Rich McCrea and Lisa Buckley, the vertebrate palaeontologists working in the Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation’s Peace Region Palaeontology Research Centre (PRPRC), are attending the Sixty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Mesa Southwest Museum in Mesa, Arizona in late October 2005.

This prestigious conference draws delegates from all corners of the globe, and features the latest research topics. Rich and Lisa are presenting a poster on some of the early results of the dinosaur excavations near Tumbler Ridge, focussing on theropod teeth. One of these teeth provided the first evidence of tyrannosaurids in B.C., and others are the oldest in western Canada. Rich is also presenting significant new information on Canada’s largest dinosaurs along with Dr Phil Currie and Dr George Pemberton, both of U. of A.

Rich and Lisa have given more than 20 presentations (public and formal scientific) during their tenure as PRPRC palaeontologists on the dinosaur research of the Tumbler Ridge area and the Peace Region. These talks have been as far afield as Calgary and Edmonton, and they raise scientific and public awareness of the TRMF and PRPRC activities.

During the course of his drive to Arizona, Rich will be stopping at a number of palaeontological museums along the way, to gain additional background information for the eventual museum in Tumbler Ridge.

Rich will also be gaining instruction on the assembly of dinosaur skeletal mounts in Fruita, Colorado where the TRMF is getting ankylosaur and small theropod replicas for the British Columbia Dinosaur Discovery Gallery in the Tumbler Ridge Community Centre, planned to open before the summer of 2006.

This is the first international conference at which Rich and Lisa have presented in their capacity as Tumbler Ridge resident palaeontologists, and another step on the journey of creating an internationally recognized facility and museum in the Peace Region.

Tumbler Ridge resident palaeontologists Lisa Buckley and Rich McCrea.

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