So 14.000 years ago, when the glaciers from the last Ice Age started to melt rapidly, the Badlands got its shape. As the ice melted, it stripped the landscape to expose the Lake Cretaceous sediments of the bearpaw and Horsehoe Canyon formations in which fossils of dinosaurs and other organisms are found. Each layer of rock in the valley walls is a page In the geological history.
By studying the subtle differences between rock layers, scientists can determine changes in ancient environments. The rocks here point to a period 72 million years ago when Alberta looked much different than it does today with warm subtropical temperatures and seasonal rainfall. It was a rainforest rich of redwood trees and big ferns. This lush green corner of the world was home to fishes, salamanders, turtles, crocodiles, small mammals, and lots if dinosaurs. Half of the dinosaur remains discovered here belong to hadrosaurs, the horned ceratopsians, armored ankylosaurs, dome-headed pachycephalosaurus, bird mimic ornithomimids, swift dromaeosaurs, and carnivores like the Albertosaurus (a distant relative to Tyrannosaurus rex).
Most of Alberta’s dinosaur remains are found in the Badlands and river valleys where cretaceous-aged -sedimentary rocks are exposed. The rock layers deposited after the dinosaurs became extinct were scrapped away by the glaciers of the last ice age. Today, wind, rainfall, and snowmelt continue to erode the Badlands, exposing more fossils with each passing season.
I was wondering why this land is called the Badlands. Well, I found out that these lands are not very hospitable for agriculture and is difficult to cross on foot or horseback particularly during wet season. In south Dakota, the Sioux called this type of landscape “Make Sico”, which literally means: land bad. Early French-Canadian fur trappers called this area: bad lands to cross. So that’s how it got its name.