Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology facts for kids
Entrance to the Royal Tyrrell Museum
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| Former name | Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology (1985–1990) |
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| Established | 25 September 1985 |
| Location | 1500 N Dinosaur Trail, Drumheller, Alberta, Canada |
| Type | Palaeontological |
| Visitors | 470,000 (2016–17) |
| Architect | BCW Architects |
| Owner | Government of Alberta |
The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology (often called the Royal Tyrrell Museum) is a museum and research center for palaeontology (the study of fossils). It is located in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. The museum is named after Joseph Burr Tyrrell, who was a geologist. The building is about 12,500 square meters (134,500 square feet) and sits in Midland Provincial Park.
The idea for a fossil museum started in 1981. The fossil collection from the Royal Alberta Museum was used to help create this new museum. After four years of planning, the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology opened in September 1985. In June 1990, Queen Elizabeth II gave the museum the title "royal," so it was renamed the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. The museum building has been made bigger twice, once in 2003 and again in 2019.
The museum has a huge collection of over 160,000 fossils. This makes it the largest fossil collection in Canada! About 800 of these fossils are on display in the museum's exhibits. Besides showing off fossils, the museum also has a research team. They study the Earth's history and how life has changed over millions of years.
Contents
Discovering the Past: Museum History
In the late 1970s, the government of Alberta started thinking about building a museum for fossils. In 1981, they officially announced plans for it. Even though they first thought about building it near Dinosaur Provincial Park, the museum was built in Midland Provincial Park near Drumheller. This was part of a bigger plan by Premier Peter Lougheed to create museums in smaller towns across Alberta.
Before the museum opened, the fossil collection and many staff members from the Royal Alberta Museum moved to help start the new museum. They worked in temporary offices until the new building was ready. The museum was first going to be called the "Palaeontological Museum and Research Institute." But the first director, David Baird, changed the name to the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. He wanted to honor Joseph Tyrrell. Joseph Tyrrell was a geologist who accidentally found the first dinosaur fossil ever reported in the Red Deer River valley in 1884, while looking for coal.
The Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology opened its doors on September 25, 1985. That same year, the museum joined the China-Canada Dinosaur Project. This was a big deal because it was one of the first times Chinese and Western fossil scientists worked together since the Chinese Communist Revolution.
On June 28, 1990, the museum became the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. This happened after Queen Elizabeth II gave it the special "royal" title. A group of volunteers, called the Royal Tyrrell Museum Cooperating Society, was formed in 1993. They help raise money for the museum's research, books, and special events.
In 2003, the museum added a new part to its building called the ATCO Tyrrell Learning Centre. This was its first big expansion.
More plans to make the museum bigger started around 2013. The museum officially announced these plans in 2016. The new part, called the learning lounge, added about 1,300 square meters (14,000 square feet) of space. This expansion was built because visitors wanted more hands-on activities. The governments helped pay for this new section, and it opened on June 28, 2019.
Exploring the Museum Grounds
The museum is located on North Dinosaur Trail in Midland Provincial Park, Drumheller, Alberta. The area around the museum is famous for its fossils, especially from the Late Cretaceous period. There's a 1.4-kilometer (0.87-mile) hiking trail called the Badlands Interpretive Trail near the museum. The museum uses this trail for its public and school programs.
The Museum Building
The museum building was designed to be both a museum and a research lab. The first part of the building was finished in 1985. It has been expanded twice since then. The original building and its first expansion cover about 11,200 square meters (121,000 square feet). About 4,400 square meters (47,000 square feet) of this space is for exhibits. The second expansion added about 1,300 square meters (14,000 square feet), bringing the total size to about 12,500 square meters (134,500 square feet).
The first part of the building was designed by BCW Architects from Calgary. Doug Craig was the main architect. He made sure the building blended in with the surrounding badlands (a type of dry, eroded land). The main building has many galleries with interactive displays, a cafeteria, a gift shop, and a theater. In the main lobby, you can see a large mural called The Story of Life, made by Lorraine Malach.
In 2003, BCW Architects also designed the ATCO Tyrrell Learning Centre. This new part of the museum is about 1,485 square meters (16,000 square feet). It has classrooms with special technology that lets researchers connect with fossil sites from far away. It also has a lab. This learning center was built for students of all ages.
In 2019, the museum finished building the learning lounge. This part was designed by Kasian Architecture. It made the museum's Distance Learning Studio and washrooms bigger. It also added more classrooms, lab spaces, an interactive learning lounge, and other rooms for different uses.
Amazing Museum Exhibits
As of 2020, the museum has thirteen exhibits. They show about 800 fossils that are always on display. You can learn about the exhibits through videos, interactive computers, and displays. There are also cool artworks by Vladimir Krb throughout the museum.
