| Royal Tyrrell Museum | |
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| Established | September 25, 1985 |
| Location | Highway 838 Midland Provincial Park Drumheller, Alberta T0J 0Y0 Canada[1] |
| Type | Palaeontological |
| Visitor figures | >400,000/year (2009/10)[2] |
| Director | Andrew Neuman[1] |
| Website | www.tyrrellmuseum.com |
The Royal Tyrrell Museum[3] is a popular Canadian tourist attraction and a leading centre of palaeontological research[4] noted for its collection of more than 130,000 fossils.[5]
Located 6 kilometres (4 mi) from Drumheller, Alberta and 135 kilometres (84 mi) from Calgary,[6] the museum is situated in the middle of the fossil-bearing strata of the Late Cretaceous Horseshoe Canyon Formation and holds numerous specimens from Dinosaur Provincial Park and the Devil's Coulee Dinosaur Egg Historic Nest Site.[4]
The Royal Tyrrell Museum is operated by Alberta's Ministry of Culture and Community Spirit.[7] The museum's mission is to "collect, preserve, research and interpret palaeontological history with special reference to Alberta’s fossil heritage".[8]
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The Museum is named in honour of Joseph Burr Tyrrell, a geologist who discovered the first dinosaur in the Red Deer River Valley in 1884. The Museum opened September 25, 1985 and was given "Royal" status by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990. In its first year of operation, the Museum attracted over 500,000 visitors.[8] The average annual number of visitors is approximately 400,000.[3] In 2010 the museum welcomed its 10-millionth visitor, a young boy from Edmonton.
More than 4,400 square metres (47,000 sq ft) of the museum's 11,200 square metres (121,000 sq ft) is dedicated to exhibits[9] in a series of chronological galleries celebrating the 3.9 billion year history of life on Earth. One of the most popular is "Dinosaur Hall", with almost 40 mounted dinosaur skeletons, including specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex and Albertosaurus.[5] Other exhibits include "Lords of the Land"; "Burgess Shale", a diorama of dozens of creatures from Yoho National Park in British Columbia;[10] "Devonian Reef", a life-size model of a 375 million year old reef;[11] a "Cretaceous Garden", with over 600 living species of plants,[12] and "Age of Mammals" and "Ice Ages" which cover mammalian life in the Cenozoic. "Triassic Giant" is a 1,700 square feet (160 m2) long specimen of the largest known marine reptile. The 21 metres (69 ft) long ichthyosaur Shonisaurus sikanniensis was recovered from the shores of the Sikanni Chief River in northeastern British Columbia by a team led by Elizabeth Nicholls, former curator of Marine Reptiles. This exhibit pays homage to the work of Nicholls, who died in 2004.[13]
A window into the "Preparation Lab" allows visitors to watch technicians as they carefully prepare fossils for research and exhibition.[14] Additional offerings include guided and self-guided tours of the badlands, the hands-on "Nexen Science Hall" with interactive stations that introduce important palaeontological concepts,[15] simulated fossil digs, fossil casting, school programs, summer camps for both children and families, and much more.
The Museum is affiliated with: CMA, CHIN, and Virtual Museum of Canada.