FROGFISH: THE FISH THAT WALKS, FISHES AND SWALLOWS ITS DINNER WHOLE

Frogfish ready for its next meal

FROGFISH: THE FISH THAT WALKS, FISHES AND SWALLOWS ITS DINNER WHOLE

Imagine a fish that looks like a sponge, walks like a rather disgruntled frog, carries a fishing rod on its head and can swallow another fish almost as large as itself.

Welcome to the wonderfully peculiar world of frogfish.

These extraordinary little predators belong to the family Antennariidae, part of the anglerfish order Lophiiformes.

They are relatives of our fabulous red-lipped batfish, although frogfish have largely abandoned the lipstick in favour of camouflage.

And what camouflage it is.

Some resemble colourful sea sponges. Others look like algae-covered rocks, lumps of coral or bits of seaweed that have seen better days.

But beneath those wonderfully deceptive disguises lurks one of the ocean's most astonishing ambush predators.

A FISH THAT PREFERS WALKING

Most fish spend their lives swimming.

Frogfish, apparently, did not receive that particular memo.

Instead, many spend their time perched on rocks, coral or the seafloor, using their modified pectoral fins to shuffle about.

Their pelvic fins can also help them brace and move across the bottom.

The result is a rather charming, if somewhat ungainly, underwater walk.

Imagine a little fish in an oversized sponge costume stomping about the reef, occasionally stopping to glare at passing marine life.

Some frogfish can swim when necessary, and a few use jet-like propulsion by forcing water through their gill openings.

But why bother swimming when dinner might come to you?

THE MASTER OF DISGUISE

Painted Frogfish, Master of Disguise

Frogfish are among the most remarkable camouflage artists in the marine world.

Their bodies may be covered in bumps, fleshy projections, irregular markings and colours that help them blend into their surroundings.

The hairy frogfish, Antennarius striatus, can sport long, skin-like appendages that make it resemble a shaggy clump of seaweed.

The painted frogfish, Antennarius pictus, may resemble a brightly coloured sponge.

And the giant frogfish, Antennarius commerson, can grow to roughly 38 centimetres long, making it a rather substantial lump of apparently innocent reef decoration.

Some frogfish can change colour over time, although this is not the instantaneous colour-changing performance we associate with certain cephalopods.

Their disguise serves two purposes.

It helps them avoid being noticed by predators.

And it allows them to remain almost invisible to unsuspecting prey.

There is something wonderfully unfair about being eaten by what you thought was a sponge.

THE FISH WITH A FISHING ROD

Now for one of my favourite evolutionary inventions.

Frogfish have a modified dorsal-fin spine called an illicium, which acts rather like a miniature fishing rod.

At its tip is a lure called an esca.

Depending on the species, this lure may resemble a worm, a tiny fish or another tempting morsel.

The frogfish waves its lure near its mouth, hoping to attract the attention of a hungry little fish.

The unsuspecting visitor approaches.

Closer.

Closer still.

And then — GULP.

Dinner disappears.

No chasing. No elaborate pursuit. No need to book a table.

Just a fishing rod attached to your head and an extraordinary amount of patience.

THE FASTEST DINNER IN TOWN

Frogfish possess one of the most impressive feeding mechanisms in the animal kingdom.

When prey comes within range, a frogfish can rapidly expand its enormous mouth cavity, creating suction that pulls the unfortunate visitor inside.

The strike can happen in just a few milliseconds.

Their mouths can expand dramatically, allowing some frogfish to consume prey approaching their own body size.

They may even eat other frogfish. Family dinners must be rather tense. Imagine inviting your cousin over for lunch and discovering that you are lunch.

This astonishing feeding system is an example of suction feeding, a technique found in many fishes but taken to remarkable extremes by frogfish.

Their specialised jaws and expandable mouths allow them to capture prey with very little warning.

One moment, a small fish is investigating a promising-looking worm. The next, it has vanished into what appeared to be a harmless lump of coral. Nature can be wonderfully inventive. And occasionally rather rude.

WHO ARE THEIR RELATIVES?

Frogfish are members of the order Lophiiformes, the anglerfishes.

Their extended family includes some of the most peculiar creatures in the ocean.

There are the red-lipped batfishes, which walk across the seafloor looking permanently unimpressed.

There are monkfishes, with enormous flattened heads and mouths designed for swallowing unsuspecting prey.

And there are the famous deep-sea anglerfishes, some of which use glowing lures to attract prey in the darkness.

Not all anglerfishes live in the deep sea, and not all have glowing lures.

Frogfish generally inhabit tropical and subtropical marine environments, often around reefs, rocky bottoms and other habitats where camouflage is particularly useful.

They have taken the anglerfish family's remarkable fishing apparatus and turned it into a wonderfully effective tool for ambush hunting.

One branch of the family lives in darkness.

Another wanders about wearing lipstick.

And the frogfish sits disguised as a sponge, waiting for something edible to make a terrible decision.

FROGFISH IN THE FOSSIL RECORD

Now let's travel back through deep time.

The living frogfish family, Antennariidae, has a limited fossil record. We cannot trace every modern frogfish species neatly backwards through millions of years of preserved ancestors.

But the broader anglerfish lineage has a fascinating fossil history.

One particularly important fossil is Histionotophorus bassani, an extinct anglerfish known from the Eocene deposits of Monte Bolca in northern Italy.

The Eocene Epoch lasted from approximately 56 to 33.9 million years ago.

The famous Monte Bolca fossil beds preserve an extraordinary assemblage of marine fishes from roughly 50 million years ago, when the region was part of a warm marine environment.

Among the remarkable fossil fishes described from Monte Bolca are early representatives of the anglerfish lineage, helping palaeontologists understand how this unusual group evolved.

These fossils are not necessarily direct ancestors of living frogfish.

Instead, they provide evidence that the wider evolutionary group to which frogfish belong was already present in ancient Eocene seas.

There is an important difference between finding a fossil of a modern family and finding an older fossil belonging to its broader evolutionary lineage.

Both are valuable, but they tell us different parts of the story.

Frogfish themselves are difficult to document through fossils, partly because their delicate skeletal structures and the environments in which they live do not always favour preservation.

That leaves some wonderful questions.

When did their extraordinary camouflage evolve?

How early did their ancestors begin using specialised fins to walk along the seafloor?

And when did their fishing apparatus become the highly effective hunting tool we see today?

Fossils, comparative anatomy and genetic research all help scientists investigate these questions.

Perhaps one day an extraordinary fossil frogfish will emerge from an ancient seabed and help fill another gap in this remarkable evolutionary story.

I do hope it looks like a sponge.

FIVE FROGFISH FACTS TO IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS

1. Frogfish can fish for fish. Their modified dorsal-fin spine carries a lure that helps attract prey directly towards their mouths.

2. They can swallow astonishingly large meals. Their expandable jaws and rapid suction feeding allow some species to consume prey approaching their own size.

3. They are masters of disguise. Depending on the species, frogfish can resemble sponges, algae, coral or other parts of their marine surroundings.

4. They have unusual ways of moving. Many use their modified fins to walk or brace themselves, while some can also propel themselves through the water by expelling water from their gill openings.

5. They are related to deep-sea anglerfish. Although they generally live in shallower environments, frogfish share an evolutionary history with some of the strangest predators in the deep ocean.

THE JOY OF BEING EXTRAORDINARILY ODD

What I love most about frogfish is how beautifully they demonstrate the creativity of evolution.

Here is an animal that has evolved a remarkable combination of camouflage, specialised movement, an extraordinary feeding mechanism and a fishing lure built directly into its anatomy.

