We go way back...

So long before I worked at the Tyrrell Museum (though I'd always dreamed I would... just not the way it happened), I'd been visiting it nearly every year.
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Here is the ONLY photo of me at the museum pre-2003. Despite this lack of photographic evidence I had been there throughout the years (it helps that its only a 1.5 hour drive from cowtown).

Though there are few photos of me there, I still accumulated evidence I'd been there. Trace fossils as it were. These are two pins still in my pin collection.

There are of course many stories and memories I could relay. Frankly I'm a little out of steam today (I actually had marking to do... remember I'm a freaking sub! Since when am I supposed to do marking?!?).

Living at a Museum

Welcome to my entry for the "My Favourite Museum" boneyard. Now because Traumador has published on the Tyrrell museum and I couldn't really hope to add much to what he's already said, I've decided to come at this topic a different way.

For many of us museums are a fun place to visit and explore, some us very lucky people even get to work at them, but only a few of us can realistically claim to have lived at a museum.

I am one of those few. While I worked at the Royal Tyrrell Museum's Badlands Science Camp in 2005, for all intents and purposes I LIVED at the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

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Though I worked at camp two years (2005 and 2006) it was only in the camps pilot year that I truly HAD to live at the museum. In this first year it was not certain how the general public and the locals would react to and treat our camp site. Being located just off the major footpath in Midland Provincial Park there was a lot of potential for vandalism and trespassing. So the staff were required to live on site to ensure that it was "secure".

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Fortunately nobody had it in for our camp stuff, and every year after the first staff have been required to NOT live on site. Probably because of we the first lot. Not that we were badly behaved, but just rather it proved to be an odd experience for us AND the museum as a whole.

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Now technically we lived in the camp's tepees, which, okay granted, weren't really a physical part of the museum. Yet they were just one step removed from being so. Being a mere 10 minute walk from the museum, and with no really infrastructure of their own to begin with (we didn't get a proper toilet at camp for 3 weeks!) we staffers ended up living out of the camp office and staff lounge at the Tyrrell an awful lot!

There had never been staff quite like us.

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In the morning we'd wake up tend to any on site stuff, and than trek into the museum as the opening shift was arriving. Making us among the first in the place for the day. We'd shower, eat breakfast (in the staff room, much to the annoyance of some of the big brass), and than get to work in the camp office.

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Our work day technically ended at 4pm like the other early people, but as all we really had to do was either go hangout in the badlands for the rest of the day or stay in the air conditioned and populated museum. So we usually opted to keep working until 7-8pm. We didn't mind not getting paid, there was a ton of stuff to set up before the kids showed up that first year.

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By the time we brushed our teeth, hit the toilet (again it took us forever to get one on site!), and hiked ourselves back to the camp, we were among the last to leave the building.

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Working at the museum two years previous had taken some of the magical edge off the place. Living there killed the magic off in many ways. The Tyrrell has never been quite the same for me since. Not that it is a bad thing.

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In some ways I'm closer to the place than the people who have been working there since it opened. It has a feeling of home, and that's because, apart from sleeping, I really did live in that place (and when the kids were at camp we'd sleep one night of the 5 in the Dinosaur Hall!).

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Now I've of course already posted about some of my work experiences at the museum, but mostly to do with the palaeo side of my job. Camp was a totally different set of experiences and rewards. I'd worked summer camps before, and I'd worked at the museum before, but combining the two has been my favourite job so far in my life.

Sure much of the magic was taken off working at the museum, but at the same time I gained something way cooler. I became Mr. Museum!

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Building a camp from the ground up is intense and you need the help and resources of all kinds of people. Being one of 3 people running around and rallying this help and those resources I quickly built an incredible network around the museum. It was so cool to get to know and work with nearly every department and branch of the institution. Even cooler is that I can still go in and visit most of them even these days! I haven't worked there in 2 years!

The other awesome thing about living at work is the bonds you make with your fellow staff. Now this is more an element of the summer camp, and not so much the museum (and I have the same thing with many of the Kiwanians), but these guys are more like family than co-workers or friends.

Of course I also have always loved working with kids, and that was pretty much all I did both those years from the beginning of July till the end of August. The fact I was educating, and doing Dinosaurs and palaeo was just icing on the cake!

What was even cooler was that due to our program being 5 continuous days of living (with the kids) at the museum, we had to fill up the time with some pretty unique experiences to make it worth their while. As of such the kids got to be, all but one step removed from, actual palaeontologists those 5 days. They got to go places and do things other visitors could only dream of... Of course as the staff member leading 6 camps all summer I got to do it ALL 6 times! Two years in a row!!!

