Fossils and Dinosaurs, in and near Jasper

 

The Royal Tyrrell Museum, Drumheller Alberta

As I look thru my Alberta trip, I realize that posting about each individual day was not quite the right thing for this experience. I think I will do it by category. I think I will start with dinosaurs and fossils.

Eastern Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and most of Alberta were once under water. After that the area was rich in plant life, followed by dinosaurs, and eventually mammals. Depending on what happened different layers were exposed in different places. So the fossils one finds depend on what got saved, and what got exposed. So this narrative will follow from the oldest, to those that might have been known by early man.

First off, let me recommend a book for you Fossils for Kids by Dan Lynch. As a professional grandma, I have been looking for good rock books for kids. This is one of the best paleontology books for the amateur, adult or child, that I have come across. I am using his time oriented method to organize this posting.

The Burgess Shale Fossils.  This stuff is really weird. No matter which book, which drawing, what ever. It is weird. These were some of the oldest animals we know of.  This was before Mother Nature decided on right/left and up/down.

They did not have bones or shells, so the only way we have of seeing them is when they were in a shallow sea and got suddenly covered by very fine mud.  This allowed them to get preserved without oxygen and leave trace in the stone. You find this stuff only two places in the world. Jasper area and someplace in Australia. 

This place is so important that this area s part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

The photos above are of Marble Canyon. The trail goes up one of those amazing slot canyons. I promise to write more about the slots later.  Big hunks of the Burgess shale line this canyon. You cannot take any of the rocks from here. Really, don't. But you can stand next to, and touch this fine grain shale and know that they are in there. 

Suggested further research Conservation Hikes and Parks Canada Website and The Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation.

On the Maligne River there is a trail with bridges. I really wish that there were a bus or taxi so that I could park at the bottom, and get dropped off at the top. I did the first 4, then realized that I was going to have to go back UP the trail. Making good decisions, I went as far as the 4th bridge, for 1.8 miles,  mostly steep stairs. 

At the top, before the first bridge is a sign about fossils. Nice sign, standard stuff.  But about 10 meters down the trail, there is a large slab of slate, with these three fossils. Not roped off, or marked in any way. Just where people were walking on them.

More on this walk when I blog on the slot canyons.

Drumheller and the Royal Tyrrell Museum: A place of extremes and to avoid on three day weekends.

Drumheller is in the middle of nowhere. There is no reason to go here other than it has the best dinosaur museum on the planet. It also has the tackiest "worlds largest dinosaur." The place was jammed. It was a typical August hot day. And there were a million kids. I don't know that I would go out of my way to go there, but if I was driving thru that area I would detour a bit to go. The displays were top notch. A great deal of effort went into showing how sites found in construction were preserved. A large picture window showed where the scientific work was taking place. But because I failed to plan around the holiday, the place was infested with families trying to give their kids a good experience. 

    

The actual find is in the Frank Slide Museum

All over the Alberta plains are locations where some kid was playing, or some farmer or fisherman stumbled on a major fossil find. I love that they put up sculptures, and interesting signage to celebrate their unique place on the planet. Take the time to visit these weird little displays.  On their own not so interesting, but when you start to look at them as a whole, the puzzle pieces start to make sense. 

There are lots of Hadrasaurs in the park. 

Dinosaur Provincial Park: More on this park when I blog about geography/geology. This is a place I will return to in the future.

As a World Heritage Site, what is buried here is so important that they are leaving most of it undug. A large number of pieces excavated are in major museums around the world, including the Royal Tyrrell.  But the really cool thing they did here is to stop some of the digs in progress, and protect them in small buildings. Most of their displays are wheel chair accessible, but might not work for wimpier equipment. The visitor's center has an entrance fee, but hosts lots of activities for adults and kids. And it is airconditioned. 

The campground is clean, but like most Alberta Provincial Parks, they use a reservation system. There are hikes and activities. August may not be the best month.  Hot and dry, and the flying bugs at their peak. 

I will write more on this when I blog on the Bad Lands.

Thousand Springs State Park: On my way home, driving thru some of the most arid country, I stumbled into this small park.  I was looking for camping, but apparently the contractors has botched the job and it hasn't opened yet. But the visitor's center was delightful. I had a lot of fun watching this guy play with the kids. 

The fossils in this area are mammal, recent in geologic time. I will write more on this park when I get to the waterfall blog.

Fossil Oregon: I drove up central and eastern Oregon on my way up, little realizing that fossils were going to be a big part of this trip. I stopped in the town of Fossil.  There is a small dig area behind the high school where one is allowed to make small digs for a donation to the school. I got there just as it was starting to get blistering hot.  I stopped a couple of guys that had just been digging and we had a lovely chat. They sent me home with a couple of lovely specimens for the girls.