Its relatives appear in fossil deposits tens of millions of years old, connecting this modern marine oddity to an ancient and wonderfully diverse evolutionary lineage.

And although the fossil record has yet to reveal every chapter of the frogfish story, the living animals offer a marvellous glimpse of what millions of years of adaptation can produce.

Some fishes evolved for speed. Others for long-distance migration.

The frogfish evolved to look like a sponge, wave a fishing rod and swallow dinner whole.

And somehow, that seems like a perfectly respectable life choice. 

There are extraordinary stories waiting beneath the waves, beneath our feet and within the ancient rocks that preserve our planet's remarkable history.

Speaking of wonderfully unusual relatives, meet the red-lipped batfish, Ogcocephalus darwini, a Galápagos fish with scarlet lips, walking fins and a face that looks permanently unimpressed. 

Discover its extraordinary evolutionary story in our Fossil Huntress article, RED-LIPPED BATFISH: THE FISH THAT WALKED INTO A BEAUTY SALON.

RED-LIPPED BATFISH: THE FISH THAT WALKED INTO A BEAUTY SALON

Somewhere in the waters around the Galápagos Islands lives a fish that appears to have applied an enthusiastic coat of bright red lipstick, put on its grumpiest expression and decided that swimming is entirely overrated.

Meet the red-lipped batfish, Ogcocephalus darwini.

With its spectacular scarlet pout, flattened body and decidedly unconventional approach to getting around, this little marine oddity looks rather like a pancake that has made some questionable fashion choices.

And I absolutely adore it.

A FISH WITH LEGS? WELL, SORT OF.

Unlike most fish, which propel themselves gracefully through the water, the red-lipped batfish spends much of its time moving about the seafloor using modified pectoral and pelvic fins.

It doesn't have actual legs, of course, but those sturdy, limb-like fins allow it to shuffle, crawl and occasionally perform what can only be described as a rather awkward underwater stroll.

Imagine a tiny, disgruntled gentleman in a red-lipped disguise making his way across the ocean floor.

That is essentially our batfish.

Red-lipped batfish are generally found around the Galápagos Islands and nearby waters off the Pacific coast of South America. They are bottom-dwelling marine fish, often encountered on sandy or rocky seafloors.

They grow to roughly 20 centimetres in length, so despite their rather dramatic appearance, they are not particularly large.

What they lack in size, they more than make up for in personality. Or at least the appearance of personality. Scientists have yet to establish whether batfish are actually judging us.

THE LIPSTICK QUESTION

Why those extraordinary red lips?

The short answer is that we don't know for certain.

One suggestion is that their bright lips may play a role in recognising other members of their species or communicating during courtship. But this remains a hypothesis rather than an established scientific fact.

Perhaps they are advertising their availability to other batfish.

Perhaps they simply enjoy looking fabulous.

Either way, nature has produced a creature that looks permanently ready for a night out while simultaneously appearing deeply disappointed by everyone at the party.

A FISH THAT GOES FISHING

Now things get even stranger.

Our red-lipped friend belongs to the anglerfish order, Lophiiformes, a remarkable group of fishes famous for their unusual methods of catching prey.

Like other anglerfish, batfish possess a modified dorsal-fin spine called an illicium, which functions rather like a miniature fishing rod.

In batfishes, this apparatus is tucked into a cavity near the snout and bears a fleshy lure called an esca. Rather than relying on the glowing lure made famous by some deep-sea anglerfish, batfish use a non-luminous lure associated with chemical attraction.

This helps bring curious prey within striking distance.

Their menu includes small fishes and marine invertebrates, including crustaceans and worms.

Imagine spending your day wandering around the seafloor wearing bright lipstick, occasionally producing a fishing rod from your face.

Evolution really does have a marvellous sense of humour.

WHO ARE THEIR RELATIVES?

The red-lipped batfish belongs to the family Ogcocephalidae, commonly known as the batfishes.

Its relatives include other wonderfully peculiar bottom-dwelling species with flattened bodies, arm-like fins and extraordinary faces.

But the wider family reunion is even more entertaining.

As members of the anglerfish order Lophiiformes, batfishes are related to frogfishes, monkfishes and the famous deep-sea anglerfishes.

Frogfishes are particularly entertaining cousins. Many are masters of camouflage, resembling sponges, corals or algae, and some also use their fins to walk along the seafloor.

Monkfishes, meanwhile, possess enormous mouths and an impressive ability to swallow prey.

And then there are the deep-sea anglerfishes, some of which dangle glowing lures in the darkness to attract unsuspecting dinner guests.

It's quite the family gathering.

One cousin walks, another glows in the dark, and our Galápagos beauty turns up wearing lipstick.

WHERE DO BATFISH APPEAR IN THE FOSSIL RECORD?

This is where our journey takes us into deep time.

Although the red-lipped batfish is a living species, we do not currently have a well-established fossil record specifically documenting Ogcocephalus darwini.

And that distinction matters.

The fossil record of its broader anglerfish relatives, however, reaches back tens of millions of years.

Some of the earliest well-known fossil anglerfishes come from the Eocene Epoch, approximately 50 million years ago.

Among these ancient relatives is Histionotophorus bassani, an extinct anglerfish known from the famous Eocene fossil deposits of Monte Bolca in northern Italy.

These extraordinary deposits preserve an ancient marine ecosystem filled with beautifully detailed fossil fishes.

Another fossil anglerfish, Caruso brachysomus, is known from the Eocene of Monte Bolca and provides another fascinating glimpse into the early evolutionary history of this unusual group.

These fossils are not red-lipped batfish, nor are they necessarily their direct ancestors. Instead, they help document the early history of the broader anglerfish lineage.

The batfish family itself has a much patchier fossil record, making the precise history of its distinctive walking adaptations difficult to reconstruct.

This is one of the challenges palaeontologists face when studying animals that live in marine environments where fossil preservation can be rare or incomplete.

An absence of fossils does not mean an animal's ancestors were absent. It means we have not yet found the evidence to tell their complete story.

And somewhere in the rocks, there may still be an extraordinary fossil batfish waiting to be discovered.

Preferably with its lipstick intact.

FIVE MORE REASONS TO LOVE THIS PECULIAR FISH

1. It is named for Darwin. Its scientific name, Ogcocephalus darwini, honours Charles Darwin, whose observations in the Galápagos helped shape our understanding of evolution. Darwin did not, however, personally name this fish.

2. Its walking fins are still fins. Those remarkable appendages are modified versions of the paired fins found in other fishes, not the same kind of limbs that allow mammals and reptiles to walk on land.

3. It has a built-in fishing apparatus. Its lure is part of a modified dorsal fin, a wonderful example of how evolution can repurpose existing anatomical structures.

4. It is not the only batfish with a memorable face. Other members of the batfish family have flattened, angular bodies and expressions that range from mildly surprised to thoroughly unimpressed.

5. It reminds us that evolution doesn't work towards a single ideal body shape. Natural selection favours traits that help organisms survive and reproduce in their environments. Sometimes that produces a swift, streamlined swimmer. Sometimes it produces a bottom-dwelling fish with a fishing rod on its head and bright red lips.

A FINAL KISS FROM DEEP TIME

The red-lipped batfish reminds us that the natural world is infinitely more inventive than we could ever imagine.

Here is a fish that has traded elegant swimming for an awkward stroll, developed its own fishing equipment and acquired a face that looks ready for the red carpet.

Its broader evolutionary family stretches back at least to the Eocene fossil record, connecting this extraordinary modern animal with ancient marine ecosystems and millions of years of evolutionary experimentation.

