Palaeontology in the Badlands

We left early this morning for a three hour drive to Drumhellar, some two hours north east of Calgary.  It sits in the middle of the "Badlands", somewhat barren country with peculiar rocks, and the most prolific fossil country in North America. Here you can see the layers of rocks laid down millennia ago, perhaps 350 million years ago, shaped by ice and the Red Deer river over that time.

Some of the more spectacular sights are the "Hoodoos", soft rocks capped by hard rock, which will eventually wear away and the whole pillar will disappear. You can see the different coloured  layers ofn them, some standing 4 mtrs high.

Here you can see Hoodoos in the making: the harder rocks sticking out, and the different layers of rock. As the water runs down this rock it eats the softer rock, leaving rivulets.

Unfortunately they allow people to clamber all over the rocks, even some of the Hoodoos, which will not help these natural formations to survive.



Until a few years ago this was a big coal mining area, but once oil was discovered in Alberta the coal industry died. This Atlas No 3 mine is now a tourist attraction, we didn't go down but they are certainly making it pay again! While the managers lived on the site, the miners lived across the river, in poor accommodation.

We went on to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of palaeontology, one of the finest I have seen. As I said earlier, there are thousands of fossils to be found around this part of Alberta, literally just lying around. The archaeologists are constantly working on the findings in this museum, and the fossils that we saw are just a minute fraction of those in store here for scientists to work on.

The Albertasaurus was discovered here in the 19th century, kick-starting the science here, since then many almost complete skeletons have been found here, particularly after a major flood uncovered many a few years ago. This dinosaur lived some 150 million years ago. Some of the fossils here have come from other parts of the world, and some have been reconstructed, but the museum certainly gives a good idea of the size and range of dinosaurs and other creatures that were about all those years ago.