FOSSILS AND FIRST NATIONS HISTORY: NOOTKA

Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam

The rugged west coast of Vancouver Island offers spectacular views of a wild British Columbia. Here the seas heave along the shores slowly eroding the magnificent deposits that often contain fossils. 

Just off the shores of Vancouver Island, east of Gold River and south of Tahsis is the picturesque and remote Nootka Island.

This is the land of the proud and thriving Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations who have lived here always. 

Always is a long time, but we know from oral history and archaeological evidence that the Mowachaht and Muchalaht peoples lived here, along with many others, for many thousands of years — a time span much like always. 

While we know this area as Nootka Sound and the land we explore for fossils as Nootka Island, these names stem from a wee misunderstanding. 

Just four years after the 1774 visit by Spanish explorer Juan Pérez — and only a year before the Spanish established a military and fur trading post on the site of Yuquot — the Nuu-chah-nulth met the Englishman, James Cook.  

Captain Cook sailed to the village of Yuquot just west of Vancouver Island to a very warm welcome. He and his crew stayed on for a month of storytelling, trading and ship repairs. Friendly, but not familiar with the local language, he misunderstood the name for both the people and land to be Nootka. In actual fact, Nootka means, go around, go around. 

Two hundred years later, in 1978, the Nuu-chah-nulth chose the collective term Nuu-chah-nulth — nuučaan̓uł, meaning all along the mountains and sea or along the outside (of Vancouver Island) — to describe themselves. 

It is a term now used to describe several First Nations people living along western Vancouver Island, British Columbia. 

It is similar in a way to the use of the United Kingdom to refer to the lands of England, Scotland and Wales — though using United Kingdom-ers would be odd. Bless the Nuu-chah-nulth for their grace in choosing this collective name.  

An older term for this group of peoples was Aht, which means people in their language and is a component in all the names of their subgroups, and of some locations — Yuquot, Mowachaht, Kyuquot, Opitsaht. While collectively, they are the Nuu-chah-nulth, be interested in their more regional name should you meet them. 

But why does it matter? If you have ever mistakenly referred to someone from New Zealand as an Aussie or someone from Scotland as English, you have likely been schooled by an immediate — sometimes forceful, sometimes gracious — correction of your ways. The best answer to why it matters is because it matters.

Each of the subgroups of the Nuu-chah-nulth viewed their lands and seasonal migration within them (though not outside of them) from a viewpoint of inside and outside. Kla'a or outside is the term for their coastal environment and hilstis for their inside or inland environment.

It is to their kla'a that I was most keen to explore. Here, the lovely Late Eocene and Early Miocene exposures offer up fossil crab, mostly the species Raninid, along with fossil gastropods, bivalves, pine cones and spectacularly — a singular seed pod. These wonderfully preserved specimens are found in concretion along the foreshore where time and tide erode them out each year.

Five years after Spanish explorer Juan Pérez's first visit, the Spanish built and maintained a military post at Yuquot where they tore down the local houses to build their own structures and set up what would become a significant fur trade port for the Northwest Coast — with the local Chief Maquinna's blessing and his warriors acting as middlemen to other First Nations. 

Following reports of Cook's exploration British traders began to use the harbour of Nootka (Friendly Cove) as a base for a promising trade with China in sea-otter pelts but became embroiled with the Spanish who claimed (albeit erroneously) sovereignty over the Pacific Ocean. 

Dan Bowen searching an outcrop. Photo: John Fam

The ensuing Nootka Incident of 1790 nearly led to war between Britain and Spain (over lands neither could actually claim) but talk of war settled and the dispute was settled diplomatically. 

George Vancouver on his subsequent exploration in 1792 circumnavigated the island and charted much of the coastline. His meeting with the Spanish captain Bodega y Quadra at Nootka was friendly but did not accomplish the expected formal ceding of land by the Spanish to the British. 

It resulted however in his vain naming the island "Vancouver and Quadra." The Spanish captain's name was later dropped and given to the island on the east side of Discovery Strait. Again, another vain and unearned title that persists to this day.

Early settlement of the island was carried out mainly under the sponsorship of the Hudson's Bay Company whose lease from the Crown amounted to 7 shillings per year — that's roughly equal to £100.00 or $174 CDN today. Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, was founded in 1843 as Fort Victoria on the southern end of Vancouver Island by the Hudson's Bay Company's Chief Factor, Sir James Douglas. 