And while we have yet to uncover a convincing fossil record of the red-lipped batfish itself, its living relatives and ancient cousins offer tantalising clues to a much older story.

For me, that is one of the great joys of palaeontology.

Every living creature carries an evolutionary history, whether we can see that history in the rocks or not.

Some of those stories involve mighty dinosaurs, enormous marine reptiles and towering prehistoric forests.

And some involve a little fish wandering around the Pacific seafloor looking as though it has just been stood up on a first date.

Keep exploring, fossil friends.

The ancient world — and its wonderfully strange living descendants — never cease to surprise us.

CRINOIDS: ANCIENT SEA LILIES

Picture a meadow beneath an ancient sea. Slender stalks rise from the bottom, each carrying a delicate crown of branching arms. The current moves through them, bringing a steady supply of drifting food.

At first glance, you might mistake them for flowers.

These beautiful creatures are crinoids, often called sea lilies. Despite their botanical appearance, they are animals—marine relatives of sea stars, brittle stars, sea urchins and sea cucumbers.

Their fossils preserve something wonderful: the remains of an underwater garden whose “flowers” were feeding.

A FLOWER WITH FEEDING ARMS

A typical stalked crinoid has a surprisingly elegant body plan.

At its base, an attachment structure anchors the animal. Above it rises a flexible column supporting a small, plated cup called the calyx. Branching arms spread from the top, forming the feeding crown.

The stalk lifts those arms into passing currents. Different species grow to different heights, allowing neighbouring animals to gather food at different levels above the seabed.

In dense communities, their crowns create a layered underwater landscape, with smaller creatures living among and beneath them.

This is a garden sustained by moving water.

HOW DOES A SEA LILY EAT?

A crinoid’s feathery arms are food collectors.

Tiny tube feet along the arms capture suspended particles. These morsels pass into food grooves and travel towards the mouth, which faces upwards within the crown.

The current delivers dinner.

Branching arms and their smaller side branches increase the collecting area, creating an intricate living filter. What looks like a delicate ornament is a remarkably effective feeding system.

LITTLE STONE BEADS

You are much more likely to encounter a piece of crinoid stem than a complete animal.

The skeleton consists of many calcite plates. In the stalk, these plates are stacked together like a column of tiny discs. Each stem segment is called a columnal.

After death, the tissues holding the skeleton together decay. Arms scatter, stems separate and the animal comes apart into a multitude of pieces.

Look closely at fossil-bearing limestone and you may notice small circles, rings or stars. Some resemble miniature washers. Others remain joined in short stacks.

These are fragments of animals that once stood above the seafloor.

Their abundance can be extraordinary. In some deposits, crinoid debris forms a substantial part of the limestone itself.

A complete fossil, with its crown and stem still connected, records a much rarer event: burial before that delicate skeleton could fall apart.

VANCOUVER ISLAND’S ANCIENT UNDERWATER MEADOWS

One of the loveliest places to imagine this vanished world is high in the mountains of Vancouver Island.

At Marble Meadows in Strathcona Provincial Park, limestone of the Buttle Lake Group preserves evidence of ancient marine communities.

During the Permian Period, long before these rocks became part of a mountain landscape, carbonate sediments accumulated on a shallow submarine platform. Crinoids lived alongside brachiopods, bryozoans and corals.

Their broken skeletons contributed to the limestone we see today.

The contrast is delicious: alpine meadows above, the remains of marine meadows below.

What is now rock beneath mountain air once lay beneath seawater. Subsequent geological movement and uplift, followed by erosion, brought that ancient seabed into view.

The fossils belong to the park’s natural heritage. Photograph them, enjoy their details and leave them in place for the next curious visitor.

SEA LILIES ARE STILL WITH US

Crinoids survived far beyond the ancient seas preserved in limestone.

Living members include stalked sea lilies and feather stars, whose adults lack a long stalk. Some feather stars can crawl or swim using their arms.

Watching one move is a lovely way to undo the illusion that these creatures are plants.

Modern crinoids also help palaeontologists interpret their fossil relatives. Their feeding, movement and anatomy offer clues to lives recorded only in stone.

WITCHES’ FINGERS: THE FOSSILS THAT FELL FROM THE SKY

For some of us, our very first fossil found in the field was a belemnite. Smooth, elongated and rather pleasing to the eye and to hold, these little treasures have a way of turning a casual beach walk into a lifelong fascination.

For Dallin Young, that first find started his fossil obsession—and I know exactly how he feels!

Imagine picking one up without knowing what it was. A slender stone finger. A pointed dart. Something curious enough to slip into your pocket and carry home.

Long before palaeontology offered an explanation, finds like these inspired some wonderfully imaginative stories.

In parts of Europe, belemnites became known as witches’ fingers, devil’s fingers and thunderbolts. Some people believed they had fallen from the sky during thunderstorms. Others kept them as charms, hoping a stone thunderbolt might protect their home from lightning.

With Halloween approaching, these curious fossils deserve a moment in the candlelight.

Their real story takes us beneath an ancient sea.

MEET THE BELEMNITE

Belemnites were squid-like marine animals belonging to the cephalopods, the group that includes living squid, octopuses, cuttlefish and nautiluses.

Picture a streamlined swimmer moving through seawater, eyes watching for movement and arms reaching towards a meal.

Inside its body was a supporting shell with several distinct parts: a tongue-shaped extension called the pro-ostracum, a chambered cone called the phragmocone, and the solid, pointed guard, or rostrum, towards the rear.

That last piece is the familiar fossil many of us recognise.

Squid also have an internal supporting structure, but the dense guards of belemnites gave these ancient animals something particularly durable to leave behind.

WHY DO WE FIND SO MANY LITTLE “BULLETS”?

After a belemnite died, its softer, squishy parts were often scavenged or decayed before they could become fossils. The solid guard had a much better chance of surviving burial.

This helps explain why a complete belemnite is an exceptional discovery, while isolated guards are common in some Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks.

Each little dart represents part of an animal that lived in a vanished marine world, preserved in sediments that eventually became stone.

It is rather lovely to think that something so small can carry an entire sea into your hand.

A WORLD OF FIRST FINDS

One of my favourite things about sharing fossils is hearing where you have found yours.

When I previously wrote about belemnites, readers brought together a wonderful little map of discoveries.

Arno Martini shared finds from northern California, while Anne Glenn finds them in Wyoming. Georg Laki has collected them from Early Jurassic rocks at Gasperich in southern Luxembourg, and Scott Carpenter and his daughter collect them along the Jurassic Coast.

Juanjo Ugalde Robledo finds them in La Rioja, Spain, and Gabriel Santos collects them in Peniche, Portugal. Rossi Franco spotted one embedded in building material at the Bank of Italy in Genoa—a lovely reminder that fossil discoveries sometimes happen in the middle of a city.

Here in British Columbia, Lloyd Rempel and I have found them too, including at Harrison Lake.

Different places, different ancient seas, and that same small thrill of recognition: there you are!

HOW TO RECOGNISE ONE

Look for an elongated fossil that tapers towards a point. Many resemble a bullet or dart, though their shapes vary between different kinds of belemnite.

A broken specimen may reveal calcite arranged in a radiating pattern. At the broader end, some specimens preserve a conical cavity that once held the chambered phragmocone.

Colour alone will not identify one. Their shades vary with preservation and the surrounding rock.

And despite their tooth-like appearance, these fossils are pieces of an internal shell.

FROM THUNDERBOLTS TO ANCIENT SEAS

There is something deeply human about finding an unfamiliar object and reaching for a story that might explain it. A pointed fossil becomes a witch’s finger. A stone uncovered after rain becomes a thunderbolt. Something strange and beautiful becomes a charm to keep close.

