Royal Tyrrell marks 40th anniversary with groundbreaking dinosaur discoveries

A new exhibit is putting a few of the Royal Tyrrell Museum's most game-changing specimens in the spotlight.

Breakthroughs, a collection of five ancient fossils, showcases everything from feathers on theropods to the feeding habits of tyrannosaurs, with these specimens representing only a small portion of the iconic Drumheller museum's collection.

The exhibit serves to illustrate "the literal breakthroughs in scientific discovery that we've made at this institution," said Lisa Making, the museum's executive director.

"We really want to highlight what makes Alberta such a unique place for paleontology in the world, but also what the Royal Tyrrell Museum has done over the last 40 years in elevating the science of paleontology around the world," she said.

Picking only five of the museum's many specimens, the majority of which aren't even on display, was a challenging task, said Craig Scott, director of preservation and research at the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Ultimately, the team narrowed the focus of Breakthroughs on fossils from the Cretaceous period, spanning from approximately 143 million years ago to the extinction of the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago.

"This highlights a very specific period of time, which happens to be the best represented period of time in the province," said Scott, who holds a doctorate from the University of Alberta. "We're lucky to have such great representation from this time, and so these specimens represent the very best of that time."

The exhibit's only non-dinosaur specimen is a mosasaur, a large marine carnivore that may be familiar to fans of the Jurassic World film series.

The exhibit showcases a young Mosasaurus missouriensis so well-preserved that even its cartilage, typically too soft to be fossilized, and its last meal, large fish bones, were left behind after the animal's death around 75 million years ago.

"The specimen is exquisite, the preservation unbelievable," said Scott.

A fossilized Ornithomimus, an ostrich-like theropod, is another eye-catching element of the exhibit.

The fossil, found in Dinosaur Provincial Park in 1995, was so well-preserved that technicians were able to find evidence of feathers on the animal's arms.

"It represents the first North American dinosaur to show evidence of feathers," said Scott.

Proving that bipedal dinosaurs like Ornithomimus had feathers helped further bridge the gap between birds and dinosaurs.