With Douglas's help, the Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Rupert on the north end of Vancouver Island in 1849. Both became centres of fur trade and trade between First Nations and solidified the Hudson's Bay Company's trading monopoly in the Pacific Northwest.

The settlement of Fort Victoria on the southern tip of Vancouver Island — handily south of the 49th parallel — greatly aided British negotiators to retain all of the islands when a line was finally set to mark the northern boundary of the United States with the signing of the Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846. Vancouver Island became a separate British colony in 1858. British Columbia, exclusive of the island, was made a colony in 1858 and in 1866 the two colonies were joined into one — becoming a province of Canada in 1871 with Victoria as the capital.

Dan Bowen, Chair of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS) did a truly splendid talk on the Fossils of Nootka Sound. With his permission, I have uploaded the talk to the ARCHEA YouTube Channel for all to enjoy. Do take a boo, he is a great presenter. Dan also graciously provided the photos you see here. The last of the photos you see here is from the August 2021 Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam, Vice-Chair, Vancouver Paleontological Society (VanPS).

Know Before You Go — Nootka Trail

The Nootka Trail passes through the traditional lands of the Mowachaht/Muchalat First Nations who have lived here since always. They share this area with humpback and Gray whales, orcas, seals, sea lions, black bears, wolves, cougars, eagles, ravens, sea birds, river otters, insects and the many colourful intertidal creatures that you'll want to photograph.

This is a remote West Coast wilderness experience. Getting to Nootka Island requires some planning as you'll need to take a seaplane or water taxi to reach the trailhead. The trail takes 4-8 days to cover the 37 km year-round hike. The peak season is July to September. Permits are not required for the hike. 

Access via: Air Nootka floatplane, water taxi, or MV Uchuck III

• Dan Bowen, VIPS on the Fossils of Nootka: https://youtu.be/rsewBFztxSY
• https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-james-douglas
• file:///C:/Users/tosca/Downloads/186162-Article%20Text-199217-1-10-20151106.pdf
• Nootka Trip Planning: https://mbguiding.ca/nootka-trail-nootka-island/#overview

NA GEH! OODLES OF FOSSILS IN VIENNA

There are museums that politely suggest you admire science from a respectful distance… and then there are places like Vienna’s Naturhistorisches Museum, which wraps you in dark polished wood, marble staircases, glass cabinets and enough deep-time wonder to make you forget what century you’re in.

When I work in Eastern Europe, I route through Vienna just to visit this lovely place.

The Natural History Museum in Vienna opened its doors in 1889, originally built to house the extraordinary collections of the Habsburg dynasty. 

Those collections were built over centuries by emperors, archdukes, scholars and enthusiastic royal collectors who apparently looked at the world and collectively decided, “Yes, we shall keep all the shiny things.” 

Their vast holdings included rare gemstones, exotic animal specimens, fossils, minerals, scientific instruments, archaeological treasures and meteorites gathered from across Europe and far beyond. 

Expeditions, trade networks and scientific exchanges fed the ever-growing imperial cabinets of curiosity. By the 18th and 19th centuries, the Habsburgs were assembling one of the most significant natural history collections in the world — equal parts science, prestige and unapologetic treasure hoarding. 

Thankfully for the rest of us curious raccoons disguised as adults, those treasures eventually became one of the world’s great natural history museums — a sprawling celebration of fossils, meteorites, minerals, evolution and the glorious weirdness of our planet.

And ohhh, the atmosphere.

Some museums feel sleek and modern, all chrome and touchscreens. Vienna feels like stepping into the study of a Victorian natural philosopher who perhaps owned twelve magnifying glasses and definitely had strong opinions about trilobites. 

The galleries glow warmly beneath ornate ceilings, the old wood display cases creak with history, and every cabinet seems to hold another marvel waiting quietly behind glass. It smells faintly of polished timber, old books and discovery.

You wander from hall to hall half expecting Charles Darwin to appear around a corner muttering, “Na geh!” because someone has mislabeled a brachiopod.

The fossil galleries are particularly lovely — packed with ancient beasts, delicate shells, Ice Age mammals and creatures that once swam through vanished seas long before the Alps rose skyward. 

There are towering dinosaur skeletons, marine reptiles, fossil fishes and beautifully preserved ammonites curled like ancient cosmic cinnamon buns. It is the sort of museum where you start by casually admiring one fossil and forty-five minutes later find yourself emotionally attached to a prehistoric sea urchin.