Many exhibits are organized by geologic eras, which are huge periods of time. These include the Cenozoic Gallery, Cretaceous Alberta, Cretaceous Garden, Palaeozoic Era, and Terrestrial Palaeozoic. In the Cretaceous Alberta exhibit, you can see a diorama (a 3D scene) of an Albertosaurus pack. This scene is inspired by 22 Albertosaurus fossils found together in Alberta, honoring Joseph Tyrrell who first discovered this dinosaur.
Some exhibits focus on specific places where fossils were found, like the Burgess Shale exhibit. The Grounds for Discovery exhibit shows fossils found during big construction or mining projects. Here, you can see the world's best-preserved thyreophora (a type of armored dinosaur). It's a Borealopelta fossil found by oil sand workers in the Athabasca oil sands.
Other exhibits with fossils include the Dinosaur Hall, Fossils in Focus, and Triassic Giants. The Dinosaur Hall has over thirty mounted dinosaur skeletons. These include an Albertosaurus, Camarasaurus, Triceratops, and a Tyrannosaurus. You can even see "Black Beauty", which is one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus skeletons ever found! Fossils in Focus shows fossils that the museum's research team is currently studying. Triassic Giants is an exhibit dedicated to Elizabeth Nicholls, a former museum expert on marine reptiles. It features a Shonisaurus, which is the world's largest marine reptile.
Besides exhibits with fossils, the museum also has two exhibits about how palaeontology works: Foundations and Preparation Lab. In the Preparation Lab, you can watch technicians carefully clean and prepare fossils for display or research. The Cretaceous Garden is another exhibit. It's designed to look like Alberta during the Cretaceous period, with plants that are related to those that grew back then. The Learning Lounge, opened in 2019, is the newest exhibit. It's a hands-on area with a bronze statue of an Albertosaurus and interactive displays about how dinosaurs ate, moved, and lived.
Gallery
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The Story of Life, a mural by Lorraine Malach, 2003. You can see it in the museum's lobby.
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An Albertosaurus and an ankylosaur on display.
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Camarasaurus on display.
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A Chasmosaurus found in Dinosaur Provincial Park on display.
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Dimetrodon on display.
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An Edmontonia model on display.
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Gorgosaurus on display.
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Ornitholestes on display.
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Prosaurolophus on display.
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Sinraptor dongi on display.
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Two Stegoceras on display.
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Triceratops on display.
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A Tyrannosaurus on display.
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The Jurassic section.
The Museum's Fossil Collection
As of 2020, the museum's collection has about 160,000 fossils. It also includes over 350 holotypes (the original fossil used to describe a new species). This makes it the biggest fossil collection in Canada! In November 2021, the museum even held five Guinness World Records for its unique fossils. These include the best-preserved Borealopelta and an Albertonectes fossil with the longest neck ever found.
Fossils from the collection are used for research or put on display. Only about 0.5 percent of the collection is shown in the museum's exhibits.
About half of the fossils are from the Cretaceous period. Most of these fossils (about 85 percent) were found in Alberta by the museum's own fieldwork teams. The museum also has fossils from the Palaeocene of Alberta, the Palaeozoic of the Canadian Arctic, and the Palaeozoic, Triassic, and Early Cretaceous periods in British Columbia.
Besides finding fossils themselves, the museum also gets them through donations, trades, purchases, and from saving fossils found during construction projects. About 3,000 new fossils are added to the collection every year.
Museum Programs and Research
The museum staff offers guided tours of Midland Provincial Park. The museum also has programs that give students hands-on training in the field. They even have "pay-to-dig" programs where people can help dig for fossils in the Drumheller area. The museum also offers online learning programs for students.
The museum has a special program that makes copies of its fossils. These copies are then used by other museums around the world.
Fossil Research
The museum's research team studies the Earth's geology and fossil history, especially in Alberta. The team includes palaeontologists, postdoctoral fellows (researchers who have finished their PhDs), and graduate students. Palaeontological technicians help with fieldwork and prepare fossils for exhibits or research. In 2015, the museum's technicians had over 150 years of experience working with fossils!
Most of the research papers written by the museum's team are about vertebrates (animals with backbones). They have also published some papers on plants and invertebrates (animals without backbones). The new discoveries from their research are often added to the museum's exhibits and educational programs.
The museum's research team started in the early 1980s. At first, they focused on finding fossils for the museum's exhibits. Once they had enough, they started focusing on studying the geology and fossils of Midland Provincial Park, Dinosaur Provincial Park, and other areas in Alberta. Since 1987, the museum has had a permanent field station at Dinosaur Provincial Park. The research team has also worked in other parts of Canada, like British Columbia, the Canadian Arctic, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.
The museum works with many other organizations on research projects. These include the Geological Survey of Canada, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, other museums, and universities. Many of their projects are in Alberta, but they also do research outside the province. For example, the Sino-Canadian Dinosaur Project in 1985 was their first big research project outside Alberta. These collaborations have led to over 75 research publications.
See also
In Spanish: Museo Tyrrell para niños
- List of museums in Alberta
- List of natural history museums
- World's Largest Dinosaur, a big dinosaur statue in Drumheller
