Qualla: Dinosaur Park Formation

Dinosaur Park Formation: Introduction

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY 2.0. The bones here sometimes still have skin attached. Paleontologists working the eroded badlands flanking the Red Deer River in southern Alberta have uncovered dinosaur skeletons so well preserved that soft tissues remain visible after 75 million years. The Dinosaur Park Formation, a layer of sediment deposited between 76.5 and 74.4 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous, has yielded such dense concentrations of articulated skeletons that UNESCO designated the area a World Heritage Site. This was once a coastal plain at the edge of an inland sea that covered much of North America, and the warm, wet conditions created perfect preservation in the mud and sand that became stone.

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Image: CC BY 2.0

Dinosaur Park Formation: A Graveyard of Giants

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fred Wierum, CC BY-SA 4.0. The numbers stagger: dozens of dinosaur species have been recovered from the formation, from massive ceratopsians like Centrosaurus and the newly identified Vagaceratops irvinensis to duck-billed hadrosaurs like Lambeosaurus magnicristatus. Paleontologists Darren Tanke and M.K. B...

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Image: Fred Wierum | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dinosaur Park Formation: The Living World

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Levi bernardo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Dinosaurs dominated the landscape, but they shared it with a remarkable diversity of life. Crocodilians like Albertochampsa and Leidyosuchus lurked in the waterways alongside champsosaurs, aquatic reptiles that superficially resembled crocodiles. Turtles of at least ten species l...

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Image: Levi bernardo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Dinosaur Park Formation: The Vanishing Fauna

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J.T. Csotonyi, CC BY 2.5. Something happened near the top of the formation. The familiar dinosaurs of the lower layers begin to disappear, replaced by rarer species: an unnamed pachyrhinosaur, the newly described Vagaceratops, the crested hadrosaur Lambeosaurus magnicristatus. Paleontologists believe a th...

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Image: J.T. Csotonyi | CC BY 2.5

Dinosaur Park Formation: Badlands Revealed

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anky-man at English Wikipedia (Original text: Anky-man 16:02, 16 April 2007 (UTC)), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Red Deer River carved through these ancient sediments, exposing the bone-rich layers in dramatic badlands topography. The eroded hoodoos and coulees of Dinosaur Provincial Park create an otherworldly landscape where new fossils emerge each year as wind and water strip away th...

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Image: Anky-man at English Wikipedia (Original text: Anky-man 16:02, 16 April 2007 (UTC)) | CC BY-SA 3.0