I am here to share part of my walk into the badlands! This post is for Wednesday Walk challenge championed by our friend @tattoodjay and the Make me Smile Collaboration challenge lead by @elizacheng. The basic idea is going for a walk, taking pictures, sharing stories and making people smile.
This Weds, I head into an ancient swamp in the Alberta badlands in search of dinosaurs!
Long time walkers might remember a recent walk where I visited the Rocky Mountains in Alberta and hiked 6 KM in a glorious canyon dotted by waterfalls. This week, I am our of the mountains, through the foothills, around the city and out into the plains not an hour away from town. Wheat as far as the eye can see in every direction and the occasional oil pumpjack. Quite a contrast to see a horizon over flat ground for many miles so close to the towering vistas of the Rockies.
Almost out of nowhere, sedimentary style rocks start to come up from the ground and the road winds down into what seems like an ancient swamp. Layers of different hues and textures representing eons of geological transition.
I didn't notice when I took this shot that there is a runaway escape ramp to the right. Perhaps hours of traveling the plains can leave you without breaks as you finally start descending? I wish we went up there.
The walk has been a drive so far but it is time to walk with these fellas now. Some people drove modern vehicles and others tied up their dinosaur mounts when visiting the museum. Museum you say?
Besides beholding the badlands and hoodoos, our destination on this trip is a big long walk through the Royal Tyrrell Museum https://tyrrellmuseum.com/about I have heard about fossils being plentiful in this area so I am looking forward to seeing some of the dinosaurs who roamed this region.
The museum gets its namesake from Joseph Tyrell https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/joseph-tyrrell as a monument to the archaeological discoveries in the region almost a hundreds years ago. With a moustache like that, he could easily fit in with the hipsters at a craft beer tasting today and not be out of place.
Admission is around $20/person and we took the family pass at $50. Right away we are walking with the dinosaurs in realistic-looking displays and immersive experience. Lessons on plaques everywhere so you can stare in awe or stop and read some cool facts. Neat to see mention of the Albertosaurus which was named after the province in which it was most predominant.
A few steps to the right and a little shirt wipe of my camera lens and we are in much more precarious position with this hungry looking fella.
They set the stage right with a framing of the branches of science that combine to make paleontology. I always thought of that science as mainly of discovery, classification and guessing to fill in the holes. So much more than that when you consider the combination of specialties and how they can be used to also take these discoveries and piece together evolution and our place in it.
There are some whose beliefs lead them to deduce the world is only a few thousand years old. This display with the evolution of humanity from origins with skulls 8 million years ago. Whichever side of that argument is most correct, it is fascinating to think we are 95% genetically with chimpanzees. Not descended from, by shared an ancestor 5 million years ago. Only 5% genetic change in that period of time seems like a slow go!
Fascinating to see the science become art as they display excavated fossils in a puzzle that is most often missing pieces.
If you thought 8 million years ago was in the distant past, all of that has been discovered in this region is 55 to 80 million years ago! The collection and research continues as hundreds of fossils per year are still found every year.
More science imitating art as these hand-sized shells fossilised themselves over millennia in this wonderful death assemblage.
Turns out they were not just big snails, but a different kind of mollusks called ammonites and are related to octopus! We are now 390 million years in the past and humanity is barely a gleam in cruel mother nature's eye.
So dramatic are the deaths of these prehistoric wonders and there seem to be countless in this collection!
So many ancient monsters crawling around in fossil format. Imagine discovering this guy or being charged to reassemble him!
This place just keeps on going. I am only half way through the photos I took and have so many more to share. The disasters! The different periods! The T-rex!
Another time, I will have to take you with me as I walk through this threshold and am taken from Precambrian through Cenozoic eras. Jurassic is a sub era in the Mesozoic era? So much more to see and learn.
Thanks for joining me on this mile half way into the Badlands. I will guide you back out another time.
@tattoodjay and the Make me Smile Collaboration challenge lead by 
@elizacheng. The basic idea is going for a walk, taking pictures, sharing stories and making people smile.
