Joseph Burr Tyrrell (November 1, 1858 – August 26, 1957) was a Canadian geologist, cartographer, and mining consultant. He discovered dinosaur (Albertosaurus) bones and coal in Alberta in 1884.
Born in Weston, Ontario, he went to Upper Canada College and received a law degree from the University of Toronto. However, after articling for a law firm in Toronto, his doctor advised him to work outdoors due to his health. He joined the Geological Survey of Canada in 1881 as a geologist and lead the 1893 and 1894 expeditions into the Northern Barren Lands - the first visit to the area by a European since the explortions of Samuel Hearne in the 1770s. These two expeditions included first European contact with the Ihalmiut, an Inuit people, now almost extinct. In the 1890s, he retrieved the biographical recollections of Canadian overland explorer, cartographer and fur trader David Thompson (explorer) and in 1916 published them as David Thompson's Narrative. Tyrrell went into the gold-mining business in 1898, a career that would last more than 50 years. He was mine manager of the Kirkland Lake Gold Mine in northern Ontario for many years. In 1918, he was awarded the Murchison Medal of the Geological Society of London. In 1933, he was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Flavelle Medal. In 1947, he was awarded the Geological Society of London's Wollaston Medal. The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta is named in his honour. The Royal Society of Canada's J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal is named in his honour. The Tyrrell Sea (prehistoric Hudson Bay), is named after Tyrrell, as well as "Tyrrell Arm", the east arm of Yathkyed Lake in Nunavut.[1]
References
- ^ Kazan River. chrs.ca. Retrieved on 2007-12-25.
- Biographical Sketch of J.B. Tyrrell - University of Toronto. Retrieved on 16 September, 2007.
- Past lives: Chronicles of Canadian Paleontology Tyrrell and Albertosaurus. Retrieved on 2 January, 2006.
- Historica minute
- Joseph B. Tyrrell - Hall of Fame - Life of a Rock Star. Retrieved on 2 January, 2006.
A recently published book, Measuring Mother Earth: How Joe the Kid became Tyrrell of the North, McClelland & Stewart Inc. ISBN:0771075391, tells his story as a life of adventure. A vivid, entertaining portrait of the great Canadian explorer Joseph Burr Tyrrell, the man who single-handedly invented the notion of the “Romance of the North”. In the nineteenth century, exploring the Earth was as exciting and awe-inspiring an activity as space exploration was in the twentieth century. And even as late as the 1880s, vast expanses of Canada remained largely untrodden by Europeans. So joining the Geological Survey in 1882 was the realization of a dream for the short-sighted, profoundly deaf, and egotistical young Joseph Burr Tyrrell. A romantic, inspired as much by Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure novels and by Wild Bill Hickock’s exploits as by the spirited debates about evolution that informed his work, Tyrrell chafed under the strictures of the survey. By the time of the Klondike gold rush in 1898, he was a bitter man, resentful that the survey under George Dawson had repeatedly refused to promote him or give him any plum jobs. He quit and took up prospecting instead, which brought him nothing but misery in the Yukon but handed him a fortune when gold was discovered in Kirkland Lake, Ontario. His own best fan, Tyrrell did finally achieve the celebrity he ached for. Decked out in a sealskin parka and moccasins, while he burnished stories of his achievements, Tyrrell became the prototype of the romantic hero-explorer later personified by Robert Scott (of the Antarctic). He retired a multi-millionaire and died at the age of ninety-eight, just six weeks before the 1957 space launch of Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth.
Heritage moment video of Joseph Tyrrell http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10181
