Dinosaurs: A roaring trade

Drumheller lies in the heart of the Canadian Badlands, an hour and half’s drive from Calgary.

In 1884, the “Albertasaurus” was discovered there by geologist Joseph Burr Tyrrell and was later found to be a cousin of T-rex. Tyrell’s discovery led the great dinosaur rush and Drumheller prospered as a destination for leading research scientists.

Drumheller has decorated its streets with dinosaur-shaped bins, signs and shops selling memorabilia, and it owns the world’s largest dinosaur statue, standing at 26 metres tall: visitors can climb it to view the Canadian Badlands.

In June, Drumheller added another discovery to its collection, the ‘Regaliceratops peterhewsi’. The previously unknown dinosaur is dubbed Hell Boy (after the cartoon character) for its horn-like feature. Hell Boy, a meat-eating dinosaur, has attracted as much attention as T-rex in the dinosaur community. It is on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, not far from Drumheller.

The Royal Tyrell museum opened in 1985. Its exhibitions and educational programmes immerse the public into a 3.9 billion-year history of life on earth. It is home to 160,000 dinosaur specimens and adds more each year.

Don Birkman, director of preservation and research, says: “Dinosaurs are abundant in Alberta and still eroding out of land banks. We can continually go back to places we have been previously and find new specimens. In the past decade, we have typically collected one or two skeletons a year.”

Highlights include “Lords of the Land”, a complete dinosaur fossil of a 13.7 metre T-rex, while Dinosaur Hall features the world’s largest displays of dinosaur bones. The Royal Tyrrell welcomed more than 404,000 visitors from 125 countries in 2014. This year has been its busiest for two decades.

This Unesco World Heritage Site is an unrivalled place to find fossils of every known dinosaur group and has 150 complete dinosaur skeletons.

There are day or overnight tours and Alberta Parks Authority offers two-day excavation programmes in the summer season for visitors to take part in a dig. The tour, led by a paleontological technician, costs £250pp for three nights including accommodation and food, and visitors are very likely to find a fossil, thus contributing to ongoing research at the museum. However, the rating of the programme is difficult and not recommended for everyone.

Anderson Vacations offers a one-night visit from Calgary to Drumheller and the Badlands. Anne Holmes suggests hiking and bus tours around the park – which can only be prebooked with Alberta Parks Authority.

A new dino-museum opened this year at the height of the Jurassic World hype. The Philip J Currie Museum, in Wembly in the Grand Prairie, is located in an area the size of several football fields where many bones have been found, called Pipestone Creek.

The museum offers summer tours to the Pachrhinosaurus lakustai bonebed, named after the species of dinosaur and paleontologist who found three in the area in 1975. It is now the world’s densest bonebed, averaging 200 fossils per square metre (most bonebeds average 10-50 fossils per square metre).

Pipestone Creek helicopter tours are also offered by the museum. They cost £97pp plus park tax. IPads in the helicopter pinpoint the important geological and paleontological areas on the ground.

The main gallery, dedicated to the Cretaceous period, displays five newly named dinosaurs never presented to the public before. The museum’s fossil lab is designed to immerse visitors into a virtual dinosaur environment. Visitors can look at CGI screens which pan over dinosaur skeletons to flesh out the bones.

According to the Grande Prairie Regional Tourism Association, it is hoped the new museum will bring $4 million annually to Alberta’s economy, and $2.5 million to the Grand Prairie region.