We’re heading into a big weekend for Calgarians who can’t get enough of dinosaurs. They’ll be getting a rare chance to get up close and personal with their prehistoric pals.
The Alberta Palaeontological Society (APS) is hosting an event called “Paleo 2024” at Mount Royal University (MRU).
Free to the public, the event includes displays of fossils and talks on dinosaurs.
Paleontologist Jon Noad gave a preview of some aspects of Paleo 2024 to a group of Grade 3 and 4 students at Colonel Walker School in southeast Calgary.
“I’ve brought in some models of dinosaurs and some real bones, as well,” Noad told the students.
Noad is one of the speakers giving a presentation at the MRU event.
“I’m going to be talking about Springbank and all the fossils that have been found there over the last two years,” Noad said.
The fact that those discoveries are happening just west of Calgary came as a surprise to many of the students.
“It’s really cool,” Cohen Frid, 9, said. “I never knew they were that close.”
Dinosaurs have been close to Noad’s heart since the day he got a book on them as a childhood gift.
“And as soon as I saw those pictures, I actually decided that I was going to be a paleontologist,” Noad said. “That was when I was six.”
Noad grew up in England and now feels fortunate to be living in Alberta.
“It’s incredible that we have these fossils all around us,” Noad said. “Within an hour of Calgary, we’ve got rocks and fossils from multiple periods of geological time.”
Paleo 2024 happens from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday in the Jenkins Theatre at MRU.
“It’s a way of sharing this with the public,” Noad said, “the amount of heritage and resources we have in the province.”