Our collections tour for example. My first 2 years as an interpreter I got to see collections once a year. After two years of camp and the 8 collections visits, I got "tired" of the place... Not really, but it wasn't an elusive elite place anymore.

The educator in me had a field day. Literally sometimes (pun intended!). My big complaint with teaching for real is you can't have fun like this or be this silly in the skool system.

Another one of the things I had a lot of fun with was the program development. Due to our having SO much time to fill we camp staff invented probably 2 days worth of stuff that was spread out throughout the week for the kids to do. It was cool seeing the 6 programs I came up with go from ideas on paper in the pre-season, get setup and put together usually just in time for the kids to arrive, and finally see the campers try them out.

Granted not all of them were hits or without their flaws. The problem with only have 2 months (with no great play testing time) is that sometimes these ideas didn't work out. The most infamous of these was my "bloody" Corythosaur.

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Despite these set backs and minor crisis, I enjoyed them in a way too. I got to creative problem solve. Something I do enjoy about substitute teaching these days.

I also doubled my canoe experience those summers. Due to my being a certified (expired mind you) flatwater canoe instructor I got to lead all 8 trips of those summers. The red deer river was a piece of cake to boat, despite it being a "moving" body, and there were no truly scary moments or incidents. Mind you like all field outings there were many stressful moments for us staff, but the kids loved it.

However my favourite of favourite memories from camp though, were the themes. A summer camp theme is basically a improv interactive drama put on for the kids where all the events of camp are framed with a loose story. At Kiwanis these were put to minor to moderate use in my day there, and as it was my favourite thing I brought it to Science camp with a vengeance.

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There is almost nothing else I love more in the world than putting on a costume and pretending I'm someone way more fantastic or cool than myself. Especially around kids as they have imaginations enough to keep up with my own. That and they appreciate make belief for the fun that it is!

Taking my 3 years at Kiwanis and their themes, I perfected camp theme to a level that will probably never be rivalled at our budget! You can get the whole story about that here.

A huge bit of camp, that lives on into this day, was Traumador. He was entwined in everything we did at camp. Often "helping" introduce or lead programs, or in a few cases the one delivering the program...

So much was Traumador a key part of these good times, me and Peter realized that to keep something of these summers alive later in our lives Traumador was our best bet. The Tyrannosaur Chronicles owes its existence to Traumador being the heart and soul of camp.

Those days are sadly over, and they're not coming back. I'll always miss the unexpected nature of camp, and the way every day ended up being a thousand adventures (big and small). You never know what was going to happen. Whether it be a random visit from the hospital helicopter (not for medical reasons thankfully!) one minute, head off to canoe the river, dig or look for fossils, or get into costume as a villainous "minion" jump into your car drive to the field trip across the valley so the bad guys appeared to be everywhere!

I still remember this moment with crystal clarity. This picture was taken 30 seconds after I delivered my last program at camp ever. Here you see all my key camp tools piled together on a chair as you'd never see them during a camp. During camp they were my lifeline, and always in use getting me to the end of the day. Now they were just idly sit here ready to collect dust. Because camp would never come to them (or me) again.

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Yes I do miss camp often, but at the same time I also realize I need to get on with my life. More to the point there's bound to be something else out there that is as equal an adventure as living at a museum. So if you know what it is could you let me know.

Preview of Drum to Come

So been on a vacation in Drumheller for a week now. Sadly my trip ends in less than 36 hours. In fact functionally I've got just over 24 hours to go.

Due to a number of factors I'm only giving you a taste of whats gone on up here. I will be posting a lot more soon. PROMISE!

Among the most key is catching up with the peoples that made my life here in Drumheller so memorable. As of today I've managed some quality time with everyone I sought out (though maybe not the amount of time I'd have liked)

Discoveries everywhere. Though to be honest the best weren't mine, but I was along for the ride at least.

Some very unexpected adventures. This photo was taken from one. Bet you can't guess where it was taken from ;p

And of course Traumador had a TON of adventures up here. Of which this picture doesn't even come close to conveying. Seriously some of the best Traum photos and adventures ever will be coming from this Drum expedition.

Plus find out my current obsession. All coming soon once I return home, and nothing more adventure wise is occurring.

Wishing I had owned a camera sooner!