Today, we can recognise the animal behind the folklore while still enjoying the wonder that inspired those earlier explanations.

The next time you spot a little stone dart among the pebbles, pause for a closer look. You may be looking at the remains of a swimmer from the age of dinosaurs—or the beginning of your very own fossil obsession.

Was a belemnite your first fossil find? I would love to hear where you found it.

AMMONITE QUESTIONS ANSWERED: SHELLS, SPIRALS AND ANCIENT TIMEKEEPERS

A spiral in stone can stop you in your tracks. Follow its curve and the questions arrive almost immediately. What lived inside? Why the ribs? And how can a shell tell us anything about the age of a rock?

Ammonites reward that curiosity. Their fossils preserve clues to ancient animals, vanished oceans and the passage of geological time. 

Here are ten questions to start your exploration, with a few favourite Fossil Huntress stories along the way.

WHAT WAS AN AMMONITE?

Imagine a sea animal with a soft body, arms around its mouth and a shell it carried wherever it went. That was an ammonite! 

Many ammonites had a shell curled into a spiral, a little like a tightly rolled garden hose. Some shells had ridges or spines, while others were much smoother.

Ammonites were relatives of today’s squid, octopuses and cuttlefish. These animals belong to a group called cephalopods. Ammonites are extinct, which means none are alive today. We learn about them by studying their fossils.

Inside the shell was a row of little spaces called chambers. Think of rooms separated by thin walls. The ammonite’s soft body lived in the largest room, near the shell’s opening. As it grew, it added a bigger room and closed off the old one behind it.

The older chambers held gas and some liquid. Together, they helped the ammonite stay afloat in the sea instead of sinking to the bottom. Scientists call this buoyancy. Its shell was both a protective home and part of its floating equipment!

For a look inside, visit Ammonites: Chambered Beauty, now illustrated with examples of chambered shells and different coiling patterns.

CAN I MEET A LIVING AMMONITE?

Only in your imagination. Ammonites are extinct, with most disappearing during the mass extinction about 66 million years ago. The fossil shell in your hand is evidence of an animal whose world has gone.

IS A NAUTILUS AN AMMONITE THAT SURVIVED?

A tempting thought, but no. A living nautilus also has a chambered shell, yet it belongs to a different cephalopod lineage. Similar shells do not make the animals interchangeable.

Meet these living shelled cephalopods in Nautilus: Nautilidae.

HOW CAN I TELL WHETHER A FOSSIL IS AN AMMONITE?

Begin by observing rather than naming. Look for the overall shell shape, ribs or other ornament, visible chambers and suture lines. Examine both sides and the edge when possible. Record its size and what is known about the rocks it came from.

A spiral is a clue, not a verdict. Other shells and natural forms can resemble ammonites, and incomplete fossils may need a specialist’s eye. Compare the examples in Chambered Beauty before settling on an identification.

WHY DO SOME AMMONITES LOOK LIKE HOOKS OR KNOTS?

The familiar flat spiral was only one possibility. Heteromorph ammonites developed open coils, hooks, helical forms and extraordinary bends. These were characteristic growth patterns, rather than shells that accidentally went wrong.

Explore Heteromorph Ammonites, then meet the wonderfully tangled Nipponites mirabilis. Research into its buoyancy and balance offers a glimpse of how such an unlikely-looking shell might have worked in the water.

WHAT ARE THOSE LACY PATTERNS?

Some fossils reveal lines that resemble branching rivers or finely cut leaves. These are sutures, marking where the internal walls between chambers met the outer shell wall. They are different from the raised ribs on the outside of the shell.

Those delicate-looking lines trace a three-dimensional structure inside the shell. The chamber walls, called septa, were folded where they joined the outer wall. One long-standing idea is that these folds acted like internal bracing, helping the shell resist the surrounding water pressure, which increases with depth.

But more elaborate lace did not necessarily mean a stronger shell or a deeper-diving ammonite. Mechanical studies have produced mixed results: extra folding can reduce stress in the outer shell wall while increasing stress in the septa themselves. The relationship between sutures, shell strength and living depth remains debated—a beautiful pattern with a scientific mystery still tucked inside. For a closer look at the evidence, see research on ammonite septa and water pressure.

Their patterns vary among ammonites and help palaeontologists distinguish groups. Explore the detail in Sutures, Ridges and Lobes.

HOW CAN AN AMMONITE HELP DATE A ROCK?

Some ammonite species were widespread but existed for comparatively short intervals of geological time. Recognising them can help scientists correlate rock layers in different places and establish their relative ages. This use of fossils is called biostratigraphy.

The fossil does not carry an exact numerical date. Its identity is one piece of evidence considered alongside the surrounding geology. Read more in Ammonite Time Keepers: Index Fossils.

HOW BIG COULD AN AMMONITE GROW?

Ammonites came in an amazing range of sizes. Some were smaller than a coin. Others grew shells wider than a bicycle wheel! A famous giant called Parapuzosia seppenradensis, found in Germany, preserves a shell about 1.74 metres across—roughly the height of an adult. Even that huge fossil is incomplete.

Size alone does not tell us an ammonite’s age. Different species grew to different sizes, and a small fossil might be a youngster or a fully grown member of a small species.

Meet a Canadian giant in The Giant Fossil Ammonite of Fernie. Can you imagine a spiral that big?

WHAT DID AMMONITES EAT—AND WHAT ATE THEM?

Not every ammonite had the same menu. Some ate tiny animals drifting in the water, called plankton. Scientists have found the remains of tiny crustaceans and a baby sea snail near the mouthparts of a fossil Baculites, a straight-shelled ammonite. That is a wonderful clue to an ancient meal!

Other ammonites may have eaten larger prey or scavenged food. Their diets probably varied, and scientists study their jaws and rare food remains to work out what they ate.

Ammonites could become someone else’s dinner, too. Marine reptiles, including some mosasaurs and ichthyosaurs, ate them. Their shells offered protection, but could not keep every hungry hunter away.

Meet one of those ocean hunters in Mosasaur of Vancouver Island, or explore the research into an ammonite’s last meal.

HOW DOES AN AMMONITE BECOME A FOSSIL?

Imagine an empty ammonite shell settling onto the sea floor. Mud or sand buries it. Burial can help protect it from being broken apart, although most shells never become fossils.

Over a very long time, the sediment around the shell can harden into rock. Sometimes parts of the original shell survive. Sometimes minerals replace the shell. In other cases, the shell dissolves but leaves its shape behind. Sediment or minerals filling the inside can form a cast—like a model of the space inside the shell.

Later, erosion can wear away the surrounding rock and reveal the fossil. Some ammonites are preserved inside rounded lumps of cemented sediment called concretions. Discover these natural time capsules in Ammonites in Concretion.

KEEP THE QUESTIONS COMING

Ready for a little fossil detective work? Pick an ammonite photograph, trace its spiral with your finger and sketch what catches your eye. Ribs? Spines? Lacy lines? Gather your clues before giving your fossil a name. Every good mystery begins with a closer look—and one more question!

Have a question you'd like answered? Drop me a message over on Facebook or in the contact form at www.fossilhuntress.com. 

For the permanent FAQ, photographs and a collection of related stories, bookmark Ammonites: A Guide to Ancient Oceans.

IS MEGALODON STILL ALIVE? 10 BIG QUESTIONS ABOUT THE BIGGEST SHARK

No—megalodon is extinct. Can you imagine swimming in the ocean if they were still lurking around? Terrifying!

The fossil evidence places its disappearance around 3.6 million years ago. There is no credible scientific evidence that it survives in today’s oceans. 

Part of me is sad for that, but as I sometimes venture below the waves to scuba dive, I am really, really grateful!

But the real animal is every bit as fascinating as the imagined sea monster. With enormous teeth and an appetite to match, this ancient shark left us clues to a remarkable life beneath the waves.

How big did it grow? What did it eat? And how can scientists piece together its story from fossils? Let’s sink our teeth into ten big questions about the biggest shark that ever lived.

1. WHAT WAS MEGALODON?

Otodus megalodon was an enormous predatory shark that lived millions of years ago. Its name means “big tooth”—and one look at a fossil tooth explains why.

It belonged to an extinct group called the megatooth sharks. The image here will give you a sense of the scale of this massive fellow. If you think Great White Sharks are scary, this is the one they would be scared of!

Terrifying and mysterious as it is an animal known to us mainly through the hard clues it left behind, rather than a complete skeleton waiting neatly in a museum drawer.

2. HOW BIG COULD MEGALODON GROW?

Very big—but the exact maximum is still debated. Earlier studies commonly estimated the largest individuals at roughly 15–20 metres long. A 2025 study proposed a possible maximum of about 24.3 metres, using fossil vertebrae and comparisons with other sharks.

These are reconstructions, not measurements of a complete animal. They depend on assumptions about the missing head, trunk and tail. The larger estimate is a working hypothesis, not a settled length for every megalodon.

Either way, imagine a shark stretching well beyond the length of a school bus. Then imagine trying to work out its full shape from only a few pieces of the puzzle.

3. HOW BIG WERE ITS TEETH?

Some megalodon teeth exceed 15 centimetres in height. That is a remarkable object to picture beside the much smaller tooth of a great white shark.

Look closely at a tooth and you can see a broad root, a pointed crown and, where preserved, fine serrations along the cutting edges. 

Different positions in the mouth produced different tooth shapes and sizes. One loose tooth is therefore not a simple ruler for the whole shark.

Try this: sketch the outline of each tooth in a comparison photograph. Where is the biggest difference—the root, the crown, or both?

4. WHAT DID MEGALODON EAT?

Marine mammals, including whales, were part of its menu. Fossil bite marks and the chemistry preserved in teeth help researchers investigate its place in ancient ocean food webs.

In one study, scientists analysed zinc isotopes—different forms of the same element—in fossil tooth tissue. Their results suggest that some megalodon and early great white populations occupied similar positions high in the food web.

That does not mean every individual ate the same meals. It gives us evidence about feeding patterns that would otherwise be very difficult to recover.

5. WHERE DID MEGALODON LIVE?

Its fossils occur in ancient marine deposits around the world. This was an ocean-going shark with a wide distribution, rather than an animal confined to one small corner of the sea.

A fossil tooth found on land today can record a place once covered by seawater. The landscape may have changed enormously since the shark lost its tooth.

6. DID MEGALODON LIVE ALONGSIDE DINOSAURS?

Not dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex or Triceratops. Those non-avian dinosaurs disappeared about 66 million years ago, long before megalodon appeared.

Birds are living dinosaurs, so there is a little scientific twist to the answer. But a meeting between megalodon and T. rex belongs in imagination, not the fossil record.

7. WAS IT A GIANT GREAT WHITE SHARK?

No. Megalodon and the great white belonged to different shark families. Similar-looking teeth once encouraged a closer connection, but megalodon is placed in the extinct family Otodontidae.

Nor can we assume that its entire body was simply a great white enlarged. Research into its proportions suggests it may have been more slender than that familiar reconstruction. Its precise appearance remains an active scientific question.

8. WHY DO WE FIND TEETH MORE OFTEN THAN SKELETONS?

Sharks replace teeth throughout their lives, leaving many opportunities for a lost tooth to be buried and preserved.

Their skeletons are made mainly of cartilage rather than bone. Cartilage generally preserves less readily than the hard tissues of teeth. Fossil vertebrae and other skeletal remains do exist, but complete megalodon skeletons have not been found.

That imbalance explains why a single tooth can be such an important window into an enormous animal.

9. WHY DID MEGALODON BECOME EXTINCT?

Scientists are still investigating the combination of pressures involved. Changes in ocean environments, prey availability and competition with other predators are among the proposed factors.

The dietary overlap suggested by zinc-isotope research makes competition with great white sharks one possibility. It does not prove that great whites alone caused megalodon’s extinction. An animal’s disappearance can have several interacting causes.

10. COULD IT STILL BE HIDING IN THE DEEP OCEAN?

There is no credible evidence for that. The ocean contains many discoveries still to be made, but unexplored water is not evidence that an extinct species survives.

The case for extinction comes from examining the ages and reliability of fossil occurrences. A giant living shark would require positive evidence—not simply the possibility of a place to hide.

The real mystery is how megalodon lived, grew and responded to a changing ocean. Fossils give us a way to investigate those questions.

YOUR TURN: READ A TOOTH LIKE A FOSSIL DETECTIVE

Choose a clear tooth photograph. Find the root, follow the crown towards its tip and look for the serrated edges. What is preserved? What is worn or missing? Which observations can you make confidently, and which questions need more evidence?

A tooth cannot tell us everything. But it can open the door to an entire vanished ocean.

Explore another Fossil Huntress story in Megalodon: Apex Predator of the Deep, or practise recording fossil observations with the ammonite guide.

READ THE RESEARCH

• Shimada and colleagues (2025): Megalodon’s possible size, shape and biology. The authors explicitly present their reconstructions as working hypotheses.
• Boessenecker and colleagues (2019): The Early Pliocene extinction of Otodus megalodon.
• McCormack and colleagues (2022): Megalodon and great white shark feeding ecology revealed by zinc isotopes.
• Natural History Museum: Is megalodon still alive? and the largest shark that ever lived.

Lead Image credit: Teeth of prehistoric Megalodon shark with the teeth of his ancestors: Otodus and Carcharocles chubutensis shark. Illustration of the evolution of Megalodon. Photograph by serg_bimbirekov / Asset ID: 1267601491.

NIPPONITES: THE AMMONITE THAT TIED ITSELF IN KNOTS

Nipponites mirabilis photo by Masahiro Miyasaka

Of all the unlikely body plans, Nipponites take the cake! Just look at the twists and turns in these great photos captured by Masahiro Miyasaka. 

Imagine slipping beneath the surface of a Cretaceous sea. Above you, sunlight breaks into shifting ribbons. 

Tiny particles drift through the water, catching the light before disappearing into blue.

For our imagined encounter, we are travelling to the ancient seas of what is now Japan. Somewhere ahead, a small shape comes into view.

At first, it looks like a piece of tangled cord.

Then you notice the ribs along its surface. The looping curves. The extraordinary shell that seems to have doubled back on itself after forgetting where it was going.

Meet Nipponites mirabilis, an ammonite with a shell resembling a ball of wool after a kitten has finished with it.

If you have ever struggled to untangle a necklace, you may feel an immediate connection.

Most of us picture an ammonite as a handsome spiral: a shell curling neatly around itself, each successive whorl following the last. 

An Ammonite Beyond the Familiar Spiral

Nipponites mirabilis photo by Masahiro Miyasaka

Nipponites takes that familiar outline and sends it wandering through three dimensions.

Ammonites were marine molluscs belonging to the cephalopods, the broader group that includes living squid, octopuses, cuttlefish and nautiluses. 

Their chambered shells helped them remain buoyant. The animal occupied the outer living chamber, adding to its shell as it grew.

