Saturday, June 10, 2023: In a land before our time!
Info:
The small town of Drumheller, northeast of Calgary, thrives mainly on geology, paleontology, and dinosaurs. The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology has been one of the world’s leading institutions in the field of dinosaur research since its founding in 1985. The focus is on fossil discoveries in the Badlands.
My opinion:
The first time I was there 35 years ago. At that time, children played with dolls and cars. What was on display at the Royal Tyrell Museum immediately captivated me: dinosaur skeletons! A few years later, children played with Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Ichthyosaurus. The scientists at Drumheller had triggered a worldwide boom with their excavations.
The museum has been expanded and is kept scientifically up to date. I could remember some exhibits in the big hall with the dinosaur skeletons. In the meantime, the collection consists of, among other things, forty complete dinosaur skeletons, making it the largest in the world.
Even though Drumheller has become a magnet for tourists, neither the incredible landscape with the hoodoos nor the development of the universe and life have lost any of their attraction. I was thrilled!
Also fantastic is a round trip through the area (Northern Dinosaur Trail), where you drive out of the valley several times to view it from above, and use a small ferry to cross the Red Deer River.
Diary:
I remember sitting in front of our little tent at a campground in Vancouver 35 years ago, overlooking the city, reading a copy of National Geographic that I had bought because it was about dinosaurs. There was an article comparing the leg skeleton of a pigeon to that of a freshly excavated Tyrannosaurus Rex. Apart from the not inconsiderable difference in size, they were identical. The article discussed that this could be a clue as to who the birds were descended from. Archaeopteryx had been known for some time at that time. The article mentioned the Tyrrell Museum of Drumheller.
I then decided to take a look. We spent two days in Drumheller and could not get out of the amazement. The valley with the striped hills. Real dinosaur skeletons – that was a sensation in the 1980s.
Today, paleontology is part of general knowledge. For me, it has lost none of its fascination.
Still a strange feeling. Half a lifetime has passed since my first visit to Drumheller. At that time I looked down on the valley and thought the world would be open to me.
This time I looked down on the valley and knew the world was open to me. At least that’s how it feels. 😊
