Exploring Canada’s dino-Disneyland
Royal Tyrell Museum’s $9.3M upgrade will expand classrooms and distance learning
“There’s lots of dinosaurs in dinosaur land,” calls out three-yearold Hudson, looking wide-eyed through the window as dad drives east through Drumheller, Alta., on Highway 9.
It starts with a 10-foot cast-concrete Tyrannosaurus caught in time marching across the Welcome to Drumheller sign.
Shortly after there’s a small Triceratops by the side of the road, then another. You spot mesh Brachiosauruses on dozens of light poles, and when you turn onto the downtown strip the dinos get straight up playful.
A green Brontosaurus wearing a purple bow tie and holding a plate of treats sits on a bench, waiting for company.
Outside the city’s fire station a Dalmatian-spotted Br achy tr ac he lo pan keeps watch, while a brown and green-dappled Centrosaurus watches over the local RCMP detachment. There’s a poppy-covered Remembrance Day Triceratops outside the local Legion, and in the distance the world’s largest concrete dinosaur — a T-Rex, naturally — watches over the valley, looking west towards the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology.
Drumheller, a 90-minute drive northeast of Calgary, is a dream vacation for children. It’s a dino-Disneyland mixed with serious paleontology and set in the geographically stunning Red Deer River valley.
The city and surrounds are best served over two to three days, but a long day can cover off some of the “Badlands” key attractions. And why the Badlands? Our Royal Tyrell Museum-based tour guide explained that French homesteaders coined the phrase when they had to portage their families and wares up and down the valley’s steep walls — which are impossibly slippery when wet — on their voyage west.
Our first day in Drumheller started at the museum, where an Alberta government subsidy means a family of eight (two adults and up to six kids) can spend the whole day for $46.
The museum, a huge attraction and economic generator for the region, is getting a $9.3-million upgrade that will include an additional hands-on learning area, classrooms and a distance-learning space.
Museum spokesperson Carrie-Ann Lunde said the facility has been experiencing record-breaking numbers for the past three years (with 479,661 visits in 2015-16).
Over the recent August long weekend alone, more than 20,000 people passed through its doors.
Lunde said interest in the museum was piqued by the release of Jurassic World in 2015 and more recently with three new exhibits profiling several high-profile specimens — including a 110-million-year-old Nodosaur that is considered to be one of the best-preserved fossils ever discovered (it had skin on it when found in an oilsands project near Fort McMurray). No doubt the weaker Canadian dollar also draws U.S. visitors, and if you’re from B.C. the cheaper gas is nice.
The museum was built in 1985, creating a low-profile fit into the textures and size of the multi-layered and -coloured, rivulet-streaked Badlands.
In 1884, the museum’s namesake, Joseph Tyrell, while working for the Geological Survey stumbled on a mysterious skull a few kilometres away from the current museum site. It was later identified as the pre-Tyrannosaurus and larger-jawed Albertosaurus. This was the start of the interest in Drumheller’s dinosaur offerings. Until that point, it was a coal town driven by dozens of mines tapping into the Cambrian-era offerings of compressed vegetation. A side trip to the Atlas Coal mine, south of Drumheller is great for kids, as is a meal in the old-style saloon in nearby Wayne.
The museum offers an easily understood and well-laid-out overview of the 3.7 billion years of life on Earth. The museum has pay-for dino skills training for children and a great 90-minute walk around the Badlands for all ages.
Within the museum walls are the finest Tyrannosaurus skull ever found and hundreds of other fossils, big and small. And the museum, which is also a research facility, processes new finds in Dinosaur Provincial Park southeast of Drumheller and presents only a fraction of its content at any one time.
Another must for family is to climb inside the 25-metre-high model Tyrannosaurus, that after 106 steps allows you to peer west over Drumheller from the beast’s mouth.
“A green Brontosaurus wearing a purple bow tie and holding a plate of treats sits on a bench.”