Stepping Back In Time
The area around Drumheller, Alberta, contains one of the richest deposits of fossils in the world. More than one thousand complete skeletons of extinct dinosaurs have been found in the area. The thirty-five million-year-old fossilized remains of long dead creatures are scattered across the rugged terrain. The land is stark and resembles a moonscape, but it’s also astonishingly beautiful. Ochre-colored hoodoos with their mushroom-like capstones and colorful stripes of sandstone, coal, shale, and mudstone dominate the landscape.
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Badlands hoodoos.
As a child, I spent hours scouring the eroded hills, coulees, and canyons of the Alberta Badlands searching for fossils. It’s been years since I was last in Drumheller, but this summer my husband and I took our nine-year-old granddaughter to see this unique area.
Needless to say, Drumheller has changed. In the summer, the small town of seven thousand is packed with tourists who are eager to tour the nearby world class Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology, which is filled to the brim with both plant and animal fossils. The museum has many interactive exhibits and life-size models of fascinating creatures. We even watched a paleontologist wield a fine-haired brush as he carefully removed centuries old dirt from a new fossil find.
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Downtown Drumheller boasts the world’s largest dinosaur. At eighty-six feet tall, the model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex is massive. We climbed the one hundred and six stairs to the dinosaur’s mouth and peered through sharp, three-foot long teeth at the bustling town below. With the influx of tourists have come other attractions. The go cart race track is a big hit, as is the bungie trampoline and rafting the Red Deer River.
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World’s largest dinosaur.
After we toured the museum (and went go cart racing and bungie trampolining), we escaped the crowds and hiked into the Badlands. It was like stepping back in time. With the sun beating on our backs and hawks soaring on the warm air currents high overhead, we climbed down steep ravines avoiding the sharp, unforgiving spines of prickly pear cactus and struggled to keep upright on the scree-filled slopes. It wasn’t long before we made our first find.
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Scattered amidst the rubble were dozens of tiny bits of fossilized dinosaur bone. We tested each rock to see if it was a fossil by touching the tip of our tongue to the rock. If our tongue stuck, we knew we’d found a fossil. Each find was exciting as we imagined what exotic creature the bone fragment was from. The best part was the look of wonder on my granddaughter’s face as she discovered the millions of years old fossils. This hands-on experience is something she’ll never forget.
