the best thing here is a wall!?! (information part 4)

okay i should really goto bed... but after checking around the university more i've discovered a weird niche in the dinosaur overpopulation theory. it seems that though much of canada, and especially alberta is over populated with dinos, the university of calgary is not...

the reason why... this would appear to be a dead zone to all things cool in palaeontology


it began with my wandering into the earth science department. what i found here kinda makes sense as this is the hub of palaeontology studies in calgary...

yet if this were drumheller or edmonton things would have been mighty different...

at first just the usual harmless extinction suspects as you'd expect. a wall full of ammonites. though from my same time era these little squidy guys pose little threat to dinosaurs. whether in the form of trying to eat us, or in the more modern sense put us out of work. these guys have the popularity of well an octopus... if octopuses wore shells that is.

however i was soon going to discover that this was the most impressive fossil display they had in many ways...

later down the hallway was a plesiosaur. these guys though not dinosaurs are often mistaken for them... not sure why... he's got flippers... and since when did swimming ever enter the dinosaur skill list...


anyways this gal was here as the senior mesozoic representative at the university. she was surprised to see me as apparently they hadn't seen a new prehistoric individual down in the heart of the university since the tyrrell opened...

seems that once the tyrrell opened up north in drumheller all the dinosaurs and other extinct critters started to migrate up there as there was a better chance for jobs and even fame up there. the university cut its funding to palaeontology and fossils, and as of such only a few senior prehistoric critters were kept on.

besides this one marine reptile the only other mesozoic representative was a bit of a shocking disappointment...

a dinosaur... but one even i won't have to fear being out performed by... it was a poor inarticulate struthiomimus. this old fellow had been at the university for over 30 years, and he was in a bad zone...

he remembered when he was first given the position of key dinosaur display that he was promised that the collection would only grow from here, and that he'd soon have other dinosaur co-workers. however all too soon the tyrrell would end that dream. one by one all the other dinosaurs left the university... then the pay cuts came in. this poor guy barely makes enough to survive day by day that alone do anything fun...

the situation was so bad for the once proud ostrich mimic he was sneaking into devil dinosaurs classes to try and find a solution to his problems...

okay so i know i've said this many times on my blog people of the web wide world, but this just PROVES i need to get out of here!!! when the only display a university is willing to put up is an ammonite wall you know we dinosaurs have it off bad!!!

well i'm going to sleep, and tomorrow mike should show up, and i can leave this nightmare behind... wait is it a good idea to goto sleep then if i'm in a nightmare???

celebrity encounter! (information part 3)

well i finally made it too the university! a new problem has popped up though. i got here a little bit late. okay a lot bit late. the guy i'm looking for has been off work for hours...

so i'm going to have to wait till tomorrow to see him. that means i'll be camping out at the university of calgary for the night. it's not a very fun looking place, but then skool was never really my thing...

with lots of time to kill though i figured i'd check the place out for a bit, as i wasn't very tired...

you're never going to guess who i ran into!

coming out of one of the lecture halls was none other then devil dinosaur himself!!!

now he probably would have just kept on going if i hadn't gotten really excited and asked for his autograph... devil dinosaur was one of my heroes growing up... though i have to say he looks a lot smaller in person then in his comic book appearances...

turns out that these days he teaches a class here in calgary that is supposed to help struggling dinosaurs in this post extinction world... i was shocked to learn that even devil dinosaur himself has been hit hard by the dinosaur draught...

ever since jurassic park (and my cousin larry's performance... JERK!) the entertainment industry has demanded nothing but the largest and most impressive of dinosaur specimens. meaning that even the most mean and kick butt devil was out of steady employment. No one wanted to see a fantastic portrayal of a t-rex, they wanted ubber real...

but devil didn't take that sitting down... oh no... he used his former fame, and his small size and bright red hide to speak out to the less empowered of dinosaurs to help them make something of themselves.

devil said based simply on my size that i must have been experiencing trouble in life... how'd he know? he offered to let me enroll in his class, but i declined. i already had my plan... that and i'm kinda broke after all the travelling around i've been doing lately...

he said it was nice to have met me, but as it was late he needed to be on his way.

well that was a cool distraction. now i just have to kill a bit more time, get some sleep, and then mike will get back here to the library where he can help me find out the key information that i need...

resistence is futile?!? (information part 2)

well after my forgetfulness induced misadventure of yesterday i've had another slight problem occur in my attempts to get to the university library...

