MEET ACICULOLENUS ASKEWI AFTER DON ASKEW

A new species of trilobite from the upper Cambrian McKay Group was introduced in March of 2020: Aciculolenus askewi.  The species is named after Don Askew, an avid fossil hunter of Upper Cambrian trilobites from Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada, who has discovered several new species in the East Kootenays. 

Don was the first to brave the treacherous cliffs up the waterfall on the west side of the ravine below Tanglefoot mountain. 

That climb led to his discovery of one of the most prolific outcrops in the McKay Group with some of the most exciting and best-preserved trilobites from the region. 

The faunal set are similar to those found at site one — the first of the trilobite outcrops discovered by Chris New and Chris Jenkins — an hours hike through grizzly bear country.

The specimens found at the top of the waterfall are not in calcite wafers, as they are elsewhere, instead, these exceptionally preserved specimens are found complete with a thin coating of matrix that must be prepped down to the shell beneath. 

Askew was also the skill preparator called upon to tease out the details from the 'gut trilobite' recently published from the region. In all, this area has produced more than 60 new species — many found by Askew — and not all of which have been published yet.

I caught up with Don last summer on a trip to the region. He was gracious in openly sharing his knowledge and a complete mountain goat in the field — a good man that Askew. Not surprising then that Brian Chatterton would do him the honour of naming this new species after him. 

Chatterton, Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta, is an invertebrate palaeontologist with a great sense of humour and a particular love of trilobites. Even so, his published works span a myriad of groups including conodonts, machaeridians, sponges, brachiopods, corals, cephalopods, bivalves, trace fossils — to fishes, birds and dinosaurs.

Brian Chatterton has been visiting the East Kootenay region for many years. In 1998, he and Rolf Ludvigsen published the pivotal work on the "calcified trilobites" we had begun hearing about in the late 1990s. There were tales of blue trilobites in calcified layers guarded by a resident Grizzly. This was years before logging roads had reached this pocket of paleontological goodness and hiking in — bear or no bear — was a daunting task. 

In his Cambridge University Press paper, Chatterton describes the well-preserved fauna of largely articulated trilobites from three new localities in the Bull River Valley. 

The Dream Team at Fossil Site #15, East Kootenays

All the trilobites from these localities are from the lower or middle part of the Wujiajiania lyndasmithae Subzone of the Elvinia Zone, lower Jiangshanian, in the McKay Group. 

Access is via a bumpy ride on logging roads 20 km northeast of Fort Steele that includes fording a river (for those blessed with large tires and a high wheelbase) and culminating in a hot, dusty hike and death-defying traipse down 35-degree slopes to the localities.

Two new species were proposed with types from these localities: Aciculolenus askewi and Cliffia nicoleae. The trilobite (and agnostid) fauna from these localities includes at least 20 species that read like a who's who of East Kootenay palaeontology: 

Aciculolenus askewi n. sp., Agnostotes orientalis (Kobayashi, 1935), Cernuolimbus ludvigseni Chatterton and Gibb, 2016, Cliffia nicoleae n. sp., Elvinia roemeri (Shumard, 1861), Grandagnostus? species 1 of Chatterton and Gibb, 2016, Eugonocare? phillipi Chatterton and Gibb, 2016, Eugonocare? sp. A, Housia vacuna (Walcott, 1912), Irvingella convexa (Kobayashi, 1935), Irvingella flohri Resser, 1942, Irvingella species B Chatterton and Gibb, 2016, Olenaspella chrisnewi Chatterton and Gibb, 2016, Proceratopyge canadensis (Chatterton and Ludvigsen, 1998), Proceratopyge rectispinata (Troedsson, 1937), Pseudagnostus cf. P. josepha (Hall, 1863), Pseudagnostus securiger (Lake, 1906), Pseudeugonocare bispinatum (Kobayashi, 1962), Pterocephalia sp., and Wujiajiania lyndasmithae Chatterton and Gibb, 2016.

Chris New, pleased as punch atop Upper Cambrian Exposures

It has been the collaborative efforts of Guy Santucci, Chris New, Chris Jenkins, Don Askew and Stacey Gibb that has helped open up the region — including finding and identifying many new species or firsts including Pseudagnostus securiger, a widespread early Jiangshanian species not been previously recorded from southeastern British Columbia. 

Other interesting invertebrate fossils from these localities include brachiopods, rare trace fossils, a complete silica sponge (Hyalospongea), and a dendroid graptolite. 

The species we find here are more diverse than those from other localities of the same age in the region — and enjoy much better preservation. 

The birth of new species into our scientific nomenclature takes time and the gathering of enough material to justify a new species name. Fortunately for Labiostria gibbae, specimens had been found of this rare species had been documented from the upper part of Wujiajiania lyndasmithae Subzone — slightly younger in age. 

Combined with an earlier discovery, they provided adequate type material to propose the new species — Labiostria gibbae — a species that honours Stacey Gibb and which will likely prove useful for biostratigraphy.

Reference: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-paleontology/article/abs/midfurongian-trilobites-and-agnostids-from-the-wujiajiania-lyndasmithae-subzone-of-the-elvinia-zone-mckay-group-southeastern-british-columbia-canada/E8DBC8BD635863E840715122C05BB14A#

Photo One: Aciculolenus askewi by Chris Jenkins, Cranbrook, British Columbia

Photo Two: L to R: Dan Bowden, Guy Santucci, Chris Jenkins, Dan Askew and John Fam at Fossil Site #15, East Kootenay Region, British Columbia, Canada, August 2, 2020.

Photo Three: Chris New pleased as punch atop of Upper Cambrian Exposures in the East Kootenay Region, British Columbia, Canada

SCIENCE AND SHENANIGANS: PACIFIC NORTHWEST BEARS

If you spend enough time in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, you start to understand why Ursus americanus and Ursus arctos horribilis have held court in our stories for millennia. 

They’re curious, clever, deeply maternal, occasionally cranky, and—much like your favourite mischievous cousin at a family reunion—always two steps from either a cuddle or a wrestling match.

Bear play looks adorable from afar—soft paws swatting, roly-poly wrestling, mock charges that end in huffing and zoomies—but make no mistake: this is serious business. 

For young black bears and grizzlies, play is the curriculum of survival. 

Wrestling hones strength and coordination. Chase games build stamina and teach cubs how to gauge speed and momentum in uneven terrain. 

You will recognize the mouthing and pawing in bears if you have ever watched dogs playfighting. It has that same feel but with a much bigger smack.

Even the classic “stand up and paw slap” routine teaches social cues, dominance negotiation, and how to not get clobbered during adult interactions later on.

Adults play too—usually in the brief windows when food is plentiful, neighbours are tolerable, and no one is watching who might judge them for being goofballs. 

Scientists have documented adult grizzlies sliding down snow patches on their backs and black bears engaging in curious-object play, poking logs, tossing salmon carcasses, and investigating anything that smells even remotely like an adventure.

Interactions between bears are a delicate dance of dominance, tolerance, and opportunism. 

Adult females tend to keep to themselves, especially when raising cubs, while males roam wider territories and have higher tolerance thresholds—at least until another big male wanders too close to a prime feeding spot.

