Tumbler Ridge Museum

In 2000 two boys, Mark Turner (11) and Daniel Helm (8), were tubing down rapids in Flatbed Creek just below Tumbler Ridge. They fell off their tube and walked back upstream on bedrock. They noticed a series of depressions in the rock and correctly identified these as a dinosaur trackway. Trying to convince adults of the importance of their discovery, their perseverance paid off as their trail led to Philip Currie, Curator of Dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, and to palaeontologist Rich McCrea, western Canada's authority on dinosaur footprints. In 2001 McCrea came to visit, confirmed the importance of this in situ discovery, and found British Columbia' s second ever dinosaur bone right beside it. At the time this was one of the only places known where footprints and bone had been discovered together in the same rock layer. Press releases made national headlines, and these events served as catalysts for the formation of the Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation