Discoverer of Badlands dinosaur bones featured in Google doodle

Fortunately for Drumheller's tourism industry, Joseph Burr Tyrrell'sdoctorurged his sickly patientto spend some time in the sun.

That's because way back in 1883, the Ontario-born geologist, cartographer and aspiring miner, then 26years old and suffering from impaired hearing and eyesight, arrived inAlberta's Badlands region, searching for coal.

He found some. And then, on Aug.12, 1884, he dug up some pretty sizeable dinosaur bones. Those turned out to be the 70-million-year-oldbones of what was later named AlbertosaurusSarcophagus, a relative ofT. Rex.

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All of that 19th century backstory became top of mind Thursday morning, when Tyrrell's animated likeness was featured as the Google doodle of the day on the site's Canadian home page, to mark the occasion of Tyrrell's 160th birthday.

Google's doodles are changes the site makes to the usual Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries and the lives of famous artists, pioneersand scientists.

That initialdiscovery by Tyrrellled, eventually, to the GreatDinosaur Rush of 1910-17, as paleontologistsmade their way to dig up the Alberta Badlands, turning nearby Drumheller into thedinosaurmeccait eventually became known for, withthe opening of the TyrrellMuseum in 1985.

Tyrrell himself stayed out of the dinosaur bone frenzy that he inadvertently set off, preferring to focus on exploring coal deposits.

He eventually relocated, in 1898to Dawson City, Yukon, where he became a mining consultant. In 1906, he returned to Ontario. But the upshot of it all was that he found a kind of happiness camping out in the northwestern part of the continent.

"My idea of peace and comfort was a tent by a clear brook anywhere north of 50 degrees of north latitude," wrote Tyrrell, in a quote published on the Google blog about his doodle. "A ground-sheet and blankets enough, a side of salt pork and a bag of flour.For glory, I had the stars and the northern lights."

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