Some ammonites developed shells that departed dramatically from the familiar flat spiral. These are called heteromorphs. Among them, Nipponites is particularly good at making people stop, lean closer and say, “Surely that cannot be right.”

Yet there it is.

Its shell raises a delicious palaeontological puzzle. How could an animal carrying something so apparently awkward stay balanced in the water?

As you might have guessed, some very good folk decided to try and answer that question. 

Modelling Buoyancy and Balance

In a study published in 2020, David J. Peterman, Tomoyuki Mikami and Shinya Inoue investigated Nipponites mirabilis using digital reconstructions. Their models examined 14 stages of growth, allowing them to explore how the animal’s balance changed as its shell developed.

The results suggested that it could achieve neutral buoyancy throughout each stage. In other words, its shell need not have condemned it to life on the seabed.

N. mirabilis (left); Ainoceras kamuy (right)

The modelling also suggested a fascinating possibility: its unusual form could have helped it turn around a vertical axis. 

The researchers proposed a relatively low-energy lifestyle, slowly rotating while searching for planktonic prey.

Picture that for a moment.

A little living sculpture, suspended in seawater, gently turning as the surrounding ocean carries potential meals within reach, rather like a rolling buffet. Our imagined animal has become rather more graceful.

There is another surprise hidden in those bends. Nipponites began with a more conventional open coil before developing alternating U-shaped turns. Its growth followed a recognisable pattern. The apparent jumble had underlying order.

What Remains Unknown?

Of course, a model cannot show us an actual feeding animal. The proposed pirouetting lifestyle remains an interpretation, and many details of its behaviour are unknown.

That uncertainty is part of the pleasure.

Look again at the fossil. Follow a curve with your eyes. Watch it turn away from you, return and disappear behind another loop. Then imagine water filling the spaces between those bends.

What seemed cumbersome in a display case becomes a question about movement. What looked like a tangle becomes a record of growth.

Fancy reading their paper? You can find more here:

Peterman, D. J., Mikami, T. and Inoue, S. (2020). The balancing act of Nipponites mirabilis (Nostoceratidae, Ammonoidea): Managing hydrostatics throughout a complex ontogeny. PLOS ONE, 15(8), e0235180.

Explore more ammonites in the Fossil Huntress Guide to Ancient Oceans.

Explore more unusual shell forms in Heteromorph Ammonites.

THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZA: FOSSILS IN STONE

Built to endure the tests of time, the pyramids of Giza stand as some of the oldest and last remaining wonders of the ancient world. 

Rising from the desert sands of Egypt’s Giza Plateau, these monuments were constructed from a masterful blend of limestone, granite, basalt, gypsum mortar, and baked mud bricks—materials quarried both locally and from distant sites along the Nile, including the red granite of Aswan.

Their smooth, once-glimmering exteriors were clad in fine-grained white limestone quarried from Tura, just across the river. This stone was prized in antiquity for its purity and brilliant color, chosen for the facing stones of Egypt’s wealthiest tombs. 

But beyond its beauty lies a story much older than any pharaoh. The Tura limestone is made almost entirely of the fossilized shells of Nummulites—single-celled marine organisms whose remains whisper of Egypt’s ancient seas.

First described by Lamarck in 1801, Nummulites are large foraminifera—amoeba-like protists with calcareous, chambered shells (or “tests”). In life, they resembled tiny white discs, their interiors patterned like concentric rings of a sliced tree or the cross-section of a shell. 

During the early Cenozoic, millions of these creatures thrived in the warm, shallow waters of the Tethys Sea. When they died, their calcium carbonate shells settled to the seafloor, accumulating over millennia. Layer upon layer, they were compacted and cemented by time and pressure into limestone—the same rock later quarried to build the tombs of kings.

Nummulites Foraminifera Fossil

It is astonishing to imagine that the Great Pyramid of Khufu (or Cheops), the largest and oldest of the Giza pyramids, built during Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty around 2560 BCE, is composed largely of the fossilized remains of microscopic life forms that lived some 50 million years earlier. 

The pyramid itself—a monument to human ambition—is, quite literally, built from the remains of ancient seas.

Nummulites are commonly found in Eocene to Miocene marine rocks across southwest Asia and the Mediterranean region, including the fossil-rich Eocene limestones of Egypt. In life, they ranged in size from a mere 1.3 cm (0.5 inches) to an impressive 5 cm (2 inches), and in some Middle Eocene species, up to six inches across—astonishingly large for single-celled organisms. 

Their size reflects an evolutionary adaptation: by expanding their surface area, they enhanced diffusion, allowing for more efficient nutrient exchange across the cell membrane. Many also harbored symbiotic algae, much like modern reef-dwelling foraminifera, further fueling their growth through photosynthesis.

Nummulites Foraminifera Fossil

These fossils, once the inhabitants of the ancient Tethys, later became both material and metaphor for Egyptian civilization. Nummulite shells were sometimes used as coins, and their very name—derived from the Latin nummulus, meaning “little coin”—speaks to this connection between life, economy, and art.

The Great Pyramid’s inner chambers tell a different geological story. The central burial chamber housing the pharaoh’s sarcophagus was constructed from massive blocks of reddish-pink granite transported from Aswan, nearly 900 kilometers upriver. This stone, denser and stronger than limestone, helped support the immense weight of the pyramid’s structure.

In 2013, archaeologists made a discovery that breathed life back into these ancient logistics: a 4,600-year-old papyrus scroll found in a cave some 700 kilometers from Giza. 

The document—addressed to Ankh-haf, half-brother of Pharaoh Khufu—records the journey of a 200-man crew tasked with transporting limestone from the Tura quarries to the Giza Plateau. After loading the stone blocks onto boats, the workers sailed down the Nile, where as many as 100,000 laborers waited to haul the two- to three-ton blocks up earthen ramps toward the construction site. It is a rare and poetic glimpse into one of humanity’s most ambitious building projects—and into the transformation of fossil limestone into enduring architecture.

Even in antiquity, the project stirred strong opinions. Writing centuries later, the Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt and chronicled Khufu’s reign in his Histories. He described Khufu as a cruel tyrant who closed temples, oppressed his people, and forced them into servitude. According to Herodotus, 100,000 men labored in three-month rotations to quarry and transport the stone, while another decade was spent constructing the grand causeway leading to the pyramid—a feat of engineering almost as impressive as the monument itself.

Modern estimates suggest that 5.5 million tonnes of nummulitic limestone, 8,000 tonnes of granite, and 500,000 tonnes of gypsum mortar were used to complete the Great Pyramid. Whether viewed as an act of divine devotion, human hubris, or cruel genius, its creation also represents one of the largest—and most extraordinary—paleontological extractions in history.

For within its weathered stones, the fossils of an ancient sea still rest, silent witnesses to both deep time and the enduring reach of human imagination.

ANTLERS, ANCESTORS AND A CERTAIN MUSKY MAJESTY: ELK

The elk you see here, Cervus canadensis, belongs to a lineage stretching deep into the Pleistocene—a time when ice sheets advanced and retreated across much of North America, reshaping landscapes and every living thing within them.

Elk are members of the family Cervidae, a group that first appeared in the fossil record during the Early Miocene, roughly 20 million years ago. 

These early deer were generally small, forest-dwelling creatures whose simple antlers bore little resemblance to the magnificent branching crowns carried by their modern kin.

By the Late Miocene and into the Pliocene, cervids had begun to diversify in both form and habitat. 

As forests shifted and grasslands expanded, deer evolved longer limbs, new feeding strategies and increasingly elaborate antlers—those extraordinary seasonal crowns of bone used for display, intimidation and, when diplomacy fails, combat.