During salmon runs, though, everything changes. Suddenly you’ll see a whole cast of characters congregate along rivers: veteran matriarchs who fish with surgical precision, rowdy subadults who think stealth means “splash loudly until the fish give up,” and massive males who square off in dominance displays worthy of a heavyweight title card. 

Most conflicts end with bluff charges, raised hackles, and guttural woofs, but real fights—when they happen—are fast, violent, and rarely forgotten by the loser.

Maternal Tenderness: Mamma & Cub

If bears had résumés, every mother would list “24/7 security expert,” “milk bar proprietress,” and “professor of applied survival sciences.”

Cubs are born in winter dens, impossibly tiny—around 300 to 500 grams—and almost hairless, little squeaking marshmallows who depend entirely on their mother’s warmth and fat reserves. 

Over the next 18–30 months, a mother teaches her young everything: which plants won’t poison you, how to find grubs by the sound of a rotting stump, how to climb fast when trouble arrives, and how to read the moods of other bears.

Her tenderness is matched only by her ferocity. A mother bear defending cubs is one of the most formidable forces in the forest, and even adult males—three times her size—think twice before pushing their luck.

Where Bears Appear in the Fossil Record

Bears are relative newcomers in deep time, with the earliest ursoids emerging in the late Eocene, around 38 million years ago. True bears (family Ursidae) appear in the early Miocene, and by the Pliocene and Pleistocene, the Pacific Northwest was home to a rich lineup of ursids, including the mighty Arctodus simus, the short-faced bear—one of the largest terrestrial carnivores to ever live in North America.

Black bears show up in the fossil record around the mid-Pleistocene, with fossils found in caves and river-cut sediments from British Columbia down to California. Grizzly bears, originally a Eurasian species, crossed the Bering land bridge during the Pleistocene, leaving their remains in Late Pleistocene deposits from Alaska through western Canada.

Today, the Pacific Northwest remains a stronghold for bears:

Black bears are the most numerous, with an estimated 25,000–35,000 individuals in British Columbia alone, and healthy populations throughout Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. They’re adaptable, omnivorous, and just clever enough to defeat most human attempts at bear-proofing.

Grizzly bears (coastal and interior populations) are far fewer. British Columbia hosts an estimated 13,000–15,000, though distribution varies greatly. 

Coastal bears—brown bear or spirit bears—are more numerous and enjoy a salmon-rich in diet, while interior grizzlies face more fragmented landscapes and higher conflict pressures. In the Lower 48, grizzlies number around 2,000, clustered mainly in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems.

Conservation efforts, especially Indigenous-led stewardship across the Great Bear Rainforest and interior plateaus, continue to shape recovery, resilience, and coexistence strategies for both species.

CHENGJIANG: A WINDOW INTO THE DAWN OF LIFE

Maotianshania cylindrica

High in the mist-softened hills of Yunnan Province, China, a band of ochre and grey shale holds one of Earth’s most extraordinary archives—a fossil record so exquisitely preserved that even the gills, antennae, and gut tracts of animals from over 518 million years ago remain visible. 

This is Chengjiang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most important early Cambrian Lagerstätten on the planet.

Here, at the base of the Maotianshan shales, paleontologists have uncovered a moment of evolutionary ignition: the rapid diversification of complex animal life known as the Cambrian Explosion.

The Geological Setting: Maotianshan Shales

The Chengjiang fossil exposures occur within the Yu’anshan Member of the Heilinpu Formation, deposited in a quiet, offshore marine environment during the Cambrian. 

These fine-grained mudstones accumulated under low-oxygen conditions—an essential factor that inhibited decay and burrowing, allowing soft tissues to fossilize with remarkable fidelity.

Key geological features:

• Age: ~518–520 Ma
• Depositional environment: Distal, oxygen-poor shelf
• Sediment: Fine mudstones and shales ideal for preserving delicate structures
• Taphonomy: Rapid burial via storm-induced sediment flows, sealing organisms beneath thin laminae

It is this marriage of rapid burial and anoxic bottom waters that created one of Earth’s rare Konservat-Lagerstätten, preserving not only bones and shells but organs, musculature, and entire life assemblages.

Lead Image Credit: Maotianshania cylindrica. Phylum: Nematomorpha Early Cambrian Chengjiang, Maotianshan Shales, SNP. Released under the GNU Free Documentation License

TASEKO LAKES FOSSIL ADVENTURE

John Fam, VIPS & VanPS

Over three field seasons, thirty-five taxa from the Mineralense and Rursicostatum zones were studied and three new species were discovered and named: Fergusonites hendersonae, Eolytoceras constrictum and Pseudaetomoceras victoriense. 

The late Hettangian ammonite fauna from Taseko Lakes is diverse and relatively well‐preserved.

This material is very important as it greatly expands our understanding of the fauna and ranges of ammonites currently included in the North American regional ammonite zonation. 

Castle Peak, Taseko Lakes

If you look closely, you can see a wee jet ranger helicopter hovering over a very chilly Castle Peak in the southern Chilcotin Range, British Columbia, Canada. 

Castle Peak served as our glorious landmark and loadstone of basalt that marked the spot on our Jurassic/Triassic palaeo adventures collecting about 7000 ft. 

The peak itself reaches higher still to around 8,176 ft. 

The site is special, both in terms of its geology and paleontological bounty, but also for the time spent there with friends. 

I had the very great honour of having the newly named, Fergusonites hendersonae, a new species of nektonic carnivorous ammonite, named after me by palaeontologist Louse Longridge from the University of British Columbia. 

Fergusonites hendersonae (Longridge, 2008)

I had met Louise as an undergrad and was pleased as punch to hear that she would be continuing the research by Dr. Howard Tipper, the authority on this area of the Chilcotins and Haida Gwaii — which he dearly loved. 

"Tip" was a renowned Jurassic ammonite palaeontologist and an excellent regional mapper who mapped large areas of the Cordillera. 

He made significant contributions to Jurassic paleobiogeography and taxonomy in collaboration with Dr. Paul Smith, Head of Earth and Ocean Science at the University of British Columbia. 

Tip’s regional mapping within BC has withstood the test of time and for many areas became the region's base maps for future studies. The scope of Tip’s understanding of Cordilleran geology and Jurassic palaeontology will likely never be matched. He passed away on April 21, 2005. His humour, knowledge and leadership will be sorely missed. 

Badouxia ammonites

Before he left us, he shared that knowledge with many of whom would help to secure his legacy for future generations. 

We did several trips over the years up to the Taseko Lake area of the Rockies joined by many wonderful researchers from the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society and Vancouver Paleontological Society, as well as the University of British Columbia. 

Both Dan Bowen and John Fam were instrumental in planning those expeditions and each of them benefited greatly from the knowledge of Dr. Howard Tipper. 

If not for Tipper's early work in the region, our shared understanding and much of what was accomplished in his last years and after his passing would not have been possible. 

