Oh, what irony that the fiercest creatures ever to roam the planet have been unearthed, literally, in Canada. Here, in the land where the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex roared, we now honour the beaver. T. rex would use beavers as tennis balls — assuming dinosaurs played tennis or coexisted with beavers. Regardless, their old bones, discovered in southern Alberta’s badlands, have been found in the world’s richest fossil bed. Like most kids, I was fascinated by dinosaurs, reciting their long-winded saurus names and taking extra time to look at today’s tiny lizards, wondering where it all went wrong. Or, given the rise of mammals, right. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived at Dinosaur Provincial Park, I was just another jaded adult too consumed by maturity to appreciate the fact that I had just plucked a 70-million-year-old dinosaur bone directly from the ground. The kids around me, however, went berserk.
ON THE BUCKET LIST: Professor Philip J. Currie
The world’s foremost dinosaur expert (think Sam Neill in Jurassic Park, who was partially based on Dr. Currie) digs into the national bucket list:
The Milk River Canyon north of the American border is Alberta’s deepest canyon and is also in the most sparsely populated region in the southern half of the province. The unhindered view of prairie grasslands is augmented by a great bowl-like depression that slopes down toward the canyon, offering a spectacular view of the mysterious Sweetgrass Hills on the south side of the border. The badlands have produced some of the most interesting fossils from the province, including embryonic duckbilled dinosaurs within eggs and a superbly preserved skeleton of the ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex!
—Professor Philip J. Currie, world-renowned palaeontologist, founder, Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology
All it takes is a little imagination. Seventy-five million years ago, the Red Deer River valley was as lush and tropical as Central America. Huge beasts roamed about, looking very much like giant lizards, or birds, or museum skeletons, depending on which theory you choose to believe. When the dinosaurs woke up to the Worst Day Ever, and promptly died, their bones settled on the riverbed, were covered by soft sandstone and mudstone, and were all but forgotten until the 1800s, when the fiercest creatures on Earth, humans, now wore funny hats. During the last ice age, a glacier had removed the top level of dirt, exposing hundreds of bones from more than 40 types of dinosaurs, including Tyrannosauridae, Hypsilophodontidae, and Ankylosauria (you know, the ones with thick ankles).
Today, this UNESCO World Heritage Site is more than just Dinosaur Central. Sure, the visitor centre and interpretation drives are interesting, and you can drive a couple of hours to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller to see what the fossils look like cleaned up and bolted together. But it’s the landscape itself that struck me, dare I say it, like a meteor.
The badlands are so called because the soil makes this land terrible for farming but wonderful for filming science fiction. Cracked grey earth resembling the skin of an elephant is tightly wrapped around phallic rocks called hoodoos. Rattlesnakes shake among the riverside cottonwoods, while the much smaller descendants of dinosaurs fly overhead or bask in the sun. Taking it all in, it’s hard not to appreciate the scale of our planet’s history, and the paleontological riches of Alberta.
A couple of years later, I find myself extracting an articulated bone from a fossil bed cut into a steep cliff, an hour outside Grande Prairie. I am almost 1,000 kilometres north of the badlands, at the site of yet another remarkable discovery. Here, among oil and gas platforms, lies one of the world’s next-richest fossil beds, as palaeontologists from around the world work each summer in sun and rain to extract one fossil after another. One of the world’s most famous dinosaur guys, Canada’s own Professor Phil Currie, is spearheading the charge, complete with a $26-million namesake museum to house new-found treasures unearthed from the area.
Oil and gas beneath the earth have made Alberta Canada’s richest province. Yet its earth continues to yield riches that give us profound insight into the past. Whether you’re into history, museums, or just unusual scenery, join the hunt for dinosaurs in Alberta. At least before a meteor comes out of nowhere, causes a deep impact, blocks out the sun, wipes out life, and forces you, inconveniently, to wait another 70 million years for the opportunity.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/dinosaur