calgary has been a growing little city. i should really see if i can find out what its eating to achieve such a large pace of growth. my problems would instantly go away if i grew like calgary is... wow i'd be like bigger then godzilla!!!

anyways due to it's fast growth the roads aren't big enough for all the traffic that wants to get around. so rather then get stuck in a jam i figured i'd use a c-train... which as far as i can tell is the same as a normal train... though i always thought that my buddy caleb from the tyrrell was the c-train. oh well

problem is when i asked someone if the c-train went to the university they said it yes. what they didn't say was that wasn't the ONLY place it went... long story short somehow i've ended up at a chinook... which for those of you who don't know is a warm weather system that hits alberta in the winter that makes it nice and not snowy... though i didn't know what they looked like before... i can now tell you with certainty they look like a mall!

now again the number of dinosaurs in alberta has been kinda freaky lately. the dinosaur i met in the chinook mall though is the most scary thing i've ever seen...

it was a borgasaurus!!! i totally freaked out, and maybe even screamed a little... though i certainly didn't cry like a little girl or anything...

holy smokes i was really worried running away from the chinook. was it close contact with such a weather phenomenon that had transformed that poor dinosaur into a cybernetic creature... or was this some out landish scheme on its part to get attention and fame to possibly secure a job. I mean the Saurian job market might be awful, but to resort to replacing yourself with a machine... only someone as sick as dark vadar would resort to that!!!

i've been watching myself for symptoms of cyborgification, but fortunately none have shown up... yet!

hopefully i can get to the university to find my friend, and figure out a place with out dinosaurs. cause man my encounters with them are getting scarier and scarier...

towering calgary (information part 1)

i left drumheller on the 25th. everyone suddenly disappeared on that day for some reason... i was a little creeped out by it, but as i'd already caught up with all of them anyways, and i had a new lead for a possible future i HAD to get moving on... i hit the road

my destination calgary... the fastest growing city in alberta. also the closest big city to drumheller too.

i'd been here a few times in my childhood. craig was born here, and he'd came back into town often to see his family. back when he was still taking care of me he'd bring me along.

i can say this... calgary is a very different kind of city then those i visited in BC...

why did i come here to calgary you might ask... good question!

for a minute this morning i forgot myself... one of the draw back of my peanut sized brain and all...

as a result i was attracted to the coolest thing i could see... and what is cooler in calgary then the calgary tower? to be honest not much...

though this wasn't my actual goal it was definitely cool checking it out!

i just should have stuck to exploring outside. cause when i ventured inside things got a little more interesting then i cared for!

walking in the lobby of the calgary tower i came face to face with an albertosaurus... not just any albertosaurus either. a tyrrell museum employed one!

he was here to prompt the museum to tourists in calgary, since drumheller is only an hour and a half away from the city...

the problems began when he spotted me... i was a dinosaur intruding on his turf. worse i was a "big" meat eater like himself (i say big in the classification sense... as we t-rexs being related to albertosaurus are big too... bigger then him in fact... just if your a t-rex other then me!!!). making the whole situation boil over though was the fact i was in a tyrrell uniform... mental note to self need to get a new uniform!

instantly the albertosaur entered into an all too familiar territoriality stance... just like EVERY other dinosaur i'd encountered these past 4 months!

it was the usual type stuff he started roaring at me...

why are you here? i was told i'd get to keep this gig for sure! back off get your own job! i'm five times your size tiny, the museum won't replace me with you. you're not even a raptor!

now i've given up on trying to make dinosaurs like me at this point in my travels. it's not their fault i'm realizing.

1. i'm a t-rex. theoretically the king of all dinosaurs. nobody likes the "man". especially since we have some real jerks in our ranks... like my cousin larry! he really doesn't help make us rexs look all that great. well okay except in king kong. that was a really sympathizable performance he gave, but that's it! well and at the end of jurassic park. oh and in all the BBC stuff he's done. okay okay in the movies larry is pretty good... just take my word for it. in real life he's a JERK!

B. i'm SO small that being the aforementioned t-rex is made worse. everyone hates us to begin with. when you don't have the terror or menace that's part of your sterotype people take advantage of the situation. especially other theropods (meat eating dino for you none science people out there)... i just wish they'd see me for the nice little guy i am...