Over the course of three field seasons, we endured elevation sickness, rain, snow, grizzly bears and very chilly nights  — we were sleeping right next to a glacier at one point — but were rewarded by the enthusiastic crew, and helicopter rides — which really cut down the hiking time — excellent specimens including three new species of ammonites, along with a high-spired gastropod and lobster claw that have yet to be written up. 

This area of the world is wonderful to hike and explore — a stunningly beautiful country. We were also blessed with access as the area is closed to all fossil collecting except with a permit.

BRITISH MUSEUM LONDON

Hope Whale

Stepping into the Natural History Museum, I was immediately greeted by Hope, the enormous blue whale skeleton gliding above Hintze Hall. 

It’s an impressive welcome—one that sets the tone for the rest of the visit. I wandered first into the Fossil Marine Reptile Gallery, where ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs stretched out in long, elegant arcs along the walls. 

There’s something grounding about standing beside creatures that ruled the seas millions of years before humans took their first steps.

From there, I couldn’t resist the Dinosaur Gallery. Stegosaurus—one of the most complete specimens of its kind—is a standout, and I paused for a while to take in the armour plates and that iconic spiked tail. 

Nearby, familiar favourites like Triceratops and Corythosaurus anchor the room, drawing steady streams of families and wide-eyed kids.

The Earth Galleries offered a completely different kind of magic. 

Gemstones glittered under soft lights, meteorites sat quietly in their cases, and huge crystals seemed almost unreal in their clarity. Each display felt like a reminder of how beautiful and varied our planet really is.

I ended my visit in the Darwin Centre, where rows of preserved specimens and interactive exhibits gave a glimpse into the research happening behind the scenes. 

It’s easy to forget that the museum isn’t just a place to display the natural world—it’s an active hub for studying it.

By the time I left, I’d only scratched the surface, but that’s the best part. The museum is the kind of place you can return to again and again, always finding something new tucked into its halls.

I returned at three different times in a week to catch the galleries at various times of day to see the natural light hitting the displays, especially in the marine reptile gallery, so I could take in all the wonderful details. 

FROM LAND TO SEA: SEALS

Seals—those sleek, playful creatures that glide through our oceans and lounge on rocky shores—are part of a remarkable evolutionary story stretching back millions of years. 

Though we often see them today basking on beaches or popping their heads above the waves, their journey through the fossil record reveals a dramatic tale of land-to-sea adaptation and ancient global wanderings.

Seals belong to a group of marine mammals called pinnipeds, which also includes sea lions and walruses. 

All pinnipeds share a common ancestry with terrestrial carnivores, and their closest living relatives today are bears and mustelids (like otters and weasels). 

While it may seem unlikely, their ancestors walked on land before evolving to thrive in marine environments. It takes many adaptations for life at sea and these lovelies have adapted well. 

The fossil record suggests that pinnipeds first emerged during the Oligocene, around 33 to 23 million years ago. 

These early proto-seals likely lived along coastal environments, where they gradually adapted to life in the water. Over time, their limbs transformed into flippers, their bodies streamlined, and their reliance on the sea for food and movement became complete.

In Kwak'wala, the language of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, seals are known as migwat, and fur seals are referred to as xa'wa.

WHEN CROCODILES WENT ROGUE: VOAY ROBUSTUS

Voay robustus

Let’s begin in Madagascar—a place so rich in oddities that it makes Australia look like it’s playing it safe. 

Here, until a few thousand years ago, lived Voay robustus, the so-called “horned crocodile.” 

Imagine your average Nile crocodile, Crocodylus niloticus, then give it a set of knobby horns just above the eyes, a chunkier skull, and a personality that can best be described as “aggressively misunderstood.”

Voay robustus was no dainty island reptile. This was a serious piece of croc engineering—up to 5 metres long and built like it had something to prove. Its very name says it all: “Voay” (from the Malagasy word for crocodile) and “robustus,” because apparently scientists looked at it and thought, “yes, that’s the robust one.”

The first thing to know about Voay is that it was one of the last survivors of Madagascar’s lost megafauna. While lemurs were still the size of gorillas and elephant birds stomped through the underbrush like feathered tanks, Voay robustus lurked in rivers and swamps, waiting patiently for something—anything—to make a poor life choice near the water’s edge.

For decades, Voay was a bit of a taxonomic mystery. When first described in the 19th century, some thought it might be a close cousin of the Nile crocodile, others insisted it was something entirely different. Scientists bickered, skulls were compared, and Latin names were flung around like darts at a pub quiz.

Then, in 2021, the DNA finally weighed in. Using ancient genetic material from subfossil skulls, researchers revealed that Voay robustus wasn’t a Nile crocodile at all—it was actually the closest known relative of the modern Crocodylus lineage, having split off around 25 million years ago. That makes it something like the evolutionary cousin who shows up at family reunions wearing leather, talking about their motorcycle, and asking everyone if they’ve “still gone soft.”

The Horned Enigma — The most distinctive feature of Voay robustus was its skull—particularly those raised, bony “horns” above its eyes. They weren’t true horns, of course, but enlarged ridges of bone, possibly used for species recognition, intimidation, or just looking fabulous. If you’ve ever seen a crocodile and thought, “You know what that needs? More attitude,” Voay had you covered.

Palaeontologists still debate whether those horns meant Voay was more territorial, more aggressive, or simply had a flair for drama. In any case, it must have been a striking sight. 

Picture it: the sun setting over a Malagasy river, the water rippling slightly as a pair of horned eyes rise from below. Birds go silent. A lemur freezes. Somewhere, a herpetologist gets very, very excited.

Madagascar is known for being a biological experiment that got out of hand. Cut off from Africa for around 160 million years, the island evolved its own cast of peculiar creatures: giant lemurs, pygmy hippos, and flightless birds the size of small Volkswagens. Into this mix slithered and splashed Voay robustus, likely arriving during a period of low sea levels that made crossings from the mainland possible.

Once there, Voay probably established itself at the top of the food chain—and stayed there. Anything coming down to drink was fair game. Lemur, bird, hippo, or careless human ancestor—Voay didn’t discriminate. It’s hard to imagine anything else on the island telling a 5-metre crocodile what it could or couldn’t eat.

And yet, despite being a literal apex predator, Voay robustus didn’t make it to the present day. The species vanished roughly 1,200 years ago, right around the time humans arrived in Madagascar. Coincidence? Probably not.

When Humans Moved In — The timeline tells a familiar story. People reach the island about 2,000 years ago. Within a millennium, the megafauna are gone. The giant lemurs disappear, the elephant birds vanish, and the horned crocodile—perhaps hunted, perhaps losing habitat—slips into extinction.

You might imagine that Voay robustus was at least a little resentful about this turn of events. After all, it had survived millions of years of climate swings, sea-level changes, and evolutionary curveballs. And then along came humans, with their spears, boats, and general knack for ecological chaos.

It’s even been suggested that early Malagasy legends of giant crocodiles or river spirits might echo distant memories of encounters with Voay. Which, frankly, would make sense. If a horned, five-metre reptile lunged at your canoe one evening, you’d probably tell stories about it for generations, too.

Genetically, Voay robustus offers a fascinating window into crocodile evolution. While modern Crocodylus species are found across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia, Voay sat just outside that global radiation. In other words, it was part of the evolutionary stem group that gave rise to today’s true crocodiles—but it stayed put while its cousins spread out and diversified.

That makes Voay something of a living fossil that outstayed its welcome—Madagascar’s own reminder of an older, meaner age. Its extinction left the island without any native crocodiles, though Nile crocodiles have since colonised parts of the west coast, re-establishing the ancient reptilian grin on Malagasy soil.

Today, Voay robustus lives on in subfossil bones, DNA samples, and the collective imagination of herpetologists who still dream of rediscovering one lurking somewhere in a forgotten swamp. (They won’t, of course—but it’s nice to dream.)

If anything, Voay reminds us that evolution loves a good experiment, especially on islands. Give a crocodile a few million years in isolation, and it might just decide it wants horns.

And if there’s a moral here—besides “don’t go swimming in prehistoric Madagascar”—it’s that even the fiercest, most robust of creatures can vanish when the world around them changes. So here’s to Voay robustus: horned, hulking, and gone too soon.

Image credit: By LiterallyMiguel - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=163874814

HERMIT CRAB: REAL ESTATE TYCOONS OF THE FORESHORE

This little cutie is a hermit crab and he is wearing a temporary home borrowed from one of our mollusc friends. 

His body is a soft, squishy spiral that he eases into the perfect size shell time and time again as he grows. 

His first choice is always the empty shell of a marine snail but will get inventive in a pinch — nuts, wood, serpulid worm tubes, aluminium cans or wee plastic caps. 

They are inventive, polite and patient. 

You see, a hermit crabs' desire for the perfect bit of real estate will have them queueing beside larger shells — shells too large for them — to wait upon a big hermit crab to come along, discard the perfect home and slip into their new curved abode. This is all done in an orderly fashion with the hermit crabs all lined up, biggest to smallest to see who best fits the newly available shell. 

There are over 800 species of hermit crab — decapod crustaceans of the superfamily Paguroidea. Their lineage dates back to the Jurassic, 200 million years ago. 

Their soft squishy, weakly calcified bodies do not fossilize all that often but when they do the specimens are spectacular. Think of all the species of molluscs these lovelies have had a chance to try on — including ammonites — and all the shells that were never buried in sediment to become fossils because they were harvested as homes.  

On the shores of British Columbia, Canada, the hermit crab I come across most often is the Grainyhand hermit crab, Pagurus granosimanus. 

These wee fellows have tell-tale orange-brown antennae and olive green legs speckled with blue or white dots. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, a shell is known as x̱ala̱'is and gugwis means house on the beach. 

I do not know the Kwak’wala word for a hermit crab, so I will think of these cuties as x̱ala̱'is gugwis — envisioning them finding the perfect sized shell on the surf worn shores of Tsax̱is, Fort Rupert, Vancouver Island. 

BANFF NATIONAL PARK, CANADA

Banff National Park is breathtaking from any angle, but from the air it feels otherworldly—an alpine tapestry of turquoise lakes, braided rivers, and peaks stitched with glacier-light. 

Flying above it, you see the Rockies as the early surveyors must have: raw, immense, and defiantly ancient.

The town of Banff itself began humbly in the 1880s, growing from a railway stop on the new transcontinental line into Canada’s first national park. Railroad workers stumbled upon the Cave and Basin hot springs, sparking a cascade of interest in the area’s geology, wildlife, and deep-time history.

That same geology would soon draw paleontologists into the region’s wild backcountry. Just west of Banff, high on a ridge in Yoho National Park, lies the legendary Burgess Shale—one of the most important fossil sites on Earth. 

Discovered in 1909 by Charles Doolittle Walcott of the Smithsonian, the Burgess Shale preserves exquisitely detailed soft-bodied creatures from over 500 million years ago, offering a rare window into early animal evolution. 

Banff became the nearest hub—its hotels, trails, and later its research community supporting generations of scientists, students, and fossil-hungry adventurers heading into the high passes.

Seen from the sky today, Banff is a quiet modern town nestled among mountains that have been sculpted for hundreds of millions of years. Its story—of hot springs, railways, and extraordinary fossils—is always a delight to explore nestled in Canada's glorious Rockies.

LINGULA ANATINA: PRIMATIVE BRACHIOPOD

Lingula anatina — Primitive Brachiopod 

One of the most primitive and enduring brachiopods alive today is the caramel-and-cream–coloured Lingula anatina. 

Though modest in appearance, this unassuming marine invertebrate tells a story that stretches back over half a billion years — a direct lineage to the dawn of complex animal life.

Brachiopods are marine, stalked (pedunculate) invertebrates with two shells — or valves — hinged at the rear. To the casual observer, they resemble clams or mussels, but this similarity is purely superficial. 

In bivalves such as clams, the two shells sit on either side of the animal, and their plane of symmetry runs along the hinge line. Brachiopods, on the other hand, have shells on the top and bottom, with the line of symmetry running perpendicular to the hinge. This fundamental difference reveals two entirely separate evolutionary paths that converged on a similar shell-bearing lifestyle.

Lingula anatina belongs to one of the oldest known animal groups, with unmistakable brachiopod fossils appearing in rocks dating back some 530 million years, during the early Cambrian. These forms represent the first certain evidence of brachiopods in the fossil record, appearing at a time when most major animal body plans were emerging during the so-called “Cambrian Explosion.”

Unlike most modern shell-bearing animals, Lingula’s shell lacks a locking mechanism. Instead, it relies on a complex system of muscles to open and close the valves with precision. Its shell is composed not of calcium carbonate like most other shelled marine creatures, but of calcium phosphate and collagen fibres — a combination it shares only with vertebrates, making it one of the earliest known examples of animal biomineralisation. 

This process, where organisms harden tissues with minerals, represents a major evolutionary innovation that would later shape the biology of countless marine and terrestrial forms.

Lingula anatina can be found buried in sandy or muddy sediments of shallow marine environments, where it uses its muscular stalk (or pedicle) to anchor itself and burrow down into the seafloor. There it filters plankton and organic particles from the water, much as its ancestors did hundreds of millions of years ago. 

Its remarkable persistence — both in form and ecological niche — has led paleontologists to call Lingula a “living fossil.” Charles Darwin himself used this very term when describing its extraordinary morphological conservatism. Indeed, specimens from the Silurian Period (443–419 million years ago) are nearly indistinguishable from those alive today.

While other brachiopod lineages flourished and faded through the great mass extinctions of Earth’s history, Lingula endured — a small, steadfast witness to 500 million years of changing seas. Its simple elegance hides a profound truth: sometimes survival is not about innovation, but about perfecting a design so well-suited to its environment that evolution has little left to improve.

Photo: Wilson44691 - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8624418

FOSSIL HUNTRESS PALEONTOLOGY PODCAST

Step into deep time with the Fossil Huntress Podcast—your warm and wonder-filled gateway to dinosaurs, trilobites, ammonites, and the astonishing parade of life that has ever walked, swum, or crawled across our planet.

Close your eyes and travel with me through ancient oceans teeming with early life, lush primeval forests echoing with strange calls, and sunbaked badlands where the bones of giants rest beneath your feet. 

