Canadian history, art and the Royal Family's relationship to the country

Fossilised dinosaur bone
Bone | RCIN 92578
This dinosaur bone is the oldest gift ever presented to Her Majesty The Queen. It is a fossilised humerus (upper arm bone), probably from the Hadrosaur family of duck-billed herbivores who lived 86-66 million years ago. The fossil was presented to The Queen in 1959 by the city of Drumheller in Alberta, an internationally-renowned centre of palaeontology. Alberta is home to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, named after the Canadian surveyor and explorer Joseph Burr Tyrrell, who discovered dinosaur remains near the site in 1884. In 1990, The Queen granted the museum permission to use the title ‘Royal’ in its name.