Dr. Dave Eberth, a geologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, has had an extensive career studying and making discoveries all over the world.
His latest book, however, comes from his own backyard.
In July of this year, Eberth published “Badlands of Drumheller –Eastern Area,” and it is proving to be popular. In fact, its first printing of 300 sold out at the Royal Tyrrell Museum’s gift shop in just two months. A second printing is on its way to the shelves.
“It’s funny, Dennis Braman (palynology researcher at Tyrrell) and I used to joke years ago when we were starting out and running all over the place in America and Asia, said ‘there’s a lot of work to be done in Drumheller but we’ll leave that for our retirement,’” he chuckles.
He explains it is a project that he pondered doing in the late 1990’s. It is a 64-page roadside guide to the geology and history of the Drumheller Badlands covering the east area of the valley including Dorothy as well as to the Wintering Hills and Wayne.
“Drumheller preserves spectacular evidence for an ancient world that is vastly different than the one we inhabit today,” says Dr. Eberth. “This book encourages people to get out and explore that evidence themselves.”
The work encourages exploration and it also includes GPS navigation to help pinpoint the sites described. It features 25 geological sites.
“It has the GPS coordinates in it so people can go to very specific localities on their own,” he said. “That’s something I really wanted to share, rather than the arm-waving approach, this will take people directly to localities and allow them to appreciate it.”
The book is accessible for the casual explorers but is also engaging to those who want to dig deeper.
“The book goes down into detail but will come back out and be quite light and tell a couple of anecdotes, and then will go back into detail again. You can use the book to explore at the level you are most comfortable at,” he said.
Eberth adds he is planning a companion book, describing west and north of Drumheller that includes Horsethief and Horseshoe canyons, the recreation areas at Morrin and Tolman bridges, and Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park.