Each episode is a journey into Earth’s secret past, where every fossil tells a story and every stone remembers.

Together, we’ll wander across extraordinary fossil beds, sacred landscapes, and timeworn shores that have witnessed the rise and fall of worlds. 

From tiny single-celled pioneers to mighty dinosaurs, from cataclysms to new dawns, this is where science meets storytelling—and where the past comes vividly alive.

So wherever you are—on the trail, by the sea, or cozy at home—bring your curiosity and join me in the great adventure of discovery. Favourite the show and come fossil-hunting through time with me!

Listen now: Fossil Huntress Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1hH1wpDFFIlYC9ZW5uTYVL

LIVING FOSSILS: MASTERS OF MASS EXTINCTION EVENTS

Horseshoe crabs are marine and brackish water arthropods of the order Xiphosura — a slowly evolving, conservative taxa.

Much like (slow) Water Striders (Aquarius remigis), (relatively sluggish) Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) and (the current winner on really slow evolution) Elephant Sharks (Callorhinchus milii), these fellows have a long history in the fossil record with very few anatomical changes. 

But slow change provides loads of great information. It makes our new friend, Yunnanolimulus luoingensis, an especially interesting and excellent reference point for how this group evolved. 

We can examine their genome today and make comparisons all the way back to the Middle Triassic (with this new find) and other specimens from further back in the Ordovician — 445 million years ago. 

These living fossils have survived all five mass extinction events. They are generalists who can live in shallow or deep water and will eat pretty much anything they can find on the seafloor.

The oldest horseshoe crab fossil, Lunataspis aurora, is found in outcrops in Manitoba, Canada. Charmingly, the name means crescent moon shield of the dawn. It was palaeontologist Dave Rudkin and team who chose that romantic name. Finding them as fossils is quite remarkable as their shells are made of protein which does not mineralized like typical fossils.

Even so, the evolution of their exoskeleton is well-documented by fossils, but appendage and soft-tissue preservation are extremely rare. 

A new study analyzes details of the appendage and soft-tissue preservation in Yunnanolimulus luoingensis, a Middle Triassic (ca. 244 million years old) horseshoe crab from Yunnan Province, SW China. The remarkable anatomical preservation includes the chelicerae, five pairs of walking appendages, opisthosomal appendages with book gills, muscles, and fine setae permits comparison with extant horseshoe crabs.

The close anatomical similarity between the Middle Triassic horseshoe crabs and their recent analogues documents anatomical conservatism for over 240 million years, suggesting persistence of lifestyle.

The occurrence of Carcinoscorpius-type claspers on the first and second walking legs in male individuals of Y. luoingensis tells us that simple chelate claspers in males are plesiomorphic for horseshoe crabs, and the bulbous claspers in Tachypleus and Limulus are derived.

As an aside, if you hadn't seen an elephant shark before and were shown a photo, you would likely say, "that's no freaking shark." You would be wrong, of course, but it would be a very clever observation.

Callorhinchus milii look nothing like our Great White friends and they are not true sharks at all. Rather, they are ghost sharks that belong to the subclass Holocephali (chimaera), a group lovingly known as ratfish. They diverged from the shark lineage about 400 million years ago.

If you have a moment, do a search for Callorhinchus milii. The odd-looking fellow with the ironic name, kallos, which means beautiful in Greek, sports black blotches on a pale silver elongate body. And their special feature? It is the fishy equivalent of business in the front, party in the back, with a dangling trunk-like projection at the tip of their snout and well-developed rectal glands near the tail.

As another small point of interest with regards to horseshoe crabs, John McAllister collected several of these while working on his MSc to see if they had microstructures similar to trilobites (they do) and whether their cuticles were likewise calcified. He found no real calcification in their cuticles, in fact, he had a rather frustrating time getting anything measurable to dissolve in acid in his hunt for trace elements. 

Likewise, when looking at oxygen isotopes (16/18) to get a handle on water salinity and temperature, his contacts at the University of Waterloo had tons of fun getting anything at all to analyze. It made for some interesting findings. Sadly, for a number of reasons, he abandoned the work, but you can read his very interesting thesis here: https://dr.library.brocku.ca/handle/10464/1959

Ref: Hu, Shixue & Zhang, Qiyue & Feldmann, Rodney & Benton, Michael & Schweitzer, Carrie & Huang, Jinyuan & Wen, Wen & Zhou, Changyong & Xie, Tao & Lü, Tao & Hong, Shuigen. (2017). Exceptional appendage and soft-tissue preservation in a Middle Triassic horseshoe crab from SW China. Scientific Reports. 7. 10.1038/s41598-017-13319-x.

THE WOMAN WHO SMUGGLED SCIENCE INTO FAIRY TALES: CLEMENTINE HELM BEYRICH

Clementine Helm Beyrich

On a gray Berlin morning in the winter of 1863, a young girl named Anna padded quietly into her foster mother’s study. She expected to find Clementine Helm bent over a draft of some gentle domestic tale. 

Instead, she found her deep in conversation with a visiting scientist, listening intently as he described fossil beds in Prussia and the strange, ancient creatures locked within them. 

Anna watched, transfixed, as Clementine’s eyes lit up — not with the polite interest expected of a nineteenth-century woman, but with the unmistakable flare of curiosity. 

After the visitor left, Clementine turned back to her manuscript with renewed purpose. 

In that moment, Anna realized something that readers across Central Europe would soon discover: her aunt was not merely a writer of stories; she was quietly, persistently rewriting the boundaries of what a woman could know — and teach — about the natural world.

Clementine Helm Beyrich (1825–1896) grew up on the edges of two worlds: one bound by the strict social expectations placed on girls in the German states, and another brimming with scientific possibility. 

Orphaned early in life, she was raised first by one maternal uncle and then another — the latter being the mineralogist Christian Samuel Weiss, whose Berlin household was steeped in geology, crystallography, and lively intellectual debate. It was an unusual atmosphere for a girl of her time, and Clementine absorbed it eagerly.

Bismark Residence, Berlin, Germany 1880s

She came to Berlin to earn a teaching diploma at the Königliche Luisenstiftung, one of the few places where a determined young woman could pursue higher education. She taught for several years, and the discipline, empathy, and pedagogical instinct she developed there flowed directly into her writing.

In 1848 she married Heinrich Ernst Beyrich — her uncle’s student, who would become a celebrated geologist and palaeontologist. 

Their home quickly became a salon of scientists, artists, and writers. Among their circle were Theodor Fontane, Otto Roquette, and Friedrich Eggers, all members of the Rütli literary group. Clementine, by all accounts, held her own in these conversations with warmth, intelligence, and a quiet but formidable wit.

The couple never had children of their own, but Clementine adopted and lovingly raised her nieces, Anna and Elly, after the death of her sister in 1851. Their letters and diaries show how deeply they influenced Clementine’s storytelling — and how deeply she shaped their intellectual lives in return.

Clementine published her first work — children’s songs — in 1861. Over the next three decades she produced more than 40 books, countless stories, fairy tales, and anthologies, and even launched an annual girls’ almanac with fellow writer Frida Schanz. 

