Qualla: Drumheller: The Valley Where Dinosaurs Became Oil

Drumheller: The Valley Where Dinosaurs Became Oil: Introduction

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Red Deer River Valley looks like another planet. Hoodoos - towering pillars of rock capped with harder stone - stand like sentinels across a landscape stripped to bare geology. The badlands around Drumheller, Alberta expose millions of years of sediment in striated cliffs of red, brown, and gray. And buried in those layers: dinosaurs. More dinosaur fossils have been found in the Drumheller badlands than in any other location on Earth. The Royal Tyrrell Museum holds over 160,000 specimens. Every year, spring floods and summer storms erode new bones from the earth, making paleontology an ongoing excavation rather than a finished inventory. The dinosaurs that lived here 75 million years ago never really left.

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Image: Ymblanter | CC BY-SA 4.0

Drumheller: The Valley Where Dinosaurs Became Oil: The Exposure

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0. The badlands exist because of ice. During the last ice age, glacial meltwater carved through the Alberta prairie, cutting down through millions of years of sediment to create the Red Deer River Valley. The glaciers themselves passed over this region without directly eroding it, b...

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Image: Ymblanter | CC BY-SA 4.0

Drumheller: The Valley Where Dinosaurs Became Oil: The Fossils

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ssalomons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Joseph Tyrrell found the first major specimen in 1884 - an Albertosaurus skull that launched decades of excavation. The dinosaurs preserved here died in an environment perfect for fossilization: river deltas where carcasses were quickly buried by sediment, protected from scavenge...

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Image: Ssalomons | CC BY-SA 3.0

Drumheller: The Valley Where Dinosaurs Became Oil: The Museum

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ssalomons, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology opened in 1985, named for the geologist who started it all. It houses one of the world's largest collections of dinosaur fossils - over 160,000 specimens, with roughly 40 complete dinosaur skeletons on display. The museum is also a workin...

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Image: Ssalomons | CC BY-SA 3.0

Drumheller: The Valley Where Dinosaurs Became Oil: The Landscape

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Beyond the fossils, the Drumheller badlands are simply beautiful in their stark, alien way. Hoodoos rise throughout the valley - columns of soft rock protected by harder capstones, eroding into impossible shapes. The Horseshoe Canyon offers accessible hiking through multicolored ...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Drumheller: The Valley Where Dinosaurs Became Oil: Visiting Drumheller

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0. Drumheller is located 135 kilometers northeast of Calgary via Highway 9. The Royal Tyrrell Museum is 6 kilometers northwest of town; allow several hours for a thorough visit. The town embraces its dinosaur identity with a 26-meter T. rex statue, dinosaur-themed businesses, and th...

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Image: Ymblanter | CC BY-SA 4.0