page_title: Herschel, Saskatchewan
section_title: Ancient Echoes Interpretive Centre
hierarchical_section_title: Herschel, Saskatchewan / Ancient Echoes Interpretive Centre
caption_attribution_description: English: The logo for Ancient Echoes Interpretive Centre.
context_page_description: Herschel is a special service area in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It is the seat of the Rural Municipality of Mountain View No. 318 and held village status prior to December 31, 2006. The population was 30 people in 2016. The community is located 37 km northwest of the town of Rosetown at the intersection of Highway 31 and Highway 656, along a now abandoned section of the Kerrobert-Rosetown Canadian Pacific Railway line. Herschel is the home of the Ancient Echoes Interpretive Centre The Vancouver-based backpack manufacturer Herschel Supply Co., founded by Lyndon and Jamie Cormack in 2009, adopted the name of Herschel, the town where three generations of their family grew up.
context_section_description: While preparations were being made to open the Interpretive Centre in June 1994, excavations continued in the ground around the largest of the three remaining petroglyphs in the Coalmine Ravine. Around the same time, a local taxidermist, Lyle Waddington, began to donating several examples of his work to Ancient Echoes, These reflected the natural history and local prairie wildlife and consisted of several native bird and mammal species found in the Herschel area.  In October of that same year, what was called The Herschel Interpretive Centre, at that time, was officially established. It was staffed by a dedicated team of volunteers and funded by individual and corporate donations, as well as a small government grant. The Centre's mandate was to promote ecology, fossil history and the Aboriginal heritage of the area.
  In the 1990s three fossilized skeletons of  Dolichorhynchops herschelensis, a type of short-necked plesiosaur, were discovered in the Coalmine Ravine. During this excavation paleontologists uncovered the remains of varying marine life: two or three different shark species, numerous fish vertebrate fragments, and a mosasaur (large lizard like marine animal). Around this time, Rosetown resident and woodcarver, Jack Klemmer, visited Ancient Echoes for the first time. Since then, his carvings have been on display at the Centre and the proceed from their sale have been donated to Ancient Echoes. Also in the late 1990s, the Centre received a $5,000 donation from Enbridge Pipelines to purchase shipping carts for the Centre's displays and to help pay for the initial print run of renowned Metis artist, Jo Cooper's paintings, entitled “The Disappearance and Resurgence of the Buffalo” which was displayed for the first time at Ancient Echoes Interpretive Centre. Outside on the Ancient Echoes Interpretive Centre's grounds stands a life size statue of a plains grizzly bear, now extinct in the area, created by artist William Epp in honour of the large bear famously killed on the very spot over 100 years earlier by James Carnegie, the 9th Earl of Southesk while on an expedition to the Canadian prairies in 1859/60 .
  Since that time, several paleontologists, students and scores of volunteers have returned every summer to continue and expand the hunt for and preservation of both paleontological and archaeological specimens in the Coalmine Ravine.  New fossils of several species of dinosaurs, marine reptiles, ancient sharks, shellfish, land and aquatic plants as well as many other fossil varieties are being found in the ravine all the time. The Herschel area is now considered by many to be a hot spot for archaeology, paleontology, rare and endangered native native prairie plants and animals.
caption: Ancient Echoes Interpretive Centre in Herschel, Saskatchewan
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