Her books were widely translated into English, French, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages. Her most famous novel, Backfischchens Leiden und Freuden (1863), became a beloved example of the Backfischroman — fiction for adolescent girls.

But Clementine’s work was never just entertainment.

She used her stories to offer young readers something exceedingly rare: a window into science. She slipped geology, palaeontology, biology, and the ongoing debates of the scientific world into narratives about girls discovering themselves. 

In Dornröschen und Schneewittchen, she openly referenced Darwin’s On the Origin of Species — a daring choice in an era when evolution was still scandalous, especially in literature intended for girls. Her heroines were curious, educated, and hungry for understanding. They were not passive ornaments but participants in the unfolding story of scientific discovery.

Breaking Barriers — Quietly, Brilliantly

In the nineteenth century, women were barred from studying geoscience formally, let alone publishing on it. Clementine Helm Beyrich found a way around that barrier with imagination as her passport. Surrounded by some of the greatest scientific minds of the German Empire — including Alexander von Humboldt, Ernst Haeckel, Weiss, and Beyrich himself — she absorbed the new ideas shaping geology and evolutionary thought. 

She then transformed that knowledge into accessible, engaging literature for young readers.

She may not have held an academic position, but she became something just as powerful: a popularizer of geoscience at a time when most women were denied even the permission to be curious.

Through fairy tales infused with fossils and novels threaded with natural history, she carried scientific ideas into households across Central Europe. Her legacy is not only in the books she wrote but in the minds she opened — especially the girls who saw themselves reflected in her brave, inquisitive characters and realized that intellect belonged to them, too.

Clementine died in 1896, just a month after her husband. But the quiet revolution she sparked — the insistence that girls could think deeply about the world, and that science belonged to them as much as anyone — continued long after her final chapter.

THE EUROPEAN FLAMINGO: STILT WALKERS OF ANTIQUITY

European Flamingo

At dawn along the salt lagoons of the Mediterranean, the European flamingo rises like a soft-feathered sunrise, a sweep of pale rose and ember pink drifting across mirror-still water. 

Their long, reed-thin legs stitch delicate ripples through the shallows, while their downcurved bills — precision tools of evolutionary engineering — sift brine shrimp and algae with gentle, rhythmic sweeps.

But Phoenicopterus roseus, the European flamingo, is more than a creature of luminous wetlands. 

It is the living remnant of a lineage forged in deep time, a story that stretches back more than 30 million years into a world utterly transformed.

For decades, flamingos stood as an evolutionary puzzle — strange in form, stranger still in habit. Their closest relatives were unclear. Then the fossil record began offering clues.

The earliest birds recognizable as flamingo ancestors appear in the Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, a period when the world was cooling and vast salt lakes spread across what is now Europe and North America.

The star of this ancient cast is Palaelodus, a long-legged wader known from deposits in France, Germany, and even North America. Often described as an “unfinished flamingo,” Palaelodus stood tall on slender legs but lacked the extreme bill curvature of modern species.

Paleontologists see it as a sister lineage — a bird halfway between the ancestral stock and the unmistakable modern flamingo form.

Their environments tell the same tale: shallow, alkaline waters rich with diatoms, crustaceans, and blue-green algae. The perfect proving ground for a future flamingo.

By the Miocene, true flamingos had fully arrived. Fossil flamingos — many nearly indistinguishable from modern species — appear in the lakebeds of Spain, Italy, Hungary, and Greece.

Some highlights of Europe’s deep flamingo past include:

• Phoenicopterus minutus, an elegant early species known from the Late Miocene of Hungary
• Phoenicopterus gracilis, which stalked ancient Iberian wetlands

Abundant trackways in Miocene lakebeds of Spain, showing flocks wading and foraging as they do today

What’s striking is how little the flamingo body plan has changed. Once their ecological niche crystallized — the brackish shallows, the sieving bill, the social flocking behaviour — evolution held its breath. Flamingos became masters of a lifestyle so successful it needed no further remodeling.

Until recently, the flamingo’s closest living relatives were uncertain. For years, hypotheses bounced between storks, herons, waders, and even waterfowl. Then genetics reshaped the field.

Flamingos are now grouped with grebes in a clade called Mirandornithes.

It’s a pairing that initially seems improbable — one bird is a pink desert ballerina, the other a compact diver of northern lakes. Yet the fossil record supports it: early grebe-like birds and Palaelodus share key skeletal traits, hinting at a common aquatic ancestor before their lineages diverged.

Today the European flamingo thrives in the wetlands of:

• The Camargue, France
• Doñana, Spain
• Sardinia and Sicily
• The salt pans of Turkey
• Coastal lagoons of North Africa

Their pink colour, borrowed from carotenoid pigments in their prey, is a living reminder of their deep bond with saline waters. Their massive colonial nests, sculpted from mud into miniature towers, echo the behaviour of flamingos preserved in Miocene fossil beds.

Each bird, elegant and improbable, embodies a lineage honed by climate shifts, vanished lakes, and ancient ancestors who once stepped cautiously through Europe’s long-lost wetlands.

From the lithified sediments of the Oligocene to the shimmering pink flocks drifting across the Mediterranean today, flamingos stand as one of the great evolutionary constants: birds whose story is etched into stone, water, and sunlight.

FOSSIL FELINES: MOZART

Mister Mozart

Cats—those purring enigmas who act like they invented gravity and disdain—have been perfecting their aloof charm for tens of millions of years. 

Long before domestic life on the couch, they prowled prehistoric forests and savannas, already masters of stealth.

The feline family tree begins about 25 million years ago with the Proailurus, whose name literally means “first cat.” 

This Miocene-era predator lived in Europe and Asia and probably looked like your housecat—if your housecat could take down small deer. 

Proailurus gave rise to the Pseudaelurus, the cat that would eventually split into two great evolutionary lineages: the big cats (Pantherinae, including lions, tigers, and leopards) and the small cats (Felinae, which include your couch companion, Felis catus), and snuggle bunnies like Mister Mozart you see here.

By the Pleistocene, cats had diversified spectacularly—from the legendary Smilodon, the sabre-toothed showstopper of Ice Age fame, to the lithe wildcats that would one day move into our granaries, charm our ancestors, and domesticate us. 

Yes, evidence suggests that around 10,000 years ago, humans didn’t so much tame cats as cats decided that humans were helpful enough to tolerate. A trend that continues to this day. 

Their fossils—sleek jaws, retractable claws, and the occasional pawprint—tell a story of evolutionary precision. Cats didn’t just evolve; they optimised. Every leap, pounce, and inscrutable stare has been honed by millions of years of predatory perfection.

So when your cat knocks your favourite mug off the counter and looks smug about it, remember: you’re gazing into the eyes of a finely tuned Miocene hunter. Evolution, it seems, has a sense of humour—and a soft spot for whiskers.

Kane & Mozart divving up the best bed spots

Despite centuries of cartoon propaganda suggesting otherwise, cats and dogs can form some of the most endearing interspecies friendships in the animal kingdom. 

