New exhibit at Royal Tyrrell Museum features fossils from beginning of life on Earth

It's a new look into some very, very, very old ways of life like, 4.6 billion years ago.

TheRoyal Tyrrell Museumhas anew exhibit that explores fossils from the Precambrian era. It explains how those fossils evolved in the Cambrian era about 500 million years ago, when the surface of the Earth cooled down, oceans began to form, and the first life appeared. The exhibit officially opened Friday.

The new exhibit, called First Life, will feature some of the oldest known fossils, including the earliest evidence of life in Alberta dated at 1.3 billion years old. What can fossils tell us about life billions of years ago? You can learn about that in the 17,150 square-foot exhibit.

"It provides the foundation for understanding the early evolution of life on Earth, and importantly conveys the vast amount of time it took for this to happen," said Dr. Craig Scott, the director of preservation and research with the museum.

Some of the fossils are from Yoho National Park in British Columbia and are on long-term loan from the Royal Ontario Museum.

"The material is so well preserved that you get a very, very good sense of what the animal actually looked like in three dimensions," Scott said. "It just blows your mind."

The exhibit is a redevelopment of the museum's previous Precambrian and Cambrian galleries, but it promises to be a novel experience for visitors both returning and new. First Life is interactive and accessible and surrounds the Burgess Shale diorama, which is the only element kept in place from the previous gallery.

"This isn't an exercise of moving the furniture. This is a complete revamp, where we're bringing in new materials, so these are never-seen-before fossils," Scott said.

Lisa Making is the museum's executive director. She said the museum works hard to reflect the quality of its findings.

"As our research continues to expand our knowledge of the province's paleontological past, we've sought to update many of our exhibits to reflect those changes," said Making. "First Life is the most recent example of our efforts."

Over 500,000 people visited theRoyal Tyrrell Museum in Drumhellerin both 2022and 2023.