URL: T.Rex Discovery Centre
Click the link below to go to this page
https://www.royalsaskmuseum.ca/trex
The home of Scotty, the world's largest T. rex.
Related Information
"Whitemud" clays in dinosaur country of southern Saskatchewan.
These are Cretaceous. Jurassic? 1km straight down.
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This is a "badlands" slope in the Frenchman river valley. The valley exposes the "Whitemud Formation" in many places (clearly visible here part way down on the left). Two surface mines of Plainsman Clays are nearby, in a place where lower-lying rolling hills leave much less over-burden to remove. These materials were laid down as marine sediments during the Cretaceous period. The skeleton of the world's largest T.Rex, dubbed "Scotty", was found 50km east of here (in the layers just above the Whitemuds). Where are the layers of Scotty's ancestors from the Jurassic period? Straight down 1 kilometer! And another kilometer to bedrock!
These Saskatchewan grasslands lie almost right on top of pure clay!
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These amazing hills near Big Muddy, Saskatchewan expose the sedimentary layers of the Whitemud formation (and others). The light-colored layer at the bottom is what Plainsman Clays calls A3, it makes up about half of M340. But below ground is the 3B layer, the other half. The dark grey layers above the Whitemuds are what we call A2, a ball clay. Top soil has accumulated on much of the clay to be able to grow the grass but there are bare spots around these hills. Although this is about 250km east of the Plainsman quarry at Eastend, Saskatchewan - the clay layers are remarkably similar. The clay resources in the area are truly astounding, not just in the quantity and quality but also in the magnificent landscape they define.
An ironstone concretion found in a quarry in southern Saskatchewan
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These iron-rich concretions occur in the Battle Formation across Saskatchewan. Plainsman Clays mines the lower part of the Battle Formation, just above the Whitemud Formation, where a 1–2 foot layer is stockpiled as A1 clay. This clay is added to reduction-fired bodies to provide speckle, color and plasticity. The A1 contains thousands of these concretions, ranging in size from lemons to toasters. When freshly mined they are extremely hard and difficult to break with a hammer. After weathering (repeated wetting and drying, oxidation, shrinkage, and freeze-thaw), they gradually break down into small fragments that can be crushed and dispersed during clay processing. These are the same Battle Formation beds exposed in the Eastend, Sask. area that yielded the Tyrannosaurus rex fossil “Scotty,” displayed at the T. Rex Discovery Centre there.
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