T.rex Discovery Centre

In 1991 a school principal, Robert Gebhardt, was shown a fossil site near Eastend by a palaeontologist and found a tooth and a vertebra; excavation over the following years produced Scotty, a Tyrannosaurus rex about sixty-five per cent complete. Analysis published in 2019 concluded Scotty is the largest and heaviest T. rex specimen known, estimated at around eight thousand eight hundred kilograms, and at over thirty years the oldest, with a skeleton showing broken ribs, an infected jaw and a damaged tail from a life of injuries. The centre stands over the Frenchman River valley with a fossil lab visible to visitors and dig programmes in summer.

What you actually see

• Scotty - the largest and heaviest known T. rex, mounted and interpreted.
• The injury record - broken ribs and an infected jaw visible in the bones.
• The working lab - preparators cleaning fossils behind glass.
• The valley setting - the Frenchman River badlands the specimen came from.

When to go

May to September for full opening and the dig programmes; the centre reduces hours in winter. Public dig experiences run in summer and need booking.

Honest expectations

Eastend is remote, over an hour from Swift Current. The centre is modest in size next to the Royal Tyrrell in Alberta. Winter hours are short.

Nearby

Cypress Hills lie west; Swift Current is northeast.