Episode 228 – Dinosaur Provincial Park

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Take a trip to Alberta, Canada and you can visit a vast stretch of badlands that contains some of the world’s absolute best fossils from the Late Cretaceous Period. This episode, we explore the deep history and discoveries of Dinosaur Provincial Park.

In the news
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New species of megaraptoran dinosaur had a croc in its mouth
Jurassic lizard is a new species and a confusing example of early lizard evolution patterns

Cretaceous Park

Located in southeastern Alberta, Dinosaur Provincial Park covers around 80 square kilometers of prairie grasslands, riverside cottonwood forest, and spectacular badlands. The Park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979 because of the unique wildlife that lives there, the ongoing geologic processes in the badlands, and the unprecedented assemblage of Late Cretaceous fossils.

Between 78 and 72 million years ago, this region was home to forest crossed by rivers that flowed eastward toward the Western Interior Seaway. Over time, the region became ever more coastal as the seaway expanded outward, before eventually southeastern Alberta was inundated by the sea. Several millions years of rivers, floodplains, and shoreline deposited the sandstones, siltstones, and shales that now make up the geology of Dinosaur Provincial Park. After the last glacial period of the Ice Age, around 15,000 years ago, meltwater carved out the modern shape of the badlands, exposing the rocks of the Oldman Formation, Bearpaw Formation, and the famous Dinosaur Park Formation.

Paleontologists have been excavating fossils from the area since the late 1800s, long before it was designated as a Provincial Park. Fossils include fish, amphibians, mammals, pterosaurs, and lots of plants, but the Park gets its name from dinosaurs. Hundreds of dinosaur skeletons representing more than 50 species have been found at the Park. Often, these fossils occur in dense bonebeds, sometimes including nearly complete skeletons. Dinosaur Provincial Park is one of the world’s very best localities for studying dinosaurs and ecosystems of the Late Cretaceous.

Many famous paleontologists have made discoveries in the Park, including Joseph Tyrrell, Lawrence Lambe, Barnum Brown, and Charles Sternberg. And many famous dinosaurs were first discovered within the area that is now the Park, including Gorgosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Centrosaurus, and Dromaeosaurus. Besides body fossils of plants and animals, excavations at the Park have also uncovered eggshells, footprints, and more.

Dinosaurs get most of the attention in the Park, but plenty of non-dino discoveries have been made there, including the giant pterosaur Cryodrakon and the rare Cretaceous dragonfly Cordualadensa.

Learn More

Dinosaur Provincial Park – UNESCO World Heritage Convention
Dinosaur Provincial Park – Alberta Parks

New Dinosaur Tracksite from Dinosaur Provincial Park (article, paper)
McGill team discovers Canada’s first dinosaur-era dragonfly fossil
Cryodrakon, “frozen dragon” pterosaur from Dinosaur Provincial park

Origins of dinosaur bonebeds in Cretaceous Alberta, Canada (technical, open access)
Competition structured a megaherbivorous dinosaur assemblage (technical, open access)

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If you enjoyed this topic and want more like it, check out these related episodes:

• Episode 71 – The Western Interior Seaway
• Episode 89 – The Burgess Shale
• Episode 127 – The Hell Creek Formation

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