Dinosaur Country: Unearthing the Alberta Badlands

One of the world's great dinosaur burial grounds is found in the badlands of the Red Deer River valley in southern Alberta. The skeletons of these fascinating beasts have travelled far from this remote spot to take up residence in reknowned collections: American Museum of Natural History, New York; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago; Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa are among these. Housed on the banks of the Red Deer River at Drumheller, the Royal Tyrrell Museum joined these august ranks in 1985. Here, the valley's dinosaurs are on exhibition near where they lived and died to acquaint visitors with the roles they played in the story of evolution.

Dinosaur Country describes the geological events that created the lush coastal plains of the Late Cretaceous and details the fascinating array of dinosaurs that populated them 75 million years ago. Meltwaters at the end of the Ice Age carved out the badlands to expose the fossils. Excavations began in the early 1900s with the Great Canadian Dinosaur Rush. Teams fielded by the American Museum of Natural History and the Geological Survey of Canada were the main players in the race to unearth the biggest and best specimens. Today, scientists at the Royal Tyrrell Museum carry on where the early bone hunters left off.

Dinosaur Country outlines current debates -- about how these giant beasts lived, about the mass extinction that brought the Age of Dinosaurs to a close, and about the growing belief that the dinosaurs escaped extinction by evolving into birds.