Canada's Royal Tyrell Museum: What to Expect

Right in Canada's beautiful Badlands you will find the Royal Tyrell Museum. The museum is a nice 85 mile (138km), 90-minute drive in the northeasterly direction of Calgary, a mere 4 miles (6km) from Drumheller, Alberta, Midland Provincial Park. The Drumheller area is full of spectacular sights such as Horseshoe Canyon on Highway 9 the Willow Creek Hoodoos on Highway 10 and Horsetheif Canyon on Highway 11.

Take time to explore Canada's Badlands, created by the floodwaters of glaciers as they melted. The Red River Valley, created by the floodwater flow, resulted in some very unusual landscape. This was an adventure in itself for us, hiking along the trails. The Tyrell Museum offers a Seven Wonders of the Badlands hike. This is a great hike and worth every penny. Before you begin your museum visit, I suggest you stop in at the Nexen science hall. This is a great beginner's course on paleontology and allows you understand a little more of what you will see in the Tyrell Museum.

For the last 3.9 billion years, the earth has been collecting artifacts. The Tyrell Museum has one of the greatest displays of rare dinosaurs in the Lords of the Land display area. Spectacular raptors, in real life poses, had my boys captivated. The rare Tyrannosaurus rex skull that is called "Black Beauty" because of its color is amazing. The dinosaur we all know as T rex is a theropod dinosaur and is the largest one found on the North American continent. The boys loved the meaning of the name, Tyrannosaurus rex "King of the Tyrant Lizards". Several interesting displays create the period in which the dinosaurs lived. There is an ice Age display that has some nice wooly mammoths on display, as well as some saber tooth tigers.

The favorite of everyone is the Triassic Giant display. Huge, this 220 million year old reptilian display will only be at the Tyrell Museum until some time in 2010, so arrange to see it soon. It is unbelievable that anything can be that large.

I personally enjoyed the Devonian Reef and the Burgess Shale, the water world from 505 - 375 million years ago. That was indeed a different type of fishing!

In addition, a lab that you can visit allows you to watch as professionals prepare fossils found in Alberta for display in the Tyrell Museum. We participated in a fossil casting class that taught us how and why fossil casts are made.

I would allow plenty of time as there is much to see. We purchased a two-day pass and took two days, thoroughly exploring everything.

There is a cafeteria and a gift shop located at the Tyrell Muesum. There is also a great picnic area, the Palaeo play park.

Some photography is allowed. Be sure and check with museum authorities before you break out the cameras.

The Royal Tyrell Museum hours vary, so I would suggest contacting them for pricing and hours of operation. A visit to the Royal Tyrell Museum website provided the following contact information:Contact Us

Toll free in North America (outside Alberta 1-888-440-4240

Toll free in Alberta (403) 823-7707

Outside North America 1-403-823-7707

tyrrell.info@gov.ab.ca