Though I'm not a real palaontologist (and sadly never will be) on occasion due through my time at the Tyrrell I've been exposed to stuff that the majority of palaeo people haven't been yet (though hopefully they will be soon).

Recently over at Manabu Sakamoto's blog the Raptor's Nest there's been some discussion about ceratopsians (here and here) that have hit on Pachyrhinosaur growth rates. Now I was unaware of this, but nobody at the Tyrrell has published on the amazing material they've dug up at Pipestone Creek.

Back in 2005 I had the opportunity to see the amazing series of a dozen or so skulls (most being composites of various incomplete bits and pieces, but still pretty good matches) that chronicled most of the age ranges of Pachyrhinos. I was given a personal briefing/lesson on the specimens by either Darren Tanke or Mark Mitchell (I think it was Darren, but I can't remember, and BOTH have been so kind to me over the years with sharing their incredible knowledge). The true crime and tragedy was I didn't own a camera at the time, and didn't manage any pictures. NOOOOOOO!

I did manage a "spare" (not that I bowl, but the term is appropriate) of managing some photo's in 2006 when I finally got a camera. Peter Bond and I managed an impromptu photographing session through the Tyrrell's collections. In our snap shot rampage I got a couple pictures of just some of these Pachyrhino elements. However due to the limited time of our access, and the specimens being put away into storage these were the only images of the series I got.

I'll try to contact Darren Tanke for further info on it.


Here is the best photo I have of various lower jaw elements of the series.

I think at some point they were thinking about putting some of the material on display, and had this excellent sculpt made up. As to whether it was going into the new ceratopsian display or not I have no idea (from my memory the ceratopsian display was only imagined in LATE 2005, after the success of the Dinosaur Park symposium, to accompany the 2007 ceratopsian symposium). Last time I was at the museum in early 2008 this was not in the public gallery (at least to my knowledge. Sadly it was a rather quick visit).

Of course this adult skull (cast on the left, original fossil on the right) isn't unique, but shows the excellent preservation and condition of the Pipestone material.

Since one of the Raptor's Nest posts is on the new Albertoceratops...

Here's the photo I took of it in Jan from the Tyrrell's new ceratopsian display.

Boneyard #20: Meeting a Prehistoric Creature: The Un-Professional Palaeontologist

Though my life has turned out fairly well (ignoring my current teacher registration and immigration issues) I've always had one regret.

I didn't grow up to be a professional Palaeontologist.

Now there's all sorts of reasons for this. My lack of great marks throughout school, my inability to apply math to the real world, and just frankly it wasn't in the universe's cards that were dealt to me.

It's not too say I didn't manage to grow up to be a palaeontologist of sorts. In fact, considering my education and work experience has been constantly building towards working with kids and teaching, I think I've done a pretty good job leaning my life expereince towards the prehistoric.

Having failed to achieve a formal approach into science at a university level, I wrote off the dream of working with dinosaurs or fossils throughout the first few years of my post high school life.

However when I started to (appear to) out-grow summer camps my mother made a fateful intervention into my work search that reignited the seemingly lost dream. She checked the Royal Tyrrell Museum's website for job openings.

They were looking for educational interpreters. A job that required a whole scattering of skills: dinosaur and science knowledge, public speaking, experience with kids, acting and creative imagination. A list of things I happened to have (and still have!) in some abundance.

Long story short I got the gig, and frankly I think I appreciated my experiences of "meeting prehistoric creatures" all the more than if I'd become a true academic Palaentologist.

My first year at the museum was a steep learning curve on the "practical" side of Palaeontology [note this photo is not from this point of my life, but rather it was taken on my last DAY working at the museum ever... *tear*]. Being a childhood dino geek I knew lots of theoretical stuff that you find in books. However, skills like finding fossils and digging them up were all completely new to me.

I managed well enough. Though I won't claim to be a professional I've got a pretty firm grasp on everything from prospecting, excavating, preparation (though I did damage my first Hadrosaur Phalange), and even casting. At the same time, I was not one of the museum's "pros" I did get paid!

One of the key things I definitely learned that not all professionals know, is how to commincate and relate these cool prehistoric creatures we've met from the deep past to the public.

My main love from this time was dinosaur and palaeontology promotion and education. Sadly as a teacher I don't get to do this anywhere near as much as I like, and only manage it by sneeking my puppet Traumador the Tyrannosaur into some of my lessons as a hook. The kids just can't get enough of him!

So when I wasn't showing off palaeontology concepts in such entertaining ways as mock ceratopsian duelling with my colleague Peter Bond (check out his awesome Boneyard entry by clicking here!), I had the oppurtunity to really engage in some real palaeontology.

