Saskatchewan River: Dry Bones

Dinosaurs abound in Alberta’s badlands

Picture a landscape that is sparsely vegetated, parched like a desert, totally unsuited to any kind of farming or horticulture, and containing exposed bands of 75 million-year-old mudstone and sandstone. Welcome to the badlands.

In prehistoric times, ancient streams deposited sediment all over the great plains region of the continent to form these fossil-rich layers. Then gullies were worn down, being carved and sculpted by the erosion of powerful winds and running water following the last glacial retreat. Hoodoos are the result.

The fossils in Dinosaur Provincial Park in the badlands of southern Alberta are considered to be so precious that the site has been declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations. It is located along the Red Deer River, a major tributary of the South Saskatchewan River, in a region of Alberta called the badlands.

Fossilized remains of dinosaurs, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and prehistoric mammals are being mined for information by the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in nearby Drumheller.

Download:
Saskatchewan River (Adobe PDF document) Rivers of Canada (All pages in a zipped file)

top ↑