Excavation of Dinosaur Skeleton, Drumheller 1912

A dinosaur emerging from the Alberta badlands in 1912. This remarkable archival photograph captures an early fossil excavation near Drumheller, with a palaeontologist standing beside the enormous bones still embedded in the earth.

The badlands surrounding Drumheller contain some of the richest dinosaur fossil beds in the world, and discoveries made here helped establish Alberta as an internationally important centre for palaeontology. More than a century later, the landscape continues to reveal its prehistoric past.