Alberta’s Fossil Trove

A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of driving into the Canadian prairies for the first time. (No sarcasm there; I had a companion, and our entertaining conversation was invited to fill the pleasant emptiness of the flatlands.)

The journey had actually begun in Richmond. Eleven hours through winding roads and mountains later, I was in Calgary, to connect with an old friend visiting from the U.K. I had proposed that we drive out to Dinosaur Provincial Park, because it was a bucket list item and because I had no interest at the time in surveying another car city (living in one is bad enough).

We agreed to the plan, met the morning after, and made our way there. It was another two hours or so East from Calgary to the park. Endless farmland, blue skies and scorching sun. The occasional, lonely cloud or tractor interrupting the monotonous land- and skyscapes.

To get to the dinosaurs, you have to zig-zag via gridded farm roads. And just like in the movies, the ancient reptiles leap out at you dramatically. It is genuinely unbelievable how abruptly the fossil-ridden badlands appear. One moment, you are coasting through wheat and pavement. The next, you are descending on rock and gravel as the land around you concaves into another era. Canyons and valleys of unbelonging hills, buttes, and most surprisingly, greenery, emerge from nowhere, evocative of another, older time.

The park is a must-see. The bus tours are largely family-focused but informative for all. It was cool to walk around and see millions of years of our history so accessible; bones protruding from soil as commonplace as the straw-like grass stubbornly staking its claim to the area. It was also clear to understand why the badlands were considered sacred by the local Indigenous populations. Among the many reasons they originally left it undisturbed were the shadows cast by the hoodoos – interpreted as spirits lying in stone. After all, much of what casts shadows is living. People, trees, animals and the like.

Today’s image: a window into strangely saturated barren lands hidden away in Southern Alberta, behind long drives and errant discussions.

The image above was taken in October 2023. You can compare this click to the one that adorns the Wikipedia page (at the time of writing), which was taken nearly a decade earlier from the same vantage point (in July 2014), for a different seasonal flavor.