A gash in the prairie fifteen minutes west of Drumheller where the badlands open under your feet with no warning at all: coal seams, ironstone bands and slumped grey clay, cut by rain rather than a river. It is the easiest introduction to these beds because you can park at the top and walk down into them. The Horseshoe Canyon Formation is the rock the Drumheller dinosaurs come out of. LOOK ONLY. Alberta protects fossils under the Historical Resources Act: you may not dig without a permit, and anything collected off the surface elsewhere in the province is held as a custodian and must stay in Alberta. Stay off the slopes when the clay is wet, because it turns to grease.
Ironstone, petrified wood, coal, bone fragments · Late Cretaceous, Horseshoe Canyon Formation
This ground is protected. Photograph it, record it, leave it where it lies. On US federal land the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act 2009 makes collecting vertebrate fossils an offence, and penalties are real.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
