This past weekend, we paid a visit to Dinosaur Provincial Park in south-central Alberta. It’s about a 2-hour drive from Calgary to another world. This is the real Jurassic Park...well, technically, Late Cretaceous...and a UNESCO World heritage site. Other such sites include the Great Wall of China, The Great Barrier Reef and Machu Picchu.

Driving the arrow-straight roads across flat, green farmland you would never expect to see the alien moonscape that is the Alberta Badlands, carved by receding glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age. Dropping down into the canyon is almost breathtaking; if upon seeing it for the first time you don’t emit an exclamation of wonder, you should check your pulse – you may be as dead is the 75-million-year-old inhabitants of the Park.





The iconic 'hoodoos', formed by erosion of soft sandstone and mudstone out from under a harder ironstone 'hat'.



Most of this is in a natural preserve where people ar not permitted except with guides, although there is a publicly-accessible loop within which you can wander, and that includes a couple of fossil displays and old dig sites but no fossils that I saw.

While there, we took two excursions: the Bonebed Hike and the Fossil Safari. Now, on this type of tour you might expect some dry lecture and a glimpse of some casts of long-removed fossils under glass, but you’d be wrong. On both trips -- after swearing an oath to 'never ever ever...ever ever ever ever pick up, pocket or move any fossil', we were able to discover, touch (with one finger only) and identify honest-to-Lambeosaur fossils.

Actually, 'discover' might not be quite the right word...'trip over' would be more appropriate, since scattered in and around the bonebeds are the legbones, ribs and frills of dozens of Centrosaur (a Ceratopsian related to Triceratops), duck-billed herbivorous Hadrosaurs...



I *think* this is an enamel-covered scale of an extinct gar-pike:



...and pictured below, the serrated teeth of a therapod carnivore, perhaps the 8-metre, 3-ton Gorgosaurus! Gorgosaur hunted and scavenged along with Despletosaurus, Albertosaurus and many smaller tyrranosaurids and raptors.



Since rain and weather erode the Badlands at a rate of 4mm per year, new fossils appear on the surface all the time. My wife and daughter found the vertebra of a ray-like sea creature as well as 'scute' -- the under-skin layer of muscle-supporting armour of crocodilians and turtles of the time. It was hard to imagine this hot, arid landscape was once a wet, verdant plain near and inland sea!

The Park boasts quite a number of living attractions, as well. We saw several sets of Mule Deer does and fawns, plenty of bird life and some beautiful flowering cacti:



I was disappointed not to see a single Prairie Rattlesnake, but was perhaps lucky to miss the small scorpions and Black Widows that live there. The locals I could have done without were the highly-carnivorous mosquitoes. Between them and the heat (it can get up to 40C out in the Badlands) we had to douse ourselves with sunscreen and Deep Woods Off!, which combined with the sweat and dust to create a crust of sorts by day's end. This kind of trip is not for the hygienically-obsessed.

But a quick wash and some beers straight from the ice is a just reward, not to mention the feeling of having touched the remains of animals that haven't walked the Earth in seventy-five-thousand millennia.

I know some of you are planning trips to Alberta and if you have any interest in this type of history, DPP is a don't-miss. The Tyrrell Musem of Paleontology is only a couple hours north and a fantastic display of the results of digs, but only in DPP can you touch the real deal in situ. It also has a Visitor Centre which is really a smaller museum but with some excellent displays.

I may post a few more pics as I sort through the many we took. Thanks for looking!

 

! I never knew a place like this existed. Awesome

 

Yikes. That looks awesome and someplace I'd love to visit.
Definitely on my list of must visits.
Thanks for sharing.

C.

 

It looks like you guys had a great trip. I remember going out there once or twice when I was a kid and it is pretty cool. We've taken the kids out to Tyrrell a couple of time and it is great too.

 

Great post Swivel. Spectacular and educational.

That's definitely on my list of sights to see. We didn't have time on our last trip to Alberta in '99.

 

Part of a football-field-sized bonebed of an estimated 200 Centrosaurs; paleontologists speculate they were swept away in a river crossing and/or flash flood, then predated/scavenged by Gorgosaurs -- many fossils have the teeth-marks of large therapods on them.



Centrosaur:



Gorgosaur:

 

So you rember seeing alot of these creatures when they were alive and you were in your youth in southern Alberta?? Must have been an exiciting time to grow up

 

^^ Surprised it took you so long

 

No sign of a jetpack and/or scissors...?





All kidding aside - shots are amazing, and I'm looking forward to seeing some of it firsthand in 52 days (not that I'm counting)...

 

Wayne, you should make a documentary. You'd be rather good at it.

 

A biography "Walking with Dinosaurs my youth in the badlands"

I will be here all week tell your friends to stop by

 

Fabulous pics and info Wayne.
We had intended to do the park the last time we were out west with the kids, but ran out of time.

I'd love to get out to see that sometime.

 

LMAO!!

 

Wayne, fantastic shots!!! I was there once before when I lived in Lake Louise. Unfortunately, since it was almost 20 years ago I don't have anywhere near the the great pics you took. Thanks a bunch for sharing.

 

OMG Wayne that is so neat and great pics, another place for us to check out next year.