The genus Cervus, which includes modern elk, appeared later in Eurasia. Its descendants eventually spread into North America through Beringia, the land bridge that connected Siberia and Alaska during periods of lower sea level in the Pleistocene.

Once here, elk flourished.

Roosevelt elk, Cervus canadensis roosevelti

Pleistocene deposits across North America—from the tar seeps of Rancho La Brea in California (so worth a visit) to river gravels, caves and northern permafrost—preserve elk bones alongside an astonishing Ice Age cast: mammoths, mastodons, ancient bison, dire wolves, sabre-toothed cats and short-faced bears.

It was a formidable neighbourhood, yet elk held their own. 

As adaptable grazers and browsers, they could feed on grasses, sedges, leaves, twigs, bark and shrubs, allowing them to navigate shifting climates and rapidly changing ecosystems.

Here on Vancouver Island, the elk we encounter are Roosevelt elk, Cervus canadensis roosevelti—the largest-bodied of North America’s living elk subspecies.

And they are magnificent.

Big, breathtaking and completely at home in the rainforest, they emerge from the trees to browse in clearings, drink along the shores of Cowichan Lake and, with alarming regularity, appear beside island roadways looking as though they have somewhere important to be.

Elk Enjoying Nature's Salad Bar

Older scientific literature may list them as Cervus elaphus roosevelti, reflecting the long-running debate over whether North American elk should be classified with Eurasian red deer. 

Today, they are generally recognized as a subspecies of the distinct North American elk, Cervus canadensis.

Roosevelt elk are native to the wet coastal forests extending from northern California through Oregon and Washington into southwestern British Columbia. 

In Canada, their great natural stronghold is Vancouver Island, with smaller populations now living along portions of the southwest mainland coast. 

Several of those mainland herds descend from animals moved from Vancouver Island as part of successful restoration efforts.

Their ancestors reached Vancouver Island following the last glaciation, entering newly available landscapes as the ice retreated and forests, river valleys, wetlands and coastal meadows developed. Over time, they became superbly adapted to life in the temperate rainforest.

Elk near Cowichan Lake. PM Photography

Unlike elk associated with the open grasslands and mountain valleys of the continental interior, Roosevelt elk often live beneath towering western redcedar, Douglas-fir, Sitka spruce and western hemlock. 

They favour low-elevation river valleys, estuaries, wetlands, forest openings and avalanche tracks where grasses, sedges, shrubs and tender young vegetation are plentiful.

Many herds move into higher country during summer, then descend into sheltered valleys as autumn storms and winter snow return. 

They are also regulars along Vancouver Island’s highways, where lush roadside vegetation apparently offers an irresistible salad bar. Unfortunately, their fondness for roadside dining sometimes ends very poorly—for elk and motorists alike. 

If you find yourself driving along Highway 18 (also known as the Cowichan Valley Highway) slow right down at any sign of movement along the roadside. 

April through June, look for wee fawns and the rest of the year, be prepared for a herd of Elk to emerge—especially within the vicinity of Youbou, British Columbia. Tis a favourite haunt of our Cervus locals.

Their dark coats seem almost made for the island’s rain-soaked forests. A mature bull can appear suddenly between the trees, his body blending into the shadows while his pale rump patch flashes through the undergrowth. He is massive, deep-chested and thick-necked, particularly during the autumn rut.

His antlers rise above the sword ferns like the branches of some highly mobile and faintly irritated tree.

To encounter one in the wild is unforgettable. The elk here have most definitely been enjoying the salad bar and look remarkably well nourished. They also appear wonderfully unconcerned by the human standing nearby, staring open-mouthed into the forest.

The woods may be dripping after rain, rich with the scents of cedar, wet earth and decaying leaves. Then comes the soft crack of a branch. A dark shape moves between the trunks, followed by another, until an entire herd materializes from the forest.

For a few moments, you simply stand and stare.

They are so perfectly at home they seem less like animals passing through the landscape than living pieces of the landscape itself. Their breath hangs in the cool air. Hooves press deeply into the saturated soil. Cows murmur softly to their calves while bulls watch from the edge of the herd, carrying an astonishing architecture of bone upon their heads.

And then the breeze turns.

Roosevelt elk possess the same earthy, musky scent as their continental relatives, enhanced during the rut by wallowing, urine-soaked vegetation and the general romantic conviction that smelling respectable is wildly overrated. The result is a potent mixture of wet hide, mud, fermented vegetation and eau de amorous ungulate.

It is not exactly Chanel No. 5, but the cows appear to approve.

On Vancouver Island, Roosevelt elk share the landscape with Columbian black-tailed deer, black bears, cougars and wolves that are more than capable of hunting them. Elk also help shape the ecosystems around them. Their grazing and browsing influence plant communities, while their movements open pathways, disperse seeds and carry nutrients through forests, wetlands and river valleys.

They are residents of these ecosystems and active participants in them.

Although elk survived the great wave of extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene, Roosevelt elk have faced more recent pressures from intensive hunting, expanding settlement, road traffic and the loss and fragmentation of low-elevation habitat.

Their Vancouver Island populations are therefore particularly important. They represent both a distinctive coastal form of elk and a living continuation of the great cervid migrations that followed the retreating Ice Age.

When a Roosevelt bull bugles through a misty Vancouver Island valley, the sound seems to belong to another time. It rises through the rain and cedar branches—wild, strange and resonant—carrying with it an echo of the Pleistocene.

Magnificent, ancient and, dare I say, magnificently smelly.

NORELLRAPTOR: A FEATHERED DINOSAUR AND THE MANY PATHS TO FLIGHT

Norellraptor barsboldi

We are accustomed to imagining the Mesozoic through its giants: enormous herbivores shaking the ground and predators with teeth the size of bananas. 

Yet some of the most revealing discoveries arrive on a much smaller scale.

While I imagine it would go horribly wrong, I still cannot get over the charm of this cutie and the wonderfully disarming notion of a dinosaur small enough to hold in your arms.

Meet Norellraptor barsboldi, a newly described feathered dinosaur from northeastern China.

Its remarkably complete skeleton measures just 57 centimetres long—roughly the length of a small Common Raven, though with very different proportions—and parts of its plumage remain preserved alongside the bones.

Here is an animal whose delicate remains give us a peek at one of evolution’s most extraordinary achievements: flight.

Published in Nature Communications on 29 September 2026, the new research adds another branch to a story that grows more interesting with every feathered fossil.

The question is how different dinosaur lineages assembled the anatomical features associated with taking to the air.

Norellraptor belonged to the microraptorines, small predatory dinosaurs closely related to birds. 

Its fossil comes from the Lower Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation in Liaoning, China—a province celebrated for its jade carvings, which also holds extraordinary treasures in its fossil beds.

Members of this group are famous for an unusual arrangement: some carried long feathers on both their arms and legs, creating the possibility of several aerodynamic surfaces.

Try imagining that silhouette. A small dinosaur with feathered limbs and a long tail looks very different from the familiar outline of a sparrow. It invites an artist’s curiosity, but also a scientist’s questions.

How were those limbs positioned? What could the feathers do? How much can a flattened fossil tell us about an animal moving through three-dimensional space?

Those questions make the distinction between evidence and reconstruction especially valuable. Preserved feathers give us something tangible to study. Reconstructing how the whole animal moved requires further interpretation.

The research team examined both the skeleton and the microscopic structure of a forelimb bone. They tell us that this individual was at least three years old when it died. But how did they know? An excellent question. Fossils can preserve more than an outline; the tissues inside its bones can also hold clues to its growth.