While their social codes differ—dogs being pack-oriented and demonstrative, cats favouring solitary stealth and subtlety—mutual respect (and occasionally a shared sunny spot or prime position on your bed) often bridges the divide. 

Studies in animal behaviour show that early socialisation, body language recognition, and individual temperament play key roles in fostering harmony between felines and canines. 

A confident cat and a calm, well-socialised dog are a recipe for peaceful coexistence—and sometimes, genuine affection. Watching a cat gently groom a dog’s ears or a Ridgeback stoically endure a kitten’s playful ambush brings a smile to us all. Evolution may have set them on different paths, but friendship, it seems, is a universal instinct.

PARIS MUSEUM D'HISTOIRE NATURELLE

Step through the Jardin des Plantes on a misty Paris morning and you can almost hear the echo of centuries: the whisper of early botanists brushing past medicinal herbs, the tap-tap of fossil preparators chiselling bone from matrix, the distant murmur of scholars arguing over geology, zoology, and the new—dangerous—idea of evolution. 

This is the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, an institution whose roots stretch back over three and a half centuries, and whose halls contain the very heartbeat of French natural science. It is one of my favourite museums, both for its collections, its history and my personal histoire with this gorgeous institution and curators over the years. 

From Royal Garden to Scientific Powerhouse

The Museum began humbly in 1635 as the Jardin du Roi, a royal medicinal garden established by King Louis XIII. Initially devoted to growing plants for healing, it soon attracted scholars hungry for classification, exploration, and discovery. By 1793, during the fervour of the French Revolution, the garden transformed into the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, formally dedicated to the full study of nature—its rocks, its creatures, its ancient past.

The new Museum wasn’t just a repository of curiosities. It became an intellectual engine, a place where comparative anatomy, paleontology, and evolutionary science were tested, debated, and sometimes fought over with near-religious intensity. Naturalists trained here went on to explore every corner of the globe, collecting specimens that would build one of the world’s greatest scientific archives.

Galleries That Feel Like Time Machines

Grande Galerie de l’Évolution

Entering this gallery feels like walking into a cathedral built for life itself. Under its towering iron-and-glass nave, rebuilt in 1994, enormous whales hang suspended above schools of preserved fish, birds, mammals, and invertebrates. These iconic displays are storytelling machines, showing how organisms diversify, adapt, flourish, and sometimes vanish.

Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie Comparée

This is where your pulse quickens. Completed in 1898, the paleontology hall is a long gallery glowing with raw scientific drama. Grinning skulls and articulated skeletons stride along the central walkway: Iguanodon, Allosaurus, Diplodocus, and early horses like Anchitherium. The fossil collection here is one of Europe’s richest, built from centuries of field expeditions and intense scientific rivalry.

I had the very great pleasure of exploring this gallery to photograph it using natural light early in the mornings before the crowds were let in to explore. It is the picture perfect museum in terms of how they choose to display the specimens and the rich history they tell. 

As I peered at each fossil, I was thrilled to think of its moment of discovery and deeply honoured to view it unhurried in the quiet hush of my early morning visits. Looking closer, my eyes were delighted by so many treasures:

The holotype of Anoplotherium commune, studied by Georges Cuvier as he developed his revolutionary ideas on extinction.

A beautifully preserved Mammuthus primigenius skull hauled from Siberian permafrost.

Jurassic marine invertebrates—ammonites, belemnites, and ichthyosaur remains—collected from classic French sites such as Normandy, the Causses, and the Paris Basin.

The upstairs gallery houses comparative anatomy, where countless skeletons and organs are preserved in glass jars—a dizzying testament to centuries of study.

Galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie

A quieter but equally dazzling space. Massive amethyst geodes glow violet in dim light, meteorites sit in solemn rows, and cabinets showcase minerals collected during Napoleonic-era expeditions. The Museum’s mineral collection is legendary, containing more than 600,000 specimens.

The Paleontologists Who Shaped the Museum—and Science

Georges Cuvier (1769–1832)

Often called the father of vertebrate paleontology, Cuvier worked in the galleries that predate the Museum and helped build the foundations of its collections. His meticulous anatomical studies of fossil vertebrates established extinction as a scientific fact—a radical idea at the time. Many specimens he worked on still sit in climate-controlled cabinets within meters of where he once lectured.

Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844)

Cuvier’s intellectual rival—famous for his battles over anatomical homology. Their debates filled lecture halls and contributed to the Museum’s reputation as a crucible of scientific progress.

Albert Gaudry (1827–1908)

A pioneering paleontologist whose work on Miocene mammals from Pikermi, Greece, helped advance early evolutionary theory. Many of his comparative specimens form the backbone of the Museum’s rich mammalian fossil collection.

Marcellin Boule (1861–1942)

Director of the Museum and one of the most influential paleontologists of the early 20th century. Boule described the famous La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neanderthal, shaping early views of human evolution—sometimes incorrectly, sometimes brilliantly. His office overlooked the very galleries where those fossils are still displayed.

The Museum weathered both world wars—sometimes narrowly.

World War I — Many staff members were conscripted, and scientific expeditions halted. Parts of the collections were quietly relocated away from potential bombing sites. Yet the Museum remained open, a place of solace for Parisians seeking continuity amid chaos.

World War II — This was the more dangerous period for the museum. As German occupation tightened, curators scrambled to protect vulnerable collections:

Rare manuscripts and irreplaceable type fossils were packed into crates and hidden in cellars beneath the galleries. Some specimens were quietly transferred to rural estates outside Paris.

The Museum’s botanical greenhouses were kept running despite shortages, symbolically maintaining the “living” portion of the institution when much around it seemed precarious.

A lesser-known fact: Allied bombing raids damaged parts of the Jardin des Plantes, shattering glasshouses and breaking roof sections in several galleries. Miraculously, no major fossil collections were destroyed, largely thanks to the foresight of curators who had reinforced windows with sandbags and internal bracing.

Perhaps most intriguingly, German officers with interests in natural science reportedly toured the galleries—but staff resisted all pressure to surrender key specimens, sometimes hiding them within other displays or tucking them out of view.

Today, the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle remains one of the world’s most active centers for research in biodiversity, paleontology, anthropology, and geoscience. Its galleries invite millions of visitors to wander through deep time, marvel at natural wonders, and walk the same floors once trod by Cuvier, Saint-Hilaire, Boule, and generations of explorers whose stories are embedded in every fossil case and herbarium drawer.

I highly recommend you take the time to visit the Museum and stroll through its many galleries, enjoying the history of life on Earth and the many individuals who have dedicated their lives to understanding it.

CAMBRIAN FAUNA FROM THE EAST KOOTENAY REGION

Upper Cambrian Trilobite Outcrops

When most people imagine British Columbia, they picture sky-scraping mountains, temperate rainforests dripping with moss, and coastlines sculpted by Pacific storms. 

But beneath these landscapes lies a vastly older, stranger world—one that thrived more than half a billion years before humans set foot on this continent.

This was the Cambrian, the era of Earth’s first great biological flowering. And ruling those early seas were the trilobites.

Trilobites were among the earliest complex animals to populate Earth’s oceans—marine arthropods with armor-like exoskeletons, jointed legs, compound eyes, and astonishing evolutionary variety. 

