Digging Canadian Dinosaurs

Reviewed: July 16, 2004
By: Rebecca Grambo / illustrations by Dianna Bonder
Publisher: Walrus Books
64 pages, $16.95

There are no dinosaur remains all over Canada. Most people know that the largest single concentration of fossil remains can be found in Alberta, there have also been finds in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and, yes, even in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

Rebecca Grambo and Dianna Bonder have put together an elementary level introduction to the topic, focussing particularly on those regions and the creatures which might have lived in them. They begin with a discussion of how fossils and formed and what they record. Then they move to a cross country tour of the dinosaur regions, beginning with the protosauropods in Nova Scotia, the Tyrannosaurus Rex of Sask., the seven varieties of dinosaur footprints in B.C.'s Peace River district.

The biggest section of the book is reserved for “Alberta's Treasure Chest”, the badlands, Dinosaur Provincial Park and the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Interestingly, two of the people who discovered remains while doing other things were George Mercer Dawson, who was mapping in Saskatchewan at the time, and Joseph Burr Tyrrell, who was an explorer and mining engineer in Alberta. Both later passed through the Klondike.

Print Preview