The larger finding emerged when the team compared evolutionary changes in microraptorines with those in the bird lineage. 

Around 30 per cent of the anatomical features identified as evolutionary innovations in microraptorines also appeared independently along the bird branch. Crucially, the shared features emerged in different sequences.

Imagine finding two complicated machines with several similar components. Their resemblance alone cannot tell you whether they were assembled through the same process. You would also want to know when each component appeared and how it worked with the parts already present.

The study supports the interpretation that different evolutionary pressures helped shape flight-related adaptations in these closely related groups. Similarities between them need not all represent a single inherited package of aerial abilities.

It is an enticing result, though further fossils and evidence of bone growth will be needed to test how widely this pattern applies. Norellraptor contributes to the discussion rather than closing it.

That is part of what I love about palaeontology. Each discovery gives us another opportunity to replace a tidy picture with a richer one. Evolution has no obligation to follow the clean sequence we might choose for a museum wall. Its history is branching, and fossils allow us to examine those branches one extraordinary specimen at a time.

Personally, while I am excited by the fossil bones they found, it is the feathers that steal my heart. It will be very exciting to see what we learn from them.

A feathered fossil in stone and a bird outside the window belong to the same unfolding conversation. One helps us ask how aerial adaptations arose. The other lets us watch what one surviving branch can do.

There is a lovely way to carry this story into the present. Watch a crow settle onto a branch, a gull adjust its wings above the shoreline, or a small songbird disappear into the trees. Living birds are dinosaurs, carrying that deep evolutionary history into our everyday world.

Each makes the larger story wonderfully immediate.

LOVE LANGUAGE OF THE NORTH

Nunatsiarmiut Mother and Child, Baffin Island, Nunavut

Warm light bathes this lovely Nunatsiarmiut mother and child from Baffin Island, Nunavut. 

They speak Inuktitut, the mother tongue of the majority of the Nunatsiarmiut who call Baffin Island home. 

Baffin is the largest island in the Arctic Archipelago in the territory of Nunavut in Canada's far north—the chilliest region of Turtle Island. 

As part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Baffin Island is home to a constellation of remote Inuit communities each with a deep cultural connection to the land—Iqaluit, Pond Inlet, Pangnirtung, Clyde River, Arctic Bay, Kimmirut and Nanisivik. 

The ratio of Inuit to non-Inuit here is roughly three to one and perhaps the reason why the Inuktitut language has remained intact and serves as the mother tongue for more than 36,000 residents. Inuktitut has several subdialects—these, along with a myriad of other languages—are spoken across the north.  

If you look at the helpful visual below you begin to get a feel for the diversity of these many tongues. The languages vary by region. There is the Iñupiaq of the Inupiatun/Inupiat; Inuvialuktun of the Inuinnaqtun, Natsilingmiutut, Kivallirmiutut, Aivilingmiutut, Qikiqtaaluk Uannanganii and Siglitun. Kalaallisut is spoken by many Greenlandic peoples though, in northwest Greenland, Inuktun is the language of the Inughuit.

We use the word Inuktitut when referring to a specific dialect and inuktut when referring to all the dialects of Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun.

Northern Language Map (Click to Enlarge)

Should you travel to the serene glacier-capped wilds and rolling tundra of our far north, you will want to dress for the weather and learn a few of the basics to put your best mukluk shod feet forward. 

The word for hello or welcome in Inuktitut is Atelihai—pronounced ahh-tee-lee-hi. And thank you is nakurmiik, pronounced na-kur-MIIK.  

Perhaps my favourite Inuktitut expression is Naglingniq qaikautigijunnaqtuq maannakautigi, pronounced NAG-ling-niq QAI-kau-ti-gi-jun-naqtuq MAAN-na-KAU-ti-gi. This tongue-twister is well worth the linguistic challenge as it translates to love can travel anywhere in an instant. Indeed it can. 

So much of our Indigenous culture is passed through stories, so language takes on special meaning in that context. It is true for all societies but especially true for the Inuit. Stories help connect the past to the present and future. They teach how to behave in society, engage with the world and how to survive in the environment. They also help to create a sense of belonging. 

You have likely seen or heard the word Eskimo used in older books to refer to the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit or Yupik. This misnomer is a colonial term derived from the Montagnais or Innu word ayas̆kimew—netter of snowshoes. 

It is a bit like meeting a whole new group of people who happen to wear shoes and referring to them all as cobblers—not as a nickname, but as a legal term to describe populations from diverse communities disregarding the way each self-refer. 

Inukshuk / Inuksuk Marker Cairn

For those who identify as Inupiaq or Yupik, the preferred term is Inuit meaning people—though some lingering use of the term Eskimo lives on. The Inuit as a group are made up of many smaller groups. 

The Inuit of Greenland self-refer as Kalaallit or Greenlanders when speaking Kalaallisut. 

The Tunumiit of Tunu (east Greenland), speak Tunumiit oraasiat ("East Greenlandic"); and the Inughuit of north Greenland, speak Inuktun "Polar Eskimo."

The Inupiat of Alaska, or real people, use Yupik as the singular for real person and yuk to simply mean person.

When taken all together, Inuit is used to mean all the peoples in reference to the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit and Yupik. Inuit is the plural of inuk or person. 

You likely recognize this word from inuksuk or inukshuk, pronounced ih-nook-suuk — the human-shaped stone cairns built by the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, and other peoples of the Arctic regions of northern Canada, Greenland, and Alaska—as helpful reference markers for hunters and navigation. 

The word inuksuk means that which acts in the capacity of a human, combining inuk or person and suk, as a human substitute. 

A World of Confusion

You may be disappointed to learn that our northern friends do not live in igloos. I remember answering the phone as a child and the fellow calling was hoping to speak to my parents about some wonderful new invention perfect for use in an igloo. 

The call came while I was in the kitchen of our family home in Port Hardy. He was disappointed to hear that I was standing in a wooden house with the standard four walls to a room and a handy roof topping it off. 

I also had my own room with Scooby-Doo wallpaper, but he was having nothing of it.

"Well, what about your neighbours? Surely, a few of them live in igloos..." 

It seems that some atlases in circulation at the time, and certainly the one he was looking at, simply blanketed everything north of the 49th parallel in a snowy white. His clearly showed an igloo sitting proudly in the centre of the province.

Interestingly, I only learned this morning (thank you, Jen) that that type of playful map is called a Counter Map and can be used in delightful ways to draw the reader in to the mapping of a landscape, region, people or culture—often out of scale and with many wonderful images added to give you a beautiful sense of the people, plants, animals and topography of a place.

My cousin Shawn brought one such simplified book back from his elementary school in California. British Columbia had a nice image of a grizzly bear and a wee bit further up, a polar bear grinned smugly. 

British Columbia's beaver population would be sad to know that they did not inhabit the province though there were two chipper beavers with big bright smiles—one in Ontario and another gracing the province of Quebec. Further north, where folk do build igloos, their icy domes were curiously lacking. 

Igloos are used for winter hunting trips much the same way we use tents for camping. The Inuit do not have fifty words for snow—you can thank the ethnographer Franz Boas for that wee fabrication—but within the collective languages of the frozen north there are more than fifty words to describe it. And kisses are not nose-to-nose. To give a tender kiss or kunik to a loved one, you press your nose and upper lip to their forehead or cheek and rub gently. 

Fancy trying a wee bit of Inuktitut yourself? This link will bring you to a great place to start: https://inhabitmedia.com/inuitnipingit/

Inuit Language Map:  By Noahedits - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0. If you want to the image full size, head to this link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85587388