Pounding the dirt in the sweltering sun, feeling the lightest of breezes flow through the multicoloured slopes, we make our way down to the valley of Bonebed 30.
There we meet a handful of people huddled together, hours into their work, welcoming the break that comes with greeting newcomers.
I’m handed a kit and told to set up anywhere, whether it be in pursuit of something new or chipping away at what’s already been discovered.
But I know exactly where it is I want to be.
Making myself comfortable in a mound of dirt and enthusiastically grabbing the dental scraper in my bag, I find my nerve. Never would my six-year-old self believe I’d see this tooth-cleaning instrument outside of the dentist’s office – especially not while unearthing a dinosaur bone.
Dinosaurs in the Canadian Badlands
Even with everything I thought I knew about Canada, I still wasn’t prepared for the Badlands.
These desert landscapes are otherworldly, certainly not a place you’d think to find in the Great White North. The Badlands are filled with rustic ranches and few inhabitants, with its accompanying canyons, gullies and hoodoos – carved from years of erosion – making it feel as though we had stepped into a land before time.
And in fact, we had.
75 million years before the Badlands became a UNESCO World Heritage site, dinosaurs roamed this once subtropical plain. Today, evidence of their existence is found at every turn, with Alberta being known as the richest hotbed for fossils in the world. Having housed more than 150 full dinosaur skeletons in its earth, more than 500 species have been discovered here and can be found in countless exhibits across the globe.
Though many remain in their home and native land.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum
The Royal Tyrrell Museum is home to some of the most remarkable prehistoric specimens ever unearthed. Located just north of Drumheller, summer is its busiest time of year, opened 7 days a week for the public to explore various exhibits at their leisure or through guided tours.
Each exhibit shows what the world would have looked like over a 3.9-billion-year span. Some of its most widely-remarked beauties include the Triassic Giant, a 1,700 square-foot specimen of the world’s largest-known marine reptile, the rare blackened T. rex skull named Black Beauty, as well as the lovely Borealopelta.
Borealopelta (aka “Suncor nodosaur”) is an armoured nodosaur, known as one of the most remarkably preserved dinosaur fossils of its size. Not only was her fossilized bone so well preserved, but nearly her entire carcass as well, with her resulting embodiment resembling more of a statue than a fossil.
Her remains were discovered at an oil sands mine owned by Suncor Energy north of Fort McMurray. In fact, many new discoveries have been found throughout the province during housing and road construction, mining, wind turbine developments, and oil and gas activities.
During my visit, I had the chance to chat with museum curator Donald Henderson – who helped examine Borealopelta – during a four-course dinosaur-inspired dinner hosted by some of Calgary’s top chefs.
Combining a love for paleontology and food, we dug into our creative meals (literally – with a tiny shovel!) while having the rare opportunity to talk to Don about paleontology in Alberta and the goings on at The Royal Tyrrell Museum.
When we told him of our dinosaur dig at the Dinosaur Provincial Park the next day, he had but one thing to say:
“If you can’t find any bones in Dinosaur Provincial Park, there’s something seriously wrong.”
An authentic dinosaur dig
While possibly being influenced from the short screening of Jurassic Park on the van ride over, visiting Dinosaur Provincial Park was like setting foot on Isla Nublar itself.
Here we were told of the paleontologists who have travelled to this place for the last 100 years. Walking along the paths of the park, it wasn’t hard to see why. Pieces of dinosaur bones were littered throughout the park; we couldn’t walk far without coming across a new find, wetting our fingers to feel for the sticky texture that meant we had struck bone.
In this space, it was as if we were walking alongside the many who had explored these lands and camped out under its stars. And somewhere along the way, we too became active participants in this history, planting our mark as we unearthed these dinosaur remains.
In the valley of Bonebed 30, I was scraping the pelvic bone of my hadrosaur ever-so timidly, as if my tiny tool could possibly harm a bone that came from the mya. The soft, pitchy sound of metal on bone is not one I’d soon forget, as I’m still mesmerized at having had such a wild opportunity.
Digging up a dinosaur bone is not an experience I cannot accurately compare. Never have I felt more alive than when unearthing a 75-million-year-old fossil from the ground.
And while it may seem like tedious work slowly breaking apart pieces of dirt bit by bit, I could have spent hours chipping away at this masterpiece.
Being struck in that moment with the realization that no other human has ever touched this relic I was unearthing was an incredibly humbling experience. The rush of never knowing what I would find, nor the state in which I’d find it, was absolutely exhilarating. Just as the distinct lines along each mountain from which we were situated told the story of how they had aged, so too did the lines of these dinosaur bones.
And while travelling may make one modest, showing you what a tiny place you occupy in the world, the Dinosaur Provincial Park does one better: It shows you how small of a space you occupy in the reflection of time itself.
If you go …
There are tons of experiences and events at the Dinosaur Provincial Park where you can not only tour the land, but dig up your own dinosaur as well.
https://www.albertaparks.ca/media/3856222/dinosaur-interpretive-brochure.pdf
Be sure to check for availability and prices by visiting the Government of Alberta website.