“Schau ma mal,” you tell yourself. Just a quick peek at one cabinet.

Three hours later you are still there squinting lovingly at Devonian fish while whispering “Oida…” under your breath and wishing you hadn't worn new shoes. 

And then there are the meteorites.

Vienna houses the largest meteorite display collection in the world, which is frankly a wildly unfair flex. Cabinet after cabinet gleams with stones that fell from space — fragments of asteroids older than Earth itself. Tiny iron worlds. Chondrites filled with the building blocks of planets. Visitors quietly shuffle about trying to process the fact that they are standing inches away from objects that travelled millions of kilometres through the cold dark vacuum before crash-landing on our little blue world.

Austrian grandmothers somewhere nearby are probably saying, “Heast, des is jo uralt,” and honestly, they are not wrong.

Beyond the fossils and meteorites, the museum sprawls into galleries devoted to minerals and gemstones, anthropology, human evolution, Ice Age life, prehistory and the natural sciences. Statues and allegorical figures throughout the museum celebrate scientific discovery itself — a reminder that this grand building was created during a time when humanity was enthusiastically cataloguing the world and trying desperately to understand its place within it.

What I adore most about the Naturhistorisches Museum is that it still feels wonderfully human. You can breath in the history, the lived in, built out over time of the place. 

It has not polished away its age or character. The old cabinets remain. The labels feel delightfully scholarly. The architecture insists you slow down and look carefully. It reminds you that science is not only data and specimens — it is curiosity, wonder and generations of people trying to piece together the story of life on Earth.

Also, somewhere between the ammonites and the Ice Age mammals, there is a very real chance you will become emotionally overwhelmed and need a coffee and a sachertorte immediately. 

This is Vienna. It is practically the law.

If you find yourself in Vienna, give yourself several hours here — preferably with comfortable shoes and absolutely no rigid schedule. Drift through the galleries. Open every mental drawer of curiosity you possess. Admire the gemstones. Stare at meteorites. Fall in love with an ammonite. Get delightfully lost among the wooden cases and ancient bones. 

This is a museum built by many hands with care and loads of love! As the Austrians say: “Passt scho.” Everything is exactly as it should be.

Natural History Museum, Burgring 7, 1010 Vienna, Austria

Photo Credit: Nowaczyk #2685053829

DIGS, DISCOS AND DINOSAURS: FOSSIL PREP IN MIAMI

Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum PaleoLab

If you find yourself wandering through downtown Miami with a coffee in one hand and a healthy appreciation for ancient dead things in the other, make your way to the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science. 

Tucked inside this sleek, sunshine-soaked palace of science is one of my favourite museum features anywhere — a living, breathing fossil lab called The Dig. And yes, it is exactly as wonderful as it sounds.

And now, the Frost Museum has dug up something especially exciting — the PaleoLab. 

Visitors can watch a chasmosaur emerge from its rocky tomb alongside a still-unidentified hadrosaur slowly revealing itself bone by bone beneath the careful hands of fossil preparators. 

That is the sort of sentence that makes paleontology folk spill their tea with excitement.

This is not one of those dusty back-room museum spaces where fossils disappear behind closed doors, never to be seen again. 

Oh no. 

The Frost Museum throws open the curtains and lets visitors peer directly into the delicate, painstaking work of paleontology in real time. 

You can watch South Florida’s first research paleontology program in action as Fossil Preparation Technicians meticulously clean and prepare fossils collected in the field by Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Dr. Cary Woodruff and his team.

Tiny air scribes buzz softly as technicians remove stubborn matrix grain by grain. Brushes sweep delicately over bones that have not seen daylight in tens of millions of years. 

It is equal parts science, surgery, archaeology, and wizardry. One wrong move and a specimen that survived asteroid impacts, shifting continents, and geological chaos could snap like a stale biscuit. No pressure there then.

The stars of the show are often Florida’s ancient marine fossils — enormous prehistoric fish, marine vertebrates, and beautifully preserved skeletons pulled from sediments that tell stories of warm shallow seas teeming with life millions of years ago. 

Florida may not be the first place folk think of when they picture fossils, but the Sunshine State is an absolute treasure chest of ancient marine life. 

