Alberta may be one step closer to getting a new dinosaur museum, thanks to the support of celebrities such as Dan Aykroyd and international media attention brought to the project.
The $27 million Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum is slated to be built 22 km west of Grande Prairie in 2013. Grande Prairie, one of Canada’s fastest-growing cities, is located 465 km northwest of Edmonton.
A host of celebrities were recently welcomed at Grand Prairie’s Crystal Square for the first Aykroyd Family and Friends Dinosaur Ball—an annual dinner and silent auction that raised $500,000 in support of the museum.
The 700 guests included philanthropist Bobby Kennedy; Matthew Gray Gubler, who plays Dr. Spencer Reid on the hit TV show “Criminal Minds”; America’s best-selling crime writer, Patricia Cornwell; artist Johnny Alexander; and producer John Goldwyn.
In addition to hosting the ball, Aykroyd and his family have volunteered to be international ambassadors for the project.
“It is a Canadian storehouse, a treasure house, and I want to bring people from all over the world to Canada to help display what’s here and to show the world that we have this incredible resource right here in this beautiful province,” Aykroyd told reporters at the Pipestone Creek excavation site.
Legendary Alberta palaeontologist Philip Currie, after whom the museum is named, told The Epoch Times that the media attention from the celebrity ball catapulted the project “to another level.”
“People are taking it much more seriously now,” he said. “Up to this point everybody thought it was a pie-in-the-sky idea—now people are thinking in terms of a real project that’s moving somewhere. So [the celebrity ball] was almost like a watershed.”
The $27 million Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum is slated to be built 22 km west of Grande Prairie in 2013. Grande Prairie, one of Canada’s fastest-growing cities, is located 465 km northwest of Edmonton.
A host of celebrities were recently welcomed at Grand Prairie’s Crystal Square for the first Aykroyd Family and Friends Dinosaur Ball—an annual dinner and silent auction that raised $500,000 in support of the museum.
The 700 guests included philanthropist Bobby Kennedy; Matthew Gray Gubler, who plays Dr. Spencer Reid on the hit TV show “Criminal Minds”; America’s best-selling crime writer, Patricia Cornwell; artist Johnny Alexander; and producer John Goldwyn.
In addition to hosting the ball, Aykroyd and his family have volunteered to be international ambassadors for the project.
“It is a Canadian storehouse, a treasure house, and I want to bring people from all over the world to Canada to help display what’s here and to show the world that we have this incredible resource right here in this beautiful province,” Aykroyd told reporters at the Pipestone Creek excavation site.
Legendary Alberta palaeontologist Philip Currie, after whom the museum is named, told The Epoch Times that the media attention from the celebrity ball catapulted the project “to another level.”
“People are taking it much more seriously now,” he said. “Up to this point everybody thought it was a pie-in-the-sky idea—now people are thinking in terms of a real project that’s moving somewhere. So [the celebrity ball] was almost like a watershed.”
The museum has been a dream of local palaeontologests for nearly 40 years. In 1974 a young schoolteacher, Al Lakusta, stumbled upon bones from a mass grave site of a new species of dinosaur near Pipestone Creek Park. The dinosaurs had drowned over 70 million years ago, and the site later became known as the River of Death.
The discovery triggered massive scientific interest in the area, including from Currie, one of the world’s premier dinosaur palaeontologists and a professor at the University of Alberta. He helped found the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta, and was a model for the character Alan Grant in the film “Jurassic Park.”
“Having Philip J. Currie as our namesake has been an absolute blessing and so helpful in engaging the Aykroyd family to come in and be our international ambassadors,” said Brian Brake, executive director of the Pipestone Creek Dinosaur Initiative and the River of Death & Discovery Dinosaur Museum Society.
“It’s going to be a wonderful thing for this project. We’ve got a good team together and we’re going to get the job done.”
Museum plans are already well underway. The building and exhibit has been designed, a lot secured, and education programs have already been utilized by local students. Funding is now the only obstacle to completion.
Brake said they had hoped the ball and media hype would attract more funding from the provincial and federal governments, but so far that has not manifested. He says this will likely delay the expected completion of the museum from December 2012 to July 2013.
“I was hoping that this dinner, with the attention, the provincial, national, and international attention that we had, might encourage the various levels of government to come forward and make announcements about supporting the project. That didn’t happen, so now we’ve got hope that it will happen sometime in the near future,” he said.
Currie hopes the museum will act as a hub for palaeontologists in the area and advance exploration significantly in the Peace Country.
The rocks around Grande Prairie are reported to be as rich in fossils as Drumheller and Dinosaur Provincial Park, but have gone largely unexplored due to the difficulty in accessing fossil sites and the area’s unexposed rock beds.
“I don’t have any doubt at all the Peace Country is very rich in fossils and that we have just scratched the surface in terms of the resources that are there,” Currie said.
“In terms of the ability to deal with fossil resources in this part of the province, it will be substantially improved.”
The museum aims to be a major cultural and scientific attraction promoting palaeontology, geology, and archaeology, and will add to Alberta’s reputation as a dinosaur lover’s paradise.
The discovery triggered massive scientific interest in the area, including from Currie, one of the world’s premier dinosaur palaeontologists and a professor at the University of Alberta. He helped found the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta, and was a model for the character Alan Grant in the film “Jurassic Park.”
“Having Philip J. Currie as our namesake has been an absolute blessing and so helpful in engaging the Aykroyd family to come in and be our international ambassadors,” said Brian Brake, executive director of the Pipestone Creek Dinosaur Initiative and the River of Death & Discovery Dinosaur Museum Society.
“It’s going to be a wonderful thing for this project. We’ve got a good team together and we’re going to get the job done.”
Museum plans are already well underway. The building and exhibit has been designed, a lot secured, and education programs have already been utilized by local students. Funding is now the only obstacle to completion.
Brake said they had hoped the ball and media hype would attract more funding from the provincial and federal governments, but so far that has not manifested. He says this will likely delay the expected completion of the museum from December 2012 to July 2013.
“I was hoping that this dinner, with the attention, the provincial, national, and international attention that we had, might encourage the various levels of government to come forward and make announcements about supporting the project. That didn’t happen, so now we’ve got hope that it will happen sometime in the near future,” he said.
Currie hopes the museum will act as a hub for palaeontologists in the area and advance exploration significantly in the Peace Country.
The rocks around Grande Prairie are reported to be as rich in fossils as Drumheller and Dinosaur Provincial Park, but have gone largely unexplored due to the difficulty in accessing fossil sites and the area’s unexposed rock beds.
“I don’t have any doubt at all the Peace Country is very rich in fossils and that we have just scratched the surface in terms of the resources that are there,” Currie said.
“In terms of the ability to deal with fossil resources in this part of the province, it will be substantially improved.”
The museum aims to be a major cultural and scientific attraction promoting palaeontology, geology, and archaeology, and will add to Alberta’s reputation as a dinosaur lover’s paradise.
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