4. it's a tough world for us dinosaurs. added to the fact it's an eat or be eaten existence for us at the best of times this whole being extinct thing has added to our competitive nature. jobs are scarce. museums and theme parks are only looking for the best of the best. due to our bad public image and reputation from various portrayals in the movies and in the media (again see my cousin larry... what a JERK!) humans are reluctant to give us jobs or places in societies removed from a locked away environment such as again museum or theme park. which means that any other dinosaur that shows up is trouble. cause their inevitably going to be after your job...

so that's why when i returned to drum this month i'd realized i needed to make a clean break, and find a place without dinosaurs. which it would turn out is NOT the calgary tower.

i had a very very upset albertosaur. i didn't want to upset him anymore. also i didn't want him to call the museum as he was threatening to do. last thing i needed was to get in more trouble there.

so i just left the tower. which is kinda sad. i did kinda want to go up and look out over the town.

i did remember just then why i was in town though, and where i should really heading. not the calgary tower, but the university library... there i was going to find the ONE man who could help me find the answers i seek!

xmas tickles

well i may not have gotten my old job back, i still don't have a clue what the future holds for me, and being in drumheller is bringing up all sorts of memories...

at least i'll get some free turkey before i leave!!!

the museum was nice enough to at least invite me to their xmas party.

i've never really gotten what xmas is or what it's about. all i know is that the trees get really bright and pretty, and there's a lot more food about then normal.

the party was at the new place in town the quarry... the COOLEST name ever! though to be fair it is the farthest thing from a fossil dig i can think of. staffed by adam and his excellent crew, we tyrrellers were in for a night we won't forget soon... well unless their like me and have a brain the size of a peanut anyway...


i got to sit with my good buddy cam for dinner. i was really glad we'd sorted out that whole him being the one who fired me thing. it would have made things kinda awkward.

at one point cam went to put his arm over my shoulder for a picture. by accident he found my ticklish spot. everyone thought that my laugh was really funny...

it kinda set the tone for the night...

during my hanging with kirsta she interrupted the conversation we were having to make me laugh again...

before that we were having a chat about where other people from the museum were or what they were doing...

dan decided not to come to the party. mostly cause i was coming, and he was still mad at me for trying to eat richardo. have to make sure that i patch things up with him. me and dan go back a long way... i don't want him to stay mad at me forever.

craig had left the museum to head back to calgary to prepare to head overseas to new zealand. kirsta was really surprised i hadn't heard anything about this... i had been in BC for the last few months, and in exile before that... how was i supposed to know. though i wonder why he hadn't told me. he is kinda like my legal guardian and stuff...

krista thought my tickled laughter was very funny though, and that's as far too catching up on other museum people as i was going too.

lastly i caught up with brad... well brad 2. he's just not brad 1 is why i make the distinction. brad 1 was nice enough to give me my job 4 years ago, but then he left the museum (some said he just couldn't live with himself for some reason... i never did find out what it was cause people would always suddenly glare at me in the middle of the story... not sure why they'd do that... i didn't know the end of it!!!)

anyways brad was having a good time. like me he doesn't work at the museum, and was just there for the fun. he had heard about my "not being with the company" anymore... though that was a weird thing to say as it's a museum. not a company!

i told brad all about the events of my return. how i had no idea what i was going to do. it was becoming clearer and clearer that i needed to find a place without any dinosaurs so that i could be the only deal in town. everywhere in canada i'd been there were dinosaurs, and they were all trying to immigrate to drumheller which seemed to say that things were even WORSE elsewhere around here.

i told him about how while looking at the badlands the flatness of the prairies reminded me of the ocean for some reason. he said that was pretty obvious why... i just looked at him... then he remembered my brain size.

"well traum it's pretty simple. i think you were smarter just then, then you think you are. there's got to be a place over the ocean that doesn't have any dinosaurs."

wait a minute! brad was right!!!

there has to be somewhere over the BIG ocean that dinosaurs haven't been found or put in museums... but where???

just as i realized who i was going to need to see to help me figure out a new possible home for me suddenly brad reached over and hit my laughing spot.

"sorry man." brad apologized. "your laugh is just too funny."

The Return

well i know that i said i'd post a vlog every 25 posts... well this is techincally in that limit. just a little sooner then i figured. alot of stuff has happened this week, and the only way to communicate it easily i found is through a vlog.



in spite of everything that has happened i'm going to hang out here for a few more days. the museum is having it's xmas party, and cam and krista have invited me to join them at it. so i figure i might as well go. i have no where better to be at moment...

updates coming real soon!

hey people of the world wide web

things have been SO crazy in my life it hasn't been funny... well okay a couple parts actually

anyways i'm currently borrowing a co-puter, and need to find out how to get my labtop back on the webwide world. that will hopefully be in the next couple days so i can finally tell you the outcome of my trip back to Drum, and what's happened to me since!

100th post!!!

holy smokes people of the web wide world... i've already made 100 entries in my blog!!!

it seems like just yesterday i started this thing, and now here i am a true veteran of the super information highway.

now i figured i'd do something special for this entry... well okay. my talent agent peter figured i should...

since i've been on the innerweb all i've talked about is what's going on in my life thus far... i thought this would be a good entry to take a look back at where i came from. this also seemed very fitting since i'm currently on route to drumheller to see if i can reconnect with this past.





hope now you have a better idea of why i'm in search of my dinosaur roots. i also hope that after all i've seen and done in my journeys these last 4 months they'll take me back in drum. now i'm a super qualified dinosaur...

i'm also planning on doing this "vlog"s more often then every 100 posts... hopefully like every 25 from here on in.

catch you in drumheller people of the innerweb!

the end of THIS thing

okay need to check out the field visitor center so i know what i'm talking about when i ask them for a job.

i'm thinking though what better way to attract people to a fossil display then with a dinosaur... even if they don't technically find us around here normally.

well for some reason there's a cowboy statue in front of the center. trilobite wrangler?

heading inside there was a bunch of fossil displays, and i figured best thing to do was check them out, and demonstrate my superior knowledge of the burgess shale

yeah no big surprises. they had a whole cabinet full of trilobites from mount stephen

a cool selection on other critters from fossil ridge. like the iconic marrella...

one of my favs though is the tentacled football leanchoilia...

they had a pretty small, but good selection of burgess shale fossils. all ones i knew about. so it would be easy to sell myself as both a palaeo attraction, but also expert.

there was only one problem when i went around the corner and bumped into their alberta and BC tourism displays...

there was a dinosaur in the center. not just that she was there from the tyrrell to promote the museum! now considering the circumstances we were both pretty civil. however this struthiomimus was very set on this job staying HERS!

well so much for that idea...

i guess i'm meant to goto drumheller. what awaits me there i'm not sure. hopefully a second chance.

all these attempts at first chances haven't been suiting me so well...

beginning of ALL things...

okay people of the innerweb i'm back into familiar territory. hopefully no more of that crazy BC type stuff can happen to me here. even though technically i'm still in the province, field is pretty much on the border with alberta, and even more important i know ALL about this area.

the reason. this is one of the most important palaeontologic places in the world!

the tyrrell has a huge display on this place called the burgess shale. they are among the OLDEST complex creatures known. these fossils are so good that we don't just get hard parts, we also get the soft ones!

once i get back to drum i'll have to check out the display again. though i'm getting an idea related to my future after i've found my past at drumheller. maybe i could come back here and get a job. i'm qualified. i know a LOT about the burgess shale cause i spent a lot of time in the display when i lived in the tyrrell. that and one of the six big books i've ever read was one called wonderful life by stephen gould... don't let the fact that he is a scary monster stop you from reading the book. it's very good and ALL about the burgess shale.

actually being here in field and seeing all the famous places is really cool!

over on one side of field is mount stephen famous for it's trilobites. i've heard from people at the museum who've been up there that there are so many fossils up on the top of that hill that every second rock has a trilobite in it!!!

on the other side opposite the highway is the burgess pass and it's famous fossil ridge. an exposure of really really early cambrian fossils of the cathedral escarpment. my buddy dan used to do a play at the museum about looking for fossils up there.

you'll also see in that photo the visitor center here in field. i was going to check in there about a possible job after i looked at all the signs they had outside.

man the signs were cool. it was like having a museum outside!

this was a really awesome sign all about the famous palaeontologists who explored this place for the first time. included in there was charles dolittle walcott, though don't let his middle name fool you. he in fact did alot!

the sign showing how the burgess shale looked when all the critters was alive was really cool. just like the vancouver aquarium only instead of fish it would be funky arthropods!

hey that gives me another idea! with my new work experience at the aquarium i could totally work IN the tyrrell's burgess shale display! combo that with my knowledge of the place, and i'd be a show in for educating the public about this place, and be able to take care of the critters in the display!

well okay it seemed like a good idea till i read this sign... now i like adventure, and all... but getting buried alive. when was that ever fun?

well scratch that working in the museum's burgess shale idea. time now instead to see if i can work at the real thing!