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.

SKARA BRAE, a Prehistoric Stone Age Village in Scotland's Orkney Islands

The ruins of Skara Brae face the Bay of Skaill

On a windswept island at the northern tip of Scotland, thick, stone walls lie half buried by the edge of the sea.  They are the remains of Skara Brae, one of Europe's oldest known and best preserved prehistoric villages.  Five thousand years ago ancient farmers tended livestock and tilled the earth on land surrounding the village.  They also hunted wildlife and fished along the coast.  Their houses, built of sturdy stone, were clustered in a compact unit and joined along an inner passageway.  They were the heart of a close-knit agricultural community and may have been home to as many as twenty families at one time.
    Art and I visited Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands in late August 1992 as part of the celebration of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.  We rode a train north from Edinburgh to John O’Groats and took a ferry from there to the islands.  It was an amazing trip back in time as we viewed the remains of the village where people had lived for nearly 600 years. After they left, wind blew sand from the surrounding dunes over the village and buried it.  For thousands of years Skara Brae was forgotten.

Skara Brae and the manor house of the Laird of Skaill

The weather in the Orkneys is often wet and windy and during our visit we experienced both sun and rain. In the winter of 1850, a series of violent storms battered the islands, pounding them with fierce waves and gale force winds.  One of these storms was so severe that it blew away the grass and sand from a high dune on land owned by William Watt, the Laird of Skaill.  (Laird is the Scottish word for lord.)  When the storm subsided, William Watt went out to inspect the damage to his property.  As he crossed the land that separated his fields from the sea, he saw that the wind and waves had exposed the remains of a long buried ancient village.  For the first time in more than forty centuries, the dwellings of Skara Brae were exposed to the open air.  As William Watt uncovered the ruins he discovered more stone walls, furniture, stone and bone tools, pottery, beads and other objects.  The sand and surrounding embankment had protected the houses and the items in them so well that many were in almost perfect condition.

Today, visitors to Skara Brae can explore the remains of the village and see many of the ancient objects found during its excavation.  No other place in northern Europe provides such a complete picture of life in the neolithic, or new stone age.

Shallow basins in the floor may have held fish bait or a supply of fresh water.

The village of Skara Brae is a cluster of one room houses joined by covered passages.  Today these buildings are open to the sky, but in ancient times they would have been covered by low roofs.  The houses probably had rafters made of whalebone or wood which were then covered with sod and held down by ropes. (Fragments of rope made from twisted heather have been found in the midden.) 
    Of all the ancient sites in the Orkneys, Skara Brae is among the most remarkable.  As we peered over the village walls, it was not hard to imagine families sitting around their hearths long ago talking and eating while children played and neighbors came to visit.  With firelight dancing across the walls and winter winds roaring outside, these sturdy stone houses would have been a welcome retreat from the weather and places where people could feel safe and secure.

The standing stones of the Ring of Brodgar are about six miles from Skara Brae.  They were erected during the same period that people lived at Skara Brae.

Skara Brae is amazing both because it is so old and because so much has been preserved.  People were living at Skara Brae before the Egyptians built their pyramids, before ancient Americans built their first cities and before the Chinese built the Great Wall.  Skara Brae is a window onto some of our most ancient history.  For those of us with roots in northern Europe, the ruins at Skara Brae provide fascinating clues to how some of our most remote ancestors may have actually lived.

You can read more about Skara Brae and the Orkney Islands in my book Stone Age Farmers Beside the Sea (Clarion, 1997).  It is out of print but available online and in libraries.  Or, you can download it to your Kindle.

Update July 21, 2014:  For information about the most recent neolithic discoveries in the Orkneys, check out the August 2014 issue of National Geographic magazine.