The kid in me, who is still sticking around, treasures these experiences like few others, and they show that even if you can't become a "proper" palaeontologist you can come pretty darn close!

Prospecting : At the Burgess Shale... Sorta

At the end of my first year at the museum in 2003 we had an unbelievable oppurtunity to go on an out of season trip to Mount Stephen in Field, British Columbia. Now for those of you who don't know the signfiicance of Mount Stephen it is part of the Burgess Shale. It is however, a less famous site than the Walcott quarry located on the connecting ridge of Mount Field and Mount Wapta directly across the valley from Mount Stephen.

Having just gotten hooked on the bizarre wonders of the Burgess Shale this was the trip of a lifetime.

It was also my first chance to hunt for fossils outside the Badlands. By this point in my 4 year run at the Tyrrell I was pretty good at determining fossil from rock, but it was this trip where I started my progress to the next level of knowledge in trying to identify the fossils I found.

The benefit of Mount Stephen vs. the Walcott quarry is that there is a near infinite number of specimens to be found. This slab full of Trilobites was found on the trail nearly 200 metres below the fossil producing plain.

The drawback of Mount Stephen is that it only produces hardbody specimens of trilobites and a handful of other arthropods. On the other hand, The Walcott quarry contains a massive array of excellently perserved specimens exhibiting the spectacular diversity of the Cambrian. Only there, you have to actively split shale to get to these treasures. On Mount Stephen there were more fossils than I could have ever imagined possible!

The actual fossil plain is atop the Mountain, and requires a very arduous hike. It is worth it though.


As the Burgess Shale was part of a UNESCO heritage site, and thus partially protected, half the hill was off limits to perserve this site for future generations, though erosion in my opinion negates the point of this rule. This meant we could only search part of the slope.

You couldn't help but wonder at the time whether the best fossils would be contained within the no go zone...




With this simple mat of shale in front of you, you could look at the more impressive layered outcrop in the protected area of the plain and wonder wistfully what you could find.

It turns out every 2nd or 3rd piece of shale in THIS photo had at least one trilobite fossil in it!!!

If you don't believe me this photo was taken within 3 minutes of our starting to look!

This trip also was my first experience to engage in real field work. The then curator of invertabrates at the Tyrrell, Dr. Paul Johnson was here to collect samples of rock for his upcoming paper on his theory of the Burgess Shale ecosystem forming around volcanic thermal vent environments.

It was a very enlightening and educational trip for me. Not only did I help collect some of the samples, but I was able to ask him all the questions that my heart desired. Those were the days.


Here are samples of our finds.


Lots of trilobites.

A few species of them too! Olenoides and Naraoia. I am hoping here that memory serves me well, as sadly my palaeontology books are all still stuck in Canada.

Trilobites weren't the only thing to be found though.

Among the most exciting finds of my life was this little beauty... An Anomalocaris claw!!! One of my favourite prehistoric creatures ever...
Though rarer than Trilobites there were few of these to be found.

New Responsibilities... New Oppurtunities

For my 3rd year at the museum in 2006 I returned as a founding member of the brand new Badlands Summer Science Camp. I was a natural to help pilot this program having had 3 years previous summer camp experience, and some palaeontological experience.

Combining the two has been thus far been my most statisfying work related experience.

As the kids were coming out for a whole week of 24/7 palaeontology experience we needed our programs at camp to be a lot more extensive than normal tourist programs. As such I got to do a lot of developement that required far more extensive palaeontology activities than I'd done as an interpreter.

Excavating- Dinosaur Provincal ParkOne of the most hands on experiences was working closely with the Museum's Senior Curator Dr. Donald Brinkman to develop a Micro Fossil sorting program. In addition to the educational presentation, which this photo of Traumador and Dr. Brinkman is from, I also helped collect the fossils. What made this cool for the kids, and cooler for me was that we were helping sort these for actual research!

The best part was the camp team accompanied Dr. Brinkman to do this excavating in Dinosaur Provincal Park which is among the most dinosaur rich sites in the world.

As this trip with Dr. Brinkman included teaching and supervising our work, every single one of us are now pretty competent micro fossil experts.

This was our quarry. Unlike macro fossil digs it wasn't the most elaborate of digs.

At the same time I have to say I enjoyed the "one day and you're done" aspect compared to week long macro digs.