Over 270 million years, they adapted to almost every marine habitat imaginable and diversified into more than 20,000 species.

Today, their fossilized forms—ribbed, spined, streamlined, or elaborately ornamented—are found on every continent. But few places on Earth preserve their story with the richness and fidelity of southeastern British Columbia.

A Fossil Time Machine in the Rockies

The province’s Cambrian-aged formations offer a rare window into early marine ecosystems. The world-famous Burgess Shale preserves soft-bodied creatures with near-photographic clarity. But nearby, just outside the city of Cranbrook, another treasure trove reveals the rise of the trilobites in even earlier seas.

This is the Eager Formation—a Burgess Shale–type Lagerstätte from Cambrian Series 2, Stage 4, roughly 515 million years old. Long considered a low-diversity deposit, new research has transformed its scientific importance.

New Species from an Ancient Sea

A sweeping study by Mark Webster, Jean-Bernard Caron and colleagues, published in the Journal of Paleontology in March 2025, combined with new trilobite taxonomy uncover a thriving community of early trilobites—including several species new to science or newly named favourites from some earlier known colloquially from Lisa Bohach's unpublished thesis.

Among them:

• Olenellus santuccii Webster n. sp.
• Wanneria cranbrookense Webster n. sp.
• Olenellus? schofieldi
• Mesonacis eagerensis

These four olenelloids dominate the fauna, forming the backbone of a “typical” benthic trilobite community from the middle Dyeran Stage in Laurentia (ancient North America).

Alongside them are rare representatives from the enigmatic dorypygid and “ptychoparioid” lineages—groups whose fragmentary preservation leaves some species unnamed but no less scientifically important.

This diversity places the Cranbrook trilobite assemblage on par with other remarkable Cambrian deposits across Laurentia, filling a major stratigraphic gap between earlier and later Burgess Shale–type localities.

Even more remarkable: sedimentologic and preservational clues indicate these creatures died close to where they lived, their bodies settling gently into Cambrian muds with minimal transport. This is time travel at its most precise.

Lower Cambrian – The Eager Formation

Wanneria cranbrookense Webster n. sp.

The site outcrops at a few locations as you head east out of Cranbrook towards Fort Steele. 

The first trilobites were discovered with the building of the Kootenay Highway connecting Cranbrook to Fort Steele and beyond. 

Several other localities, including the outcrops at the Silhouette Rife Range — which is literally on a Rifle Range where folks go to shoot at things — is a shade older than the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale but the fauna here is much less varied. 

The site has been known and collected since the 1920s. Back in the day, fossil collecting was a family affair with folks heading out in their lightly coloured finery to picnic and surface collect the eroding exposures. 

Cranbrook local, Clement Hungerford Pollen was an engineer and avocational palaeontologist. He promoted collecting the exposures of the Eager Formation around 1921. As a pedigreed Englishman of considerable means, he had invested in the Kootenay Central Railway, revitalizing the town by opening up railway access within the region. Locals have been actively collecting at this site ever since. 

Recent work by Mark Webster et al. highlighted other Lower Cambrian species from this area, including:

• Fritzaspis – a small, early olenellid.
• Elliptocephala – known for its elongated head shield.
• Repinaella – a primitive form key to understanding trilobite origins.

Together, these fossils help correlate the Eager Formation with Lower Cambrian deposits across western Laurentia, refining the timeline of trilobite evolution.

Upper Cambrian – The McKay Group

A short drive from the Eager outcrops lies the McKay Group, a sequence of shales and limestones preserving spectacular Upper Cambrian trilobites.

Here, paleontologists such as Brian Chatterton have documented a flourishing array of species, including:

• Pterocephalia norfordi
• Elvinia roemeri
• Calyptaulax
• Prosaukia
• Orygmaspis contracta

Recent fieldwork by dedicated scientists and citizen collectors—Chris New, Chris Jenkins, Guy Santucci, Don Askew, and Stacey Gibb—continues to expand this list, even turning up Pseudagnostus securiger, a Jiangshanian-age species not previously known from southeastern BC.

Names That Tell a Story of Some Very Awesome Folk...

Paleontology is not just about fossils—it’s also about the people who dedicate their lives (and weekends) to uncovering them. In British Columbia, several trilobite species honour those contributions:

• Pterocephalia santuccii – named for geologist Guy Santucci, whose mapping and fieldwork brought attention to the Cranbrook area.
• Orygmaspis newi – recognizing Chris New, a tireless and deeply awesome citizen scientist.
• Calyptaulax jenkinsi – honouring Chris Jenkins, whose meticulous collecting enriched scientific collections.

These names are more than labels—they’re tributes to the collaboration between professionals, institutions, and passionate community members.

A Cast of Characters Spanning Millions of Years

Across the Cambrian rocks of BC, several trilobites stand out as icons of their time:

• Olenoides serratus – the Burgess Shale classic, often preserved with legs and antennae intact.
• Wanneria walcottana – an Early Cambrian form.
• Mesonacis eagerensis – the signature trilobite of the Eager Formation.
• Pterocephalia santuccii, Orygmaspis newi, Calyptaulax jenkinsi – Upper Cambrian forms marking the twilight of trilobite diversity in the region.

Together, these species chart an evolutionary journey from the earliest trilobites to the sophisticated, ornamented forms of the late Cambrian.

Collecting fossils is restricted in national parks like Yoho, but other formations around Cranbrook allow regulated scientific access. Here, fossil hunters navigate weathered shale slopes and scree-covered ridges, scanning for the ribbed arcs and crescent-shaped cephalons of long-dead arthropods.

Trilobites are as beautiful as they are informative. Their perfect bilateral symmetry, paired spines, and geometric patterns have inspired artists and scientists alike for centuries.

Tuzoia, Lower Cambrian, Eager Formation

For those eager to explore this deep past without a rock hammer, the Cranbrook History Centre, located on the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa First Nation, offers superb displays of Cambrian trilobites, including Tuzoia and other arthropods—plus a delightful collection of Devonian fish.

Trilobites may have vanished 250 million years ago, but their legacy endures.

They help us understand:

• How ecosystems rebounded after ancient climate disruptions
• How early animals diversified and competed
• How continents moved and reshaped marine habitats
• How life evolved complex sensory systems and behaviours

Every fossil is a data point from a vanished ocean, a chapter in Earth’s deep-time biography.

Next time you find yourself walking the rocky outcrops of southeastern British Columbia, pause for a moment. Beneath your feet lies the fossilized remains of vibrant, bustling seas—worlds where trilobites crawled, hunted, burrowed, and thrived long before mountains rose or forests took root.

These ancient mariners whisper stories from half a billion years ago. And thanks to ongoing research—from Caron’s foundational work to the newest species described by Webster and dedicated field collectors—we are finally learning to hear them.

Mark Webster and Jean-Bernard Caron "Trilobites of the Cranbrook Lagerstätte (Eager Formation, Cambrian Stage 4), British Columbia," Journal of Paleontology 98(4), 460-503, (6 March 2025). https://doi.org/10.1017/jpa.2023.89