During much of the Cenozoic, much of Florida lounged beneath warm tropical seas while giant sharks, dugongs, whales, rays, and schools of strange prehistoric fish cruised overhead like some beautifully chaotic underwater ballet.

And here is the lovely bit: you are not just staring at fossils trapped behind glass after all the fun is done. You are witnessing the actual process of discovery and preparation. 

Fossils emerge slowly from stone like ancient secrets, finally deciding they are ready to gossip.

The Dig also leans beautifully into hands-on learning. Visitors can explore tactile displays and even try digital fossil preparation activities themselves. 

Which is excellent because many of us secretly believe we could prepare fossils professionally after watching exactly six minutes of someone else doing it. The digital prep stations are a wonderfully safe way to test that theory without accidentally obliterating a 15-million-year-old fish skull.

The museum itself sits at 1101 Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami, all gleaming architecture and waterfront views. 

It is worth setting aside a good chunk of your day because Frost Science is packed with delights beyond paleontology — aquariums, planetarium shows, and enough science goodness to make your inner nerd very happy indeed.

If you go, check museum hours and tickets ahead of time as lab activity schedules can vary. And do give yourself time to linger at The Dig. 

There is something deeply magical about watching ancient life emerge slowly from stone under the careful hands of modern scientists. 

One moment, you are standing in humid, modern Miami, surrounded by traffic and palm trees… and the next, your mind is drifting through vanished seas filled with horned dinosaurs, hadrosaurs, giant fish, and creatures that vanished millions of years before humans arrived to marvel at them.

. . . . . 

As a funny aside, the last time I found myself in Miami, I was only meant to be passing through on my way to Nassau and Mayaguana Island. A missed connecting flight forced an unexpected overnight stay. 

The hotel clerk informed me — somewhat suspiciously — that only one room remained available on the 22nd floor. There was a great deal of awkward hesitation and “Are you sure?” energy at the front desk, which naturally made me think the room might be haunted, flooded, or home to a mildly aggressive iguana. 

What they neglected to mention was that directly above my room sat the hotel disco, where enthusiastic dancers in stilettos were hammering the floorboards like caffeinated woodpeckers attempting to excavate for oil. 

After lying awake for an hour trying to determine why the ceiling was experiencing tectonic activity, I finally gave up, got dressed, strolled upstairs, and joined the party. 

Which, honestly, feels very much in keeping with Miami’s general energy. That city is relentless. Resistance is futile...

CERATIOCARIS, YE KEN

Well now, would you have a look at this bonnie wee beastie. 

This braw Scottish lad is Ceratiocaris papilio (Salter in Murchison, 1859), a pod shrimp from the Silurian mudstones of the Kip Burn Formation in Scotland’s Midland Valley. 

About 430 million years ago, he would have paddled through warm rising seas teeming with crinoid meadows, coral reefs, brachiopods, trilobites, and some of the newest show-offs on the evolutionary stage — fish sporting jaws for the very first time. Imagine the drama. 

Up until then, most fish were essentially gummy wee vacuum cleaners. Suddenly, evolution hands out teeth and the oceans become a much rowdier pub on a Saturday night.

Ceratiocaris belongs to an extinct group of Paleozoic phyllocarid crustaceans found in marine rocks from the Upper Ordovician through the Silurian. They were tidy little armoured swimmers with eight short thoracic segments, seven longer abdominal somites, and an elongated pretelson that gave them a sleek, shrimpy silhouette. 

Their carapace was gently oval-shaped with elegant ridges running along the ventral margin, plus a jaunty horn projecting from the front — because apparently even Silurian arthropods appreciated a bit of flair.

This handsome specimen comes from the dark laminated silty mudstones of the Kip Burn Formation, famous amongst fossil folk for its richly fossiliferous “Ceratiocaris beds.” These layers are packed with extraordinary arthropods including Ceratiocaris, Dictyocaris, Pterygotus, and Slimonia, alongside early fishes such as Birkenia and Thelodus. 

Higher in the formation, the so-called “Pterygotus beds” preserve great hulking sea scorpions — eurypterids large enough to give you pause before dangling your toes in a Silurian estuary — together with brachiopods like Lingula and more Ceratiocaris.

The Kip Burn Formation captures a fascinating ecological shift as Scotland’s ancient environments moved from fully marine settings toward brackish and near non-marine conditions. 