Fossil digging whether micro or macro is great excercise. In the case of micros carrying them and the matrix they're in out of the field is a lot heavier than it looks.

As the micro fossil program was mine to develop I was put in charge of cleaning and screening them for our use.

Which just made working with these fossil all the cooler. I found em, prepped em, and finally..


with the help of the kids sorted them.

Casting- The Corythosaur of Doom!

Another of my development projects was refurbishing an old cast skeleton of Corythosaurus into a program prop usable by children. Sadly I only managed the refurbishing part of that task. The skeleton had been a test bed for a number of experimental casting materials in the 80's and as such a lot of it was made of fairly brittle, or worse, heavy stuff. This made it impossible for me to make it truly kid friendly.

Not that we didn't try it out with the kids. Sadly it was too hard to make it engaging for them as the hands on part had to be strictly supervised, and we adults did the "fun" work of putting the skeleton together. For example, the arms required two of us to attack. One person would hold up the heavy cast and the other would bolt it to the frame.

We retired it from the camp program roster after 2 failed attempts.

That having been said the 2 months I spent repairing the skeleton was a very indepth expereince in cast and mounting techniques. Though I couldn't nessecarily mould a new specimen, beyond wielding the underlying frame, I could put together the mounted cast skeleton now with what I learned in this project.

Much like the whole program's tragic outcome, due to the hectic pace of that pilot camp year I stupidly never had a good photo of me and my creation taken though I believe there is one out there somewhere!

Lost Quarries

In my last year I decided to develop a program around one of my personal favourite research projects at the Tyrrell. For the last decade or so, Darren Tanke has been hunting down the lost dig sites of such legends as the Sternbergs and Barnum Brown throughout Alberta.

I approached him about developing a program in which our kids are given a simulated lost quarry on the camp site, and using Darren's techniques figure out who dug it up, when they carried out the dig, and what dinosaur it was. Darren not only agreed to help me with the program, but he personally got involved!

These photos you're seeing are those taken of me and Darren in the early 20th century costumes that were used in the program.

Considering he's hunting for unrecorded spots all throughout the extensive Badlands of Alberta it seems incredible that Darren has found as many sites as he has so far.

Using nothing more than old expedition photographs, like the ones we simulated in these photos, garbage, old newspapers, and some good old fashioned detective work Darren now routinely pinpoints anywhere between 4 and 7 of these sites each summer. Considering he does this during his off time on current digs he's working on I think that's amazing!

Darren's guidance and assistiance led to this being my most successful program out of the lot. My only regret was a few authentic artifacts (like glass bottles and broken wooden crate) had to be substituted with child safe proxies.

The kids loved it. Being presented with the method of how Darren finds them they really enjoyed finding out the mystery of which dinosaur was found at camp.

This outcome was of course ficticious, but for the record it was the Hypacrosaur George Sternberg "found" in 1914. My Corythosaur cast was to stand in for the Hypacrosaur, but of course that didn't happen.

So I guess I sort of lost my target of meeting a prehistoric creature here at the end. To salvage this premise on this last photo I'll relay the best connection to palaeontology I made with my kids.

Having had a very long day most of the camp staff were incredibly exhausted. They just wanted to get back to the camp site and sleep. I offered for any who wanted to go on the Lost Quarry photo hunt.

You see Darren often finds the unknown dig site locations by matching land marks in the antique photos with the landscape of today. Taking the kids on a hike with this series of photos we followed a trail of landmarks that brought us to this lookout.

In the "modern" day this spot is camp itself, and though simulated the 6 kids who came with me forgot this wasn't real, and ran into camp to excitedly inform everyone that George Sternberg had been digging AT camp!

So, I may not be a professional palaeontologist, but I've had my fair share of run-ins with prehistoric creatures. Perhaps more importantly, I've facilitated and shared these encounters with a whole new generation of potential palaeontologists. Or at least I can try to comfort myself with that thought next time I start to regret my life's outcome.

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Be sure to check out the rest of the Prehistoric Insanity Productions affliate blogs' entries into the Boneyard #20 contest.

Traumador the T-Rex goes on an imaginary Tyrannosaurid date with the girl (dino) of his dreams.

Peter Bond takes us on a tour of Canada's largest fossil collection

Prehistoric Insanity Productions takes you on a behind the scenes of Meeting a 3D CG Prehistoric Creature.

Also be sure to hit Laelaps to check out the other entries, and most important to vote. You simply have to leave a comment to register your vote.

Thanks for stopping by, and hopefully see you again in the future!