The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology (RTMP; often referred to as the Royal Tyrrell Museum) is a palaeontology museum and research facility in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. The museum was named in honour of Joseph Burr Tyrrell, and is situated within a designed by BCW Architects at Midland Provincial Park.
Efforts to establish a palaeontology museum were announced by the provincial government in 1981, with the palaeontology program of the Provincial Museum of Alberta spun-off to help facilitate the creation of a palaeontology museum. After four years of preparation, the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology was opened in September 1985. The museum was later renamed the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in June 1990, following its bestowal of the title "royal" from Queen Elizabeth II. The museum's building was expanded twice in the 21st century. The first expansion was designed by BCW Architects, and was completed in 2003; while the second expansion was designed by Kasian Architecture, and was completed in 2019.
The museum's personal collection includes over 160,000 cataloged fossils, consisting of over 350 holotypes, providing the museum with the largest collection of fossils in Canada. The museum displays approximately 800 fossils from its collection in its museum exhibits. In addition to exhibits, the museum's fossil collection are also used by the museum's research program, which carries a mandate to document and analyze geological and palaeontological history.
History
thumb|upright|right|Bust of [[Joseph Burr Tyrrell in the museum building]]
During the late 1970s, the government of Alberta began to consider building within, or adjacent to Dinosaur Provincial Park. In 1981, the provincial government formally announced plans to build a palaeontology museum. However, the museum was built in Midland Provincial Park near Drumheller, as opposed to Dinosaur Provincial Park. The construction of the museum formed a part of a larger initiative from premier Peter Lougheed, to establish a network of provincially-operated museums and interpretive centres in select small towns and rural areas throughout Alberta. The provincial government had allocated C$30 million to build the museum. The development of the museum was largely led by the institution's first director, David Baird.
The Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology was opened to the public on 25 September 1985. In the same year, the museum announced its participation in the China-Canada Dinosaur Project, the institution's first collaborative, out-of-province research project. The collaborative effort marked the first meaningful collaboration between Chinese and western palaeontologists since the Chinese Communist Revolution.
On 28 June 1990, the museum was renamed the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, after it was bestowed the title royal by Queen Elizabeth II.
Plans to expand the museum's building again were underway as early as 2013, although the museum did not announce its plans to expand the museum building until 2016. The expansion plan saw the construction of a learning lounge annex, that increased the building's size by an additional . The learning lounge annex was created in response to the feedback received from the museum, which requested more hands-on exhibits and activities at the museum. The expansion for the museum was funded by the provincial and federal governments, costing approximately C$9.3 million. The provincial government provided C$5.7 million, while the remaining C$3.5 million was provided by the federal government.
Building
The building was designed to function as a museum, and as a laboratory/research facility. The original structure, with its first expansion holds approximately worth of exhibit space. The museum's main lobby features a mural made of ten ceramic panels; titled The Story of Life, the mural was crafted by Lorraine Malach.
The museum contracted BCW Architects again to help design the ATCO Tyrrell Learning Centre, a to the main museum. The ATCO Tyrrell Learning Centre was completed in 2003 and included several classrooms with distance learning technology that allows researchers to remotely connect with field sites, and a laboratory. Audio-visual, interactive computers, and video programs and displays typically provide relevant information on the items in the exhibit.
thumb|left|Skeletal frames of a [[mammoth and a Smilodon the Cenozoic Gallery]]
A number of these exhibits are organized by geologic eras, displaying specimens and dioramas from those periods. These exhibits includes Cenozoic Gallery, Cretaceous Alberta, Cretaceous Garden, Palaeozoic Era, and Terrestrial Palaeozoic.
Several exhibits are also organized by locale, or focused on a specific fossil-bearing deposit, such as the Burgess Shale exhibit. The Grounds for Discovery exhibit displays specimens found from commercial and industrial digs. The world's most well-preserved thyreophora is situated within the Grounds for Discovery exhibit, a fossil of a Borealopelta found by oil sand workers at the Athabasca oil sands.
Other exhibits that display specimens from the museum's fossil collection includes the Dinosaur Hall, Fossils in Focus, and Triassic Giants. Fossils in Focus is an exhibit that typically displays specimens of interest for the museum's research program. Triassic Giants is an exhibit dedicated to Elizabeth Nicholls, the museum's former curator of marine reptiles, and houses a specimen of a Shonisaurus, the world's largest marine reptile.
thumb|Dinosaur Hall houses a number of dinosaur skeletal frames|upright=1.3
Along with exhibits that are primarily concerned with the exhibition of specimens and dioramas, the museum also has two exhibits related on palaeontology, Foundations, and Preparation Lab; the latter exhibit allowing visitors to watch technicians as they prepare fossils for exhibits or research. Other exhibits in the museum includes the Cretaceous Garden, which is designed to mimic the Albertan environment during the Cretaceous era by planting living relatives of the vegetation that grew in Alberta during that era. Opened in 2019, the Learning Lounge is the museum's newest exhibit, and serves as the museum's interactive and hands-on exhibit, and includes a bronze statue of an Albertosaurus, and interactive displays on how dinosaurs ate, moved, and interacted with other organisms. providing the museum with the largest fossil collection in Canada. As of November 2021, the museum's collection holds five Guinness World Records due to its unique collection of fossils; including the best-preserved Borealopelta, and a Albertonectes fossil that has the longest neck recorded.
thumb|A [[Borealopelta on display. The specimen is one of many from the collection that was found in Alberta]]
Items from the collection are either used for research, or for museum exhibits. Approximately 0.5 per cent of the collection are placed on display in the museum's exhibits. The museum has maintained a permanent field station at Dinosaur Provincial Park since 1987.