It is a world caught mid-change — tides shifting, habitats evolving, and strange creatures experimenting with new ways to survive. Scotland was positively heaving with wonderfully odd life at the time, and the Midland Valley preserves it all beautifully beneath those dark ancient mudstones.

And while Ceratiocaris is proudly Scottish royalty in the fossil world, these crustaceans also turn up across the pond in the Silurian Eramosa Formation of Ontario, Canada — another legendary locality famous for gorgeous eurypterids and exquisitely preserved Paleozoic life.

Photo credit / collection of: York Yuxi Wang and Tianyi Zhang

Joseph H. Collette; David M. Rudkin (2010). "Phyllocarid crustaceans from the Silurian Eramosa Lagerstätte (Ontario, Canada): taxonomy and functional morphology". Journal of Paleontology. 84 (1): 118–127. doi:10.1666/08-174.1.

M. Copeland; T. E. Bolton (1985). Fossils of Ontario part 3: the eurypterids and phyllocarids. Volume 48 of Life Sciences Miscellaneous Publications. Royal Ontario Museum. ISBN 0-88854-314-X.

SKATE SKIING THROUGH THE MISSISSIPPIAN

Trilobite and Sea Scorpion Fossil Trackways

This curious wee slab is absolutely alive with movement from the Mississippian seas, laid down some 359.2 to 318.1 million years ago when strange arthropods were bustling about the seafloor like tiny armoured Roombas on a mission. 

What makes this block especially tasty to the fossil-loving eye is that it preserves both a lovely Cruziana trilobite trackway alongside what may be a eurypterid — a sea scorpion — or horseshoe crab trackway, all dancing together across the same bit of ancient seabed. 

It is a proper prehistoric traffic jam.

Now, when we say Cruziana, we are not talking about the trilobite itself, but the style of the trace fossil — the shape and pattern left behind by the critter as it shuffled, ploughed, scraped or scooted along the sediment. 

In this case, we see elongate, bilaterally symmetrical furrows preserved along the bedding plane with repeated oblique striations running at jaunty little angles. 

I always picture some tiny Paleozoic artist armed with a wee putty knife making rhythmic cuts through wet clay. Alternatively, imagine an overly enthusiastic trilobite showing off its Olympic-level skate skiing skills across the seabed. 

Sadly, no medals were awarded in the Carboniferous. While Cruziana traces are most commonly linked to trilobites, other arthropods could make similar marks, so there is still a little mystery woven into the mud.

Trilobite and Sea Scorpion Fossil Trackways

The study of trace fossils is called ichnology — from the Greek ichnos, meaning “track” or “footprint” — and it is one of the best ways we have of decoding the behaviour of ancient life long after the critters themselves have vanished.

Trace fossils are marvellous things because they preserve behaviour rather than bodies. 

These are the footprints, furrows, resting spots and feeding trails of ancient marine life — little snapshots of daily business on the ocean floor hundreds of millions of years ago. 

They tell us who was bustling about, how they moved, where they paused, and sometimes even what mood they might have been in. 

Alright, perhaps not mood exactly, but definitely purpose. 

Every groove and scratch here records a living creature interacting with its world in real time, long before dinosaurs, birds or mammals ever appeared on the scene.

This busy little block — measuring 4 1/2" x 3 1/2" x 1 1/4" — comes from the Tar Springs Formation of Perry County, Indiana, USA, and resides in the collections of the deeply awesome David Appleton.

The Tar Springs Formation stretches across parts of southern Indiana and is known both from surface outcrops and subsurface deposits extending from central Martin County southwestward toward the Ohio River. 

In Indiana, the formation is primarily shale, though scattered limestone beds and chunky local sandstone lenses also appear, including the handsome Tick Ridge Sandstone Member described by Gray in 1986. Thickness varies considerably, from about 70 feet (21 m) to more than 150 feet (46 m) in places like central Posey County and southwestern Gibson County. 

Where the formation thickens, sandstone tends to dominate, hinting at shifting ancient shorelines, changing currents and the restless pulse of long-vanished Carboniferous seas.

MOONFISH & LIMESTONE DREAMS: A MENID FROM MONTE BOLCA

This glorious discoidal darling is Mene rhombea, an extinct moonfish from the legendary Monte Bolca deposits of northeastern Italy. 

She lived during the Mid-Eocene, roughly 45–50 million years ago, at a time when the world was warmer, crocodiles lounged much farther north, and lush tropical seas covered parts of Europe. 

