THE ROYAL TYRELL MUSEUM, Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, a Prehistoric Treasure Trove

Royal Tyrell Museum, Drumheller, Alberta, Canada

In early May, Art and I were in Canada, landing in Calgary, then driving about an hour and a half across the Alberta wheat fields to the town of Drumheller, located in the Canadian Badlands, where some of the world’s most impressive dinosaur fossils have been found. Our goal was to visit the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology, a treasure trove of fossils from the Dinosaur Age.

Dinosaur fossils at the Royal Tyrell Museum, Drumheller, Alberta, Canada

After buying our tickets at the museum entrance, we followed signs to the first room, which we found filled with life size models of dinosaurs and an introduction to life in Cretaceous Alberta. We felt as if we had stepped into another world.

Cretaceous Alberta. Seventy million years ago, eastern Alberta was warmer and wetter than it is today and was teeming with wildlife—dinosaurs of all sorts of shapes and sizes!

Dinosaurs lived from about 230 to 64 million years ago, during the Mesozoic Era.

A visit to the museum is a trip through time—3.9 billion years of evolution. 

While some skeletons are displayed in life-like poses, assembled as they would have been in the living animal---

Camarasaurus. The mounting of the skeletons in real-life poses recreates the drama of life in the past.

--or even as whole skeletons as they appeared when first discovered---

This T. rex skeleton is known as “black beauty". The bones became darkened by the element manganese during fossilization.

--it is more typical for fossil bones to be scattered, needing to be reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle.

A typical bonebed.

And not only are there fossils of dinosaurs at the museum, but also of plants, insects, fish, amphibians, birds, other reptiles.

Fossil impression of an early bird Confuciousornis sanctus (125-120 mya) from Liaoning Province China. Donated by the Chinese Academy of Science.

While most exhibits are just to look at, some invite participation. Standing next to this Camarasaurus hind limb, I look miniscule. In real life Camarasaurus grew to be 60 feet long and weighed 32 tons.

Camarasaurus right hind limb.

Albertosaurus sarcophagus hand--and my hand!

The remains of Borealopelta markmitchelli, found at a mine north of Fort McMurray, are of the best-preserved armored dinosaur in the world.  This dinosaur is named after Mark Mitchell, who worked on the specimen to prepare it for study and exhibit.  Analysis of pigments found with the skeleton suggest that the dinosaur was reddish-brown in real life.

Borealopelta markmitchelli

Most of the fossils on exhibit at the Tyrell Museum have been found in Canada, but some are from other places. A slab of fossilized ferns from a coal mine in Pennsylvania is mounted at the entrance to the Cretaceous Garden, a greenhouse with ferns, cycads, and other plants typical of the Dinosaur Age.

Ancient ferns preserved in coal.

Every day scientists are learning new things about dinosaurs. The large flat plates along the spine of Stegosaurus were probably used for display and species recognition, but traces of blood vessels suggest they may also have been used to help regulate body temperature.

Stegosaurus. This slow-moving, plant-eating dinosaur was about 20-25 feet long and weighed 2-5 tons.

 

Shonisaurus skeleton.

One whole room of the museum is devoted to the giant fossil of a sea reptile called Shonisaurus, the biggest and best-preserved giant sea reptile fossil ever found. I wrote about its discovery in my book Giant Sea Reptiles of the Dinosaur Age. It was a thrill to meet it in person--and to see all the other amazing fossils that fill the museum. (You can read more about Shonisaurus in a separate blog post at my Art and Books blog.)

The path through the museum winds its way through many rooms (including some on the second level) finally exiting through the gift shop. Among the many souvenirs for sale I was pleased to see a large selection of children's books about dinosaurs and the prehistoric world. We visited on a Saturday afternoon and the museum was filled with families of dinosaur enthusiasts. As we left the last room of the museum we were reminded of the importance of learning about the Earth's past:

Understanding ancient life and the circumstances in which it flourished or died, helps us recognize our place in nature, and how our decisions affect all life on Earth.

Royal Tyrell Museum seen from viewing platform.

