Joseph Tyrrell was looking for coal seams in the Red Deer valley in 1884 when he walked into the first reported dinosaur skull from this country. The museum named for him opened on 25 September 1985 in Midland Provincial Park outside Drumheller, holds over 160,000 catalogued fossils and more than 350 holotypes, and takes around 470,000 people a year. Go for the collection, then walk the badlands trails outside, which are the same beds. Museum staff run guided walks in the park and run public dig programmes on real bonebeds, which is the honest way to get your hands on Alberta rock: the fossils stay with the province either way.
The best dinosaur collection in Canada, and the ground it came out of · 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.