The specimen in the photograph lives today in the paleontology collection of the Senckenberg Nature Museum in Frankfurt am Main, Germany — and honestly, it looks like it could flick its tail and swim straight off the slab.

And what a slab it is.

The limestone matrix from Monte Bolca is world-famous for preserving fish with extraordinary fidelity. Bones, fin rays, eye sockets, delicate spines — all frozen in exquisite detail like nature’s own lithographic masterpiece. 

You can see the elegant curve of the spinal column, the sharply compressed body, and those wonderfully dramatic pelvic fins trailing beneath like ribbons on a ballroom gown. If fish held fashion week during the Eocene, Mene rhombea would have strutted the runway in Milan and stolen everyone’s espresso.

Modern moonfish — relatives within the family Menidae — still swim in tropical Indo-Pacific waters today, though they are nowhere near as flamboyant as some of their fossil cousins. 

The living species, Mene maculata, has the same deep, compressed body shape that lets it pivot and glide through reefs with remarkable agility. Their fossil kin tell us this lineage has been around for quite some time.

The family Menidae first appears in the fossil record during the Paleocene and flourished through the Eocene. Their fossils are known from Europe, Asia, and parts of North America, but nowhere are they more spectacularly preserved than at Monte Bolca. 

This locality is one of the great Lagerstätten of the world — a fossil site with exceptional preservation — preserving a tropical marine ecosystem shortly after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs.

Monte Bolca itself is something of a celebrity in palaeontology circles. For over four centuries, collectors and scientists have marvelled at its fossil fishes. The deposits formed in quiet lagoonal waters associated with ancient coral reefs. 

Fine carbonate mud settled gently to the seafloor, rapidly burying organisms in low-oxygen conditions that discouraged scavengers and decay. The result? Fossils so detailed you half expect them to blink.

Mene rhombea is instantly recognizable by its highly compressed, almost circular body shape and broad triangular tail. That shape was no accident. Like many reef-associated fishes, this body plan allowed quick manoeuvring through tight underwater spaces — handy when weaving through coral heads while trying not to become lunch for some enthusiastic Eocene predator with teeth the size of butter knives.

What I love most about these fossils is how modern they feel.

We often imagine prehistoric life as strange, lumbering, and alien, but many Eocene fishes would look perfectly at home in today’s tropical seas. 

Standing before this fossil in Frankfurt, you are peering into an ocean only slightly different from our own — one filled with reef fish, rays, crustaceans, sharks, and the bustling energy of marine ecosystems recovering and diversifying after the great extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.

And here she remains.

Forty-five million years later, pressed delicately into limestone, elegant,  dramatic, still the prettiest fish in the room

MUD, MONSTERS AND AMMONITES: FOSSIL HUNTING AT KIMMERIDGE BAY

There’s a particular kind of madness that takes hold when you arrive at Kimmeridge Bay on the Jurassic Coast of Dorset. 

You tell yourself you’re just going for a “nice seaside walk,” but five minutes later you’re crouched in the mud like an enthusiastic raccoon, pockets bulging with ammonites and your knees soaked through by 150 million years of ancient ooze.

Welcome to fossil hunting on England’s Jurassic Coast — where the cliffs leak time.

Kimmeridge Bay is part of the famed Jurassic Coast UNESCO World Heritage Site, and what a glorious bit of deep-time drama it is. These dark shales and limestones belong to the Kimmeridge Clay Formation, laid down during the Late Jurassic, roughly 157–152 million years ago, when Dorset sat beneath a warm, shallow sea teeming with life. 

No cream teas. No tourists in sensible rain jackets. Just marine reptiles, squidgy cephalopods, fish, crustaceans and enough mud to preserve a kingdom.

The cliffs here are famously rich in organic material — so rich, in fact, that the Kimmeridge Clay became one of the major source rocks for North Sea oil. Every step you take is over the compressed remains of ancient plankton, algae and marine life. Delightful, really. Ancient death soup under your hiking boots.

And the fossils! Oh, the fossils.

Ammonites are the stars of the show, spiralled little beauties weathering out of the shale after winter storms and heavy tides. Some are tiny enough to fit on your fingertip; others are dinner-plate-sized beasts that make you briefly consider whether you can casually carry 40 pounds of rock back to the car without injuring yourself or your dignity.

