Educating Risa

We spent quite a bit of time inside the Interpretive Centre at Dinosaur Provincial Park, and we were all quite surprised to find that there was far more to it than dinosaurs. (Many more dinosaurs are on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, about an hour and a half away, and I think it is sensible to DPP not to try to compete with this museum—the only museum solely dedicated to palaeontology in Canada, and widely regarded as one of the top 5 palaeo museums in the world.) DPP’s Interpretive Centre also has several excellent displays about current wildlife (birds, bugs, plants, mammals, reptiles, etc.) found in the park. I spent a lot of time at an interactive computer program in which you learned bird calls of common “badlands birds”—hope to put my new knowledge to further use when we go back later this summer! After the Interpretive Centre, we got a bite to eat at “The Concession”, and we were pleased to find a number of veggie options on the menu. Veggie burgers, veggie wraps, fries, onion rings, salads, and for breakfast items like pancakes, an egg-cheese-and-vegetables breakfast wrap, hashbrowns, etc. in addition to the usual burgers and chicken and such. Just a little FYI for any other veggies among us.

Here’s some photos of our “inside adventures”. Here’s Daegan just outside the interpretive centre:

There are LOTS of hands-on items at the centre, and interactive displays, keeping kids happy:

The welcome sign to the Interpretive Centre, which also functions as a field station for the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Ongoing palaeontology digs and research happen at DPP, and the most recent displays at Tyrrell on ceratopsians (triceratops, styracosaurus and the like) feature new species from DPP found AFTER the birth of my kids! This is a very active field of science where we live, and I am hard-pressed to think of a better place for our boys to grow up, given their interests.

Daegan by one of a handful of large dino skeletons on display:

This bone, which rather reminds me of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, is in fact a vertebra from a quetzalcoatlus, the largest pterosaur species (flying reptile) known. It had a wingspan of 12 metres (almost 40 feet)!

Both Daegan and I found this next display, the “dino diversity wall”, quite interesting. It lists the species so far found in the park, grouped by order / family / genus / species. 42 different species by my count:

As I mentioned, there was far more to the centre than dinosaurs. After walking through a mock palaeontology camp:

you came to a large section that was about the park as it is today. There were many displays on wildlife, one on how hoodoos are formed, some on First Nations Peoples and their views on the badlands, etc. They had a box with the different kinds of sedimentary rocks found in the park for you to touch: sandstone, mudstone, bentonite clay (which is insanely slippery when wet!), etc. But the boys’ favourite display, by far, was the “Badlands Diversity Wall.” It had several 3-sided panels that could be flipped around to reveal information about various lifeforms found in the park (bugs, birds, plants, etc.), and when you let go, it flipped back to the panoramic scene. You can see one of these walls behind Jim and Daegan at this hands-on display (there were two such walls):

Here are the boys turning the panels around seeing / reading about what critter lurked behind:

The boys had me take gajillions of pics as they found some of their favourite animals, bugs and plants, but I’ll just share their two absolute favourites right now. Gareth with the northern scorpion, and Daegan with the prairie rattlesnake:

Gareth just wandered over and insisted I show you the 10-lined June beetle as well:

And here’s one last one of the boys and I goofing around, making T rex claws and roaring at each other. Just adding to the ambiance for the other visitors.

It was a wonderful mini-vacation!