Page 158 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Canada

DINOSAURS IN ALBERTA
It is easier to imagine gunslingers and coyotes in the desertlike badlands
of Alberta than it is to envisage the dinosaurs who once lived in this
region. Over 75 million years ago the area was a tropical swamp (similar
to the Florida Everglades) and the favored habitat of these huge reptiles,
which dominated the Earth for some 160 million years. Dramatic changes
in the region’s climate transformed the area from humid swamp to dry
EXPERIENCE The Prairies FIRST DISCOVERY DINOSAURS
desert, helping preserve an incredible number of dinosaur remains.

Joseph Burr Tyrrell, a 26-year old geologist and mining
ACROSS CANADA
consultant, found the remains of Canada’s first-known
Alberta isn’t the only
meat-eating dinosaur in the Red Deer River Valley of
province with some of

Alberta, in 1884. Tyrrell stumbled across the skull
of the 71.5 million year-old dinosaur a few miles from
fossil deposits. In 1991,
Drumheller while searching for coal deposits. The skull
palaeontologists in
was identified as a new species over a decade later and the world’s best dinosaur
named Albertosaurus in 1905, honouring the province Saskatchewan found
of Alberta that was newly formed that same year. an almost complete
The Royal Tyrell Museum was skeleton of one of the
subsequently named largest T-rex dinosaurs
for Tyrell. ever found. In Manitoba,
a 43-ft (13-m) Mosasaur
skeleton was found in
1974, and in 1984,
Skull of the dinosaur fossils dating
Albertosaurus back some 200 million
now in the years were discovered
Royal Tyrell in the Bay of Fundy.
Museum

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