You’ll also find belemnites — the bullet-shaped internal guards of extinct squid-like cephalopods — scattered about like Jurassic cigars tossed aside by some enormous marine gangster. Bivalves, marine snails, crustaceans and fossil wood turn up regularly, and if the fossil gods are smiling upon you, you may glimpse bones from ichthyosaurs or plesiosaurs weathering from the cliffs. Proper sea dragons.

These waters once swam with predators. Ichthyosaurs sliced through the sea with tuna-shaped precision while long-necked plesiosaurs lurked below like nightmare swans with teeth. Above them drifted ammonites in absurd abundance, jetting through the water column while trying very hard not to become lunch.

The real joy of Kimmeridge is that the geology is laid out like pages in a very muddy storybook. Broad wave-cut platforms stretch out at low tide, exposing bedding planes packed with fossils. You can literally walk across ancient seabeds while gulls scream overhead and the English Channel hurls itself dramatically against the shore in proper British fashion.

Now — and this bit matters — Kimmeridge Bay is not a free-for-all fossil freebie buffet. The bay is privately owned and protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), which means loose fossils may be collected responsibly, but hammering into the shale ledges or cliffs and extracting fossils from the rock is strictly forbidden. The cliffs are unstable enough without enthusiastic humans attacking them with geology hammers like caffeinated dwarves.

Kimmeridge is also not quite the fossil bonanza you’ll find at Lyme Regis or Charmouth. Folk sometimes arrive expecting ammonites rolling at their feet like Jurassic tennis balls, but much of what you see here remains embedded in the ledges, often beautifully preserved but heavily compressed by millions of years of pressure. 

This is less grabbing a fossil every five seconds and more patiently scan the rocks while questioning your tide timing.

And speaking of tides — always check them. The sea at Kimmeridge comes in with alarming enthusiasm and absolutely no regard for your collecting plans. More than one eager fossil hunter has found themselves stranded while trying to “just check one more rock.” The ledges are notoriously slippery with seaweed as well, and the coastguard regularly ends up rescuing visitors who underestimate both the tides and their own balance. Jurassic mud wrestling with the English Channel is rarely a winning strategy.

The second rule? Never trust a shale slab. The moment you pick one up, it will either crumble beautifully to reveal a perfect ammonite — or explode directly into your face like a Jurassic cream cracker.

Honestly, both outcomes are part of the experience.

And that is the magic of Kimmeridge Bay. It is messy, windswept, ancient and utterly alive with stories. Every fossil you hold was once part of a thriving Jurassic ecosystem long before humans arrived to invent car parks, sandwiches and waterproof trousers.

Before heading down to the shore, it is always worth stopping into The Etches Collection Museum of Jurassic Marine Life in Kimmeridge Village. 

The museum houses one of the finest collections of Jurassic marine fossils in Britain, and the staff are wonderfully generous with advice on safe and responsible collecting. If you want to understand the strange and beautiful creatures hidden in those black shales, this is the place.

You arrive looking for fossils, but somewhere between the ammonites, the sea spray and the black shale under your boots, you begin to feel something else entirely — the dizzying wonder of deep time.

Also, lower back pain from carrying too many rocks. Fossil hunting is a glamorous business.

OCEAN SUNFISH: MOLA MOLA

Mola mola (Linnaeus, 1758)

Meet the mighty Mola mola — the ocean’s giant floating dinner plate with the personality of an overgrown puppy and the body plan of a fish someone clearly stopped designing halfway through. 

This massive, docile sunfish is one of the two heaviest bony fish alive today, rivalled only by its equally peculiar cousin, the southern sunfish. 

Imagine a Volkswagen Beetle crossed with a pizza crust and you are delightfully close to the truth.

The Molidae family first flapped onto the evolutionary scene between 45 and 35 million years ago — long after the dinosaurs had shuffled off this mortal coil and back when whales still sported legs and looked suspiciously like wolves testing out a new aquatic lifestyle. 

Their ancestors were adorable pufferfish-like oddballs, chunky little reef dwellers built like armoured dumplings. 

Those early pioneers eventually gave rise to Mola around 23 to 20.4 million years ago. Their cousins, the wonderfully bizarre Ranzania, appeared a bit later, around 16 to 13.8 million years ago. 

A third modern genus, Masturus, remains frustratingly absent from the fossil record. 

Somewhere out there, hidden in ancient sediments, is the fossil equivalent of a missing puzzle piece waiting for some lucky fossil hunter to stumble upon.

