Plans for a dinosaur museum near Pipestone Creek, Canada, have been given a boost with news that the County of Grande Prairie will donate an additional CAN$5m (£3.2m, 3.8m euro US$4.9m), allowing work to start.

The proposed museum, named in honour of reowned paleontologist, Philip J Currie, will showcase fossils recovered from the nearby Pipestone Creek site, where a duck-billed dinosaur bone bed lies.

Executive director of the Pipestone Creek Dinosaur Initiative, Brian Brake, thinks the museum will prove popular, as other famous fossil beds at Alberta Dinosaur Park and Royal Tyrell Museum, attract 400,000 visitors a year.

“The resources in this area are amongst the best in the world,” he says. “The densest horned dinosaur bone bed in the world is right here in the Grand Prairie region and this is only one of many finds that has occurred here in the last few years.”

Plans for the CAN$35m (£22.4m, 26.7m euro US$34.6m) project have been underway since 2002. Brake is hoping the remaining funding can be raised through corporate and community sponsorships and municipal donations, but this latest funding will allow work on site to commence.