Calgary & Southern Alberta

Joseph B. Tyrrell
Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection

The story of Calgary begins 90 million years ago when a shallow inland sea covered much of western Canada. Buried at the bottom of this sea were the remains of tons of small living organisms that under pressure and heat of the following millennium produced the petroleum that supports Alberta's current oil and gas industry. Once this inland sea drained the climate became semi-tropical and the coastal lowlands were dotted with lakes, marshes and deltas that sustained an environment in which dinosaurs evolved. George Mercer Dawson was credited with the first western Canadian dinosaur fossil discoveries in the 1870s. In 1884, Dawson commissioned his assistant Joseph B. Tyrrell, an explorer, cartographer, geologist, and mineralogist, to explore the relatively unknown wilderness stretching from Central Alberta west from Fort Calgary, into what is now British Columbia. He began his journey at Fort Calgary and led his team of eight east into the valleys.

In April 1884, near what is now Drumheller, Alberta, Tyrrell was eating lunch and decided to wash off his dishes in a nearby creek. After he had finished he began to search an unusual rock formation on the bank. His curiosity made him probe deeper, and he stumbled across a piece of bone projecting out of the bank. The piece turned out to be a portion of a very large dinosaur skull. His team spent the afternoon excavating the remains, which Tyrrell deduced to be of great value. They then secured them to a buckboard and loaded the complete, and very large skull onto a wagon, and it was sent to Fort Calgary. The load was too great for the wagon, however, and its axle broke. And so it took numerous trips to bring the skull out of the valley and back to the scientists at Fort Calgary. Once the entire skull arrived there, the scientists were so amazed by what they saw, they sent the bones to the Geological Survey of Canada Headquarters. While there, it was decided that the skull was the first specimen of a new genus of carnivorous dinosaur. The skull was later dubbed Albertosaurus and J.B. Tyrrell was commended for his discovery.

Albertosaurus sculpture by Brian Cooley
Courtesy of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology

The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology
Adapted from the Royal Tyrrell Museum

The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta

One hundred years after the discovery of the Albertosaurus, a museum was established in Drumheller to show and teach people about the Earth before humankind. It was decided that the new museum should be named after the man that started "dino-fever" in Drumheller. The new museum and surrounding valley was christened the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeotology. In June 1990, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II visited the museum and was so impressed my its vision, ideals, and people, she bestowed the Royal designation to the museum, making it the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. Today the museum is one of only two Royal museums in all of Canada. Many of the specimens displayed at the Royal Tyrrell Museum come from Dinosaur Provincial Park where the Museum conducts major digs every summer. To support its activities, the museum established a Field Station in the heart of the badlands. The museum is also an internationally renowned research facility led by Dr. Phil Currie, the head of the Dinosaur Research Program and Curator of Dinosaurs and Birds.

 

Dr. Philip J. Currie
Courtesy of the Royal Tyrrell Museum

Dr. Phil Currie has undertaken fieldwork throughout western North America, the Arctic and China. He is Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Biology, Geology and Geophysics at the University of Calgary. Dr. Currie is one of the world's leading paleontologists and is best known for his work with specimens collected in the fossil beds of Dinosaur Provincial Park and the Gobi Desert. Currie's fascination with dinosaurs began as a young boy, when he made his first fossil find at age six near his birthplace of Toronto. His interest in dinosaurs carried forward into his college years at the University of Toronto and McGill University, where he earned a doctorate in paleontology. Dr. Currie has conducted field research on several continents, and was co-leader of the Canada-China Dinosaur Project, the largest dinosaur expedition ever undertaken.