a few hours here to see a lot of fossils. M really loved it because he’s just a dinosaur nerd.
Address:
1500 N Dinosaur Trail, Drumheller, AB
Website:
http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/
