In this Canadian province grown-ups can dig up dinosaur fossils

This journey again in time begins in southern Alberta, two hours east of Calgary, the place the bottom cracks open to disclose a prehistoric archive courting again some 76 million years. Here, the rolling prairie collapses into wrinkled valleys carved out by historic glaciers, banded in orange and gray layers just like the pages of a medieval e-book and punctuated by weird ‘hoodoos’ — pillars of rock sporting jaunty sandstone hats.

These are Canada’s Badlands — so-called as a result of early French fur merchants discovered them inhospitable and tough to cross. In this treeless desert, solely the hardiest vegetation survives: yellow buffalo bean flowers and tiny pincushion cacti sprout between gullies, and the aroma of sagebrush hangs on the breeze. This space could have been dangerous for the settlers, nevertheless it’s a goldmine for palaeontologists. The scientific motherlode lies in Dinosaur Provincial Park, a 29-square-mile UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of many richest fossil places on Earth.

“These layers date to between 76 and 74 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period,” reveals geologist Jessica Glombick, the park’s customer expertise workforce chief. “People have been searching for fossils here since the early 1900s, though of course the local Indigenous people knew about them long before that.”

Close to 50 dinosaur species have been discovered right here, together with Albertosaurus, a formidable predator associated to Tyrannosaurus rex, and Corythosaurus, a crested herbivore whose near-complete skeleton was unearthed after a park ranger noticed a bone poking out of a cliff. These had been discovered alongside fossils of prehistoric turtle shells and crocodile tooth, revealing a thriving, complicated ecosystem.

Visitors can discover public trails and museum shows, however to see these historic monsters up shut, it’s greatest to affix a guided hike into the park’s protected zone, the place fossils lie strewn like shattered pottery, and you might come throughout a hadrosaur leg bone or ankylosaur rib mendacity on the bottom like driftwood washed up on a seaside. Walking round requires focus: there are such a lot of fragments, it’s virtually not possible to not step on one thing.

The greatest discoveries find yourself on the Royal Tyrrell Museum, two hours north in Drumheller. This small city of about 8,000 inhabitants is named the ‘Dinosaur Capital of the World’, a tag worn with pleasure. A gold dinosaur roars on the signal, there are dinosaur fashions on each road and the world’s largest mannequin dinosaur, an 86ft T-rex named Tyra, towers over the city centre. But these are mere warm-ups for the headline act. As one of many world’s prime dinosaur museums, the Royal Tyrrell homes greater than 170,000 specimens protecting virtually the whole historical past of evolution, from bizarre, 500-million-year-old worms discovered within the Canadian Rockies to a woolly mammoth and sabre-toothed cat from the final Ice Age.

In the Breakthroughs gallery, guests encounter Alberta’s newest discoveries. An Ornithomimus — like a prehistoric ostrich — offers the primary proof that North American dinosaurs had beaks and feathers. In the following show, nonetheless resting within the plaster jacket through which it was lifted out of the bottom, is Borealopelta, the world’s best-preserved armoured dinosaur, each scale on its bony armour and even its abdomen contents set in stone.

The showstopping finale is the Dinosaur Hall, the place greater than 30 mounted skeletons roar, combat or amble in frozen movement. A Tyrannosaurus rex looms over the room, its open jaws frozen mid-snarl. Nearby, the armour-plated herbivore Euoplocephalus, its again studded with bony knobs and its tail ending in a heavy membership, squares as much as the predator Gorgosaurus, whereas a long-necked Camptosaurus struggles for all times within the jaws of an Allosaurus, their bones locked in an everlasting battle to the loss of life.

But for anybody who needs to get even nearer to prehistory, the lively palaeontological coalface could be discovered close to the town of Grande Prairie — a brief flight from Calgary or a 4.5-hour drive from both Jasper or Edmonton. Here, the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum oversees probably the most thrilling lively fossil websites on this planet: the Pipestone Creek bone mattress.

Nicknamed the ‘River of Death’, this dense deposit incorporates the jumbled stays of a herd of Pachyrhinosaurus, highly effective herbivores that seemed a bit like modern-day rhinos, however with an enormous frill on the again of their heads and a bony lump on their noses as a substitute of a horn.

“We believe there may have been as many as 10,000 individuals migrating through this area,” explains curator Dr Emily Bamforth. “But about 72 million years ago, they drowned in a catastrophic flood. Later, a second flood mixed up all the bones, creating a huge Pachyrhinosaurus puzzle.”

The workforce now has the laborious activity of separating the confusion of fossils from the stable rock, though the museum’s Palaeontologist for a Day expertise lets amateurs be a part of the work. A rattling bus journey alongside an unsealed observe, adopted by a brief stroll by means of a forest of poplars and spruce, brings you to the bone mattress, the place a tarpaulin is peeled again to disclose a darkish patch of rock, ridged and furrowed by shapes within the stone.

“That’s a rib,” factors Emily. “That’s part of the frill. That’s a toe bone. We have about 100-200 fossils per square foot here and they’re all interlocked. We may never know if this is one animal or 10.”

Using an axe and rock hammer, visitors assist chip away on the surrounding matrix, cautious to not injury something valuable. It’s not a job for the impatient, however the potential payoff is priceless: the possibility to assist uncover actual dinosaurs which were buried for thousands and thousands of years, and even to find one thing model new. And it does occur — final yr, the workforce dug up one of many largest Pachyrhinosaurus skulls ever discovered. Nicknamed ‘Big Sam’, he’s now present process a radical clean-up within the museum’s lab, and visitors can watch as technicians coax his broad snout from the stone after thousands and thousands of years underground.

What makes Alberta’s dinosaur nation so distinctive isn’t simply the amount of fossils, however the truth that they’re nonetheless being found. There’s an actual thrill in strolling throughout the identical panorama as soon as trodden by dinosaurs, touching the stays of a 75-million-year-old monster or watching a rib emerge below a palaeontologist’s device. And all of it far-off from the excitable faculty tour teams and theme park rides of most different dinosaur sights.