During our visit we spent several hours in the museum, pausing for lunch in the museum cafeteria. We ate inside but on a warmer day one can sit on the patio overlooking a pond. At the end of the day, before going back to our car, we climbed the stairs to the top of the hill across from the museum for a panoramic view of the Red Deer River Valley. The next morning we returned for a hike around the Badlands Interpretive Trail and a visit to the hoodoos. (See my blog post of May 15, 2023.)

To plan a visit to the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology, visit the museum website.

Daspletosaurus skull.

MARY ANNING's Amazing Fossils at the Natural History Museum, London

"Mary Anning" at the Museum of Natural History, London

In 1811, Mary Anning and her older brother Joseph discovered a strange-looking skull eroding out of the cliffs of Lyme Regis on England’s Dorset coast.  The fossil turned out to be the head of an ichthyosaur, a sea-going contemporary of the dinosaurs.  (At the time the word “dinosaur” had not yet been coined.)  This was the first of Mary Anning's many remarkable discoveries, now on display at the British Natural History Museum in London.

Meeting Mary Anning

On a recent trip to London, I visited the museum, and as I walked along the gallery where Mary Anning’s fossils are displayed, who should I see, but Mary Anning herself!  Of course, it was not the real Mary Anning, who lived from 1799 to 1847, but a character actor, who was delighted to interact with me and other visitors as if we were still in the early 19th century.  For me, this was a special treat, as I had researched Mary Anning’s life and written about her discoveries in two of my books, Giant Sea Reptiles of the Dinosaur Age and Pterosaurs: Rulers of the Skies in the Dinosaur Age.

Ichthyosaur fossil, 203 - 194 million years old. Like reptiles that live on land, ichthyosaurs needed to breathe air.  Their nostrils were located in front of their eyes.

Fossil hunting in Britain had its “golden age” in the first half of the nineteenth century.  People collected fossils for fun and profit as well as for academic study.  Mary Anning collected fossils from the rocks along the shore near Lyme Regis and sold them to support her family.  She had little formal education, but an uncanny ability to find fossils.  The ichthyosaur skeleton, and many of Mary’s other finds, were used by leading scientists of the time as a basis for their new theories about Earth’s history.

Ichthyosaur head. The large eye of an ichthyosaur was surrounded by a doughnut-shaped bone called the sclerotic ring.  Large eyes enabled ichthyosaurs to see well in dim ocean depths.

The cliffs at Lyme Regis, on England’s southern coast, are filled with the remains of marine animals that had lived 200 million years earlier, during Jurassic times, when this region was a shallow sea.  When Mary Anning’s brother Joseph first saw the ichthyosaur skull, he thought it was a crocodile.  Later, after a fierce storm washed away more of the cliff, Mary discovered the neck and shoulders of the animal’s skeleton. At the time, she was only thirteen years old.  She and her brother excavated the bones and sold them to a fossil collector from London, who thought they belonged to a giant fish.  At the time, little was known about prehistoric sea reptiles.  It was not until several years later, after similar fossils had been found, that the skeleton was correctly identified as that of an ichthyosaur.  Because these strange animals seemed to be part fish and part reptile, they were given a scientific name meaning “fish lizard.”

Plesiosaur skeleton, 203 - 194 million years old.  Collected by Mary Anning in 1824.

In addition to her discoveries of at least three ichthyosaur skeletons, Mary Anning found fossils of two plesiosaurs and a pterodactyl, as well as numerous fish, ammonites (spiral-shelled mollusks that are ancient relatives of the chambered nautilus), brittle stars, and other marine animals, including many belemnites.  Like squid, belemnites had ink sacs.  One of the belemnites she found was complete with its fossil ink!

Ammonites from Lyme Regis

Mary Anning collected fossils for many of the leading scientists of the day and her work helped develop new ideas about what the world was like in prehistoric times.  As a woman and without a formal education, she was not recognized in her time.  Today, she is given credit for some of the most amazing fossil discoveries ever made.

Recommended book:
I recently read about Mary Anning in the book, Remarkable Creatures: A Novel by Tracy Chevalier.  This fictionalized story of Mary Anning and her relationship with the Philpot sisters who helped promote her work, brings the town of Lyme Regis to life and makes you appreciate the difficulty of fossil collecting and the amazing contribution Mary Anning has made to our understanding of prehistoric life.  The book is also a window on the social and religious conventions of the time and how Mary Anning’s  fossils challenged many of those ideas.