Royal Tyrrell Museum

As a child my parents used to take me often, perhaps every two weeks or so, to get some borrow some new books. To this day I still know my way to the shelf where one of my childhood favourites is kept. It’s a purple book about Velociraptors, and I loved to read and reread it. If it wasn’t available there was one about Allosaurus but it just wasn’t the same. If you couldn’t tell, I love dinosaurs.

That said, I remember that I had a lot of fun at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta when I went, and I was very sad to see that because of Covid it is temporarily closed. It’s for the best, but that still doesn’t ease my worry. They have a distance learning program, but it’s not quite the same.

For adults it’s a wonder to see the skeletons which are collected from the Albertan badlands, but I think every child should be given the opportunity to see this museum in person. You can get loads of information about the species that once inhabited North America, and you can learn all sorts of things about the life of these animals, the process of their extinction, their fossilization, excavation and reassembly, but that’s not really what you’re there for. You’re there for your imagination.

I remember looking up at some of the species and marveling at their size, staring in shock and awe at just how massive their heads were and their teeth. I’m really glad that I did see this museum as a child for the specific reason that the sheer size of these animals is permanently etched in my brain. I also remember being shown how to find dinosaur bones which to my childhood brain was one of the coolest things I’d ever experienced.

All this to say that if you have children, plan on having children, or want to reignite your childlike wonder, nothing is better than seeing dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Check it our post Covid!