If you want to be transported to another time for an afternoon, there is no better place to go than the permanent dinosaur collection at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). On weekend afternoons the museum is filled with children staring up at the ferocious Tyrannosaurus rex and running the length of the 24-metre Barosaurus, but the James and Louise Temerty Galleries of the Age of Dinosaurs, unveiled in 2007, contain wonders for visitors of all ages. It takes an incredible and dedicated team of researchers to study the wide range of skeletons that make the gallery so inspiring.

The ROM made headlines earlier this summer for its discovery of a new species of dinosaur in collaboration with the University of Toronto, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and the University of Calgary. Albertadromeus syntarsus, a quick-footed plant-eater the size of a turkey discovered in Southern Alberta, is the newest species to join the existing knowledge base of 600–700 types of prehistoric reptiles. The species lived during the late Cretaceous period (77 million years ago), and would have been wiped out during the famous mass extinction event.

The significance of this discovery is its contribution to knowledge of biodiversity within dinosaurs; a far cry from the large, long-necked sauropods that serve as the classic example of a dino-herbivore, the existence of Albertadromeus syntarsus sheds light on a part of the Cretaceous ecosystem previously ignored by research.

Just a few months ago, the same team discovered a novel dome-headed dinosaur, Acrotholus audeti, at the same Alberta site. The rounded skull plates are already available to view in the museum in a small cabinet nested beside the Jurassic dinosaurs.

The ROM has a long history of excavation work in Alberta, starting with the first skeleton acquired by the museum in 1920, a Gyposaurus incurvimanus, member of the diverse group of duck-billed dinosaurs known as hadrosaurs. Many of the specimens in the gallery were discovered in the Western part of Canada throughout the twentieth century, and  recent discoveries suggest that there are many more impressive dinosaurs to come.

 

Fast facts about the dinosaurs in the ROM’s collection:

The only dinosaurs to survive the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period were birds, who share a close common ancestor with small carnivorous dromaeosaurs

 

All carnivorous dinosaurs ran on their hind legs

Sauropods were the largest animals ever to walk on Earth, but were born in eggs the size of a basketball

 

Hadrosaur mouths contain somewhere between 800–1,000 teeth

The large hollow crests on the skulls of hadrosaurs were used to make species-distinct sounds and calls

 

The Barosaurus specimen is the largest dinosaur on display in Canada. It was 24 metres long and weighed 15,000 kilograms. The staff affectionately address him as Gordo.