Now here is where things get wonderfully absurd. Baby mola are tiny. Ridiculously tiny. Dozens of newborns could fit in the palm of your hand, each scarcely larger than a pea and looking more like nervous confetti than future leviathans. 

As youngsters, they are intensely curious and occasionally swim up to humans for a wee investigative nibble. My own mother was sampled by one as a girl while travelling. One tiny tooth embedded itself in her leg and worked its way out weeks later like the world’s most polite shark attack. She still tells the story fondly, which says a great deal about both her and the fish.

As adults, however, mola abandon all restraint and become absolute units. Most tip the scales at 247 to 1,000 kilograms — roughly one-and-a-half cows or one very surprised grizzly bear. The heavyweight champion so far is a bump-head sunfish, Mola alexandrini, caught off Japan in 1996. 

That magnificent beast weighed an astonishing 2,300 kilograms (5,070 pounds) and stretched nearly 2.72 metres long. That is less “fish” and more “sentient manhole cover with fins.”

Their sheer bulk and thick hide discourage many predators, though younger fish are still vulnerable to bluefin tuna and mahi-mahi. Adults, meanwhile, occasionally end up on the menu for orca, sharks, sea lions, and sadly, humans. In parts of Japan, Korea and Taiwan they have historically been eaten, though thankfully the European Union has banned the sale of mola species from the family Molidae.

And then there are the names. Oh, the names. No fish on Earth seems to have inspired quite so much international confusion.

The scientific name mola comes from the Latin for “millstone,” which is honestly fair. They do look like giant grinding stones with fins glued on as an afterthought. 

Their English name, sunfish, comes from their habit of basking at the surface like retirees on holiday in Palm Springs. Across Europe, many names translate loosely to moonfish — the Dutch maanvis, Portuguese peixe lua, French poisson lune, Spanish pez luna, Italian pesce luna and many others — all nodding to that glorious moon-shaped silhouette.

The Germans, never ones to sugarcoat things, also call it Schwimmender Kopf — “swimming head.” Accurate. Slightly rude, but accurate. The Polish samogłów means “head alone,” which again feels unnecessarily personal. 

Scandinavian languages gift us klumpfisk or “lump fish,” while the Finnish möhkäkala roughly translates to “chunky blob fish,” which sounds less like a species name and more like playground bullying. I am Norwegian on my Mother's side and am going to have to fail my relations on their truly uninspired use of names here.

The Chinese name, fān chē yú 翻車魚, means “toppled wheel fish,” which may be my favourite of all. Somewhere, someone looked at a mola and thought, “Ah yes. An overturned wagon wheel with opinions.”

By any name, these gentle giants continue to drift through tropical and temperate seas around the world, basking in the sunlight, nibbling jellyfish, and confusing humanity with their glorious evolutionary weirdness

FOSSIL FLOWERS AND POLLINATORS

Flower encased in amber

Plant fossils are found coast-to-coast in Canada, from 45-million-year-old mosses in British Columbia to fossil forests on Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere islands in the Canadian Arctic.

The early angiosperms developed advantages over contemporary groups — rapid reproductive cycles —  which made them highly efficient, adapting well to "weedy" growth. These modifications, including flowers for the attraction of insect pollinators, proved advantageous in many habitats.

Interaction between plant and pollinator has been a driving force behind the astounding diversification of both flowering plants and insects. 

Together, they tell one of the most interesting co-evolutionary stories on Earth, and one of vital importance to us. We must give thanks to our precious bees for their work pollinating about one-third of our diet and adding nutritious and delicious fruits and vegetables to our menu. 

Some of the earliest known flowering plants are found in northeastern British Columbia coalfields. Late Cretaceous (about 101–66 million years ago) floras of the Dawson Creek area of British Columbia, and Milk River, Alberta, reveal increasing dominance by angiosperms. 

These fossils, while generally resembling some living angiosperms, represent old, extinct families, and their relationships to living groups remain unclear.

Early pollinators co-evolved with flowering plants

At the end of the Cretaceous, the climate cooled, inland seas covering much of western Canada drained, and dinosaurs became extinct. 

At the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene is evidence of extinction amongst land plants, too. 

During this interval of mass extinction, the Earth was struck by a massive meteorite. The fallout from this impact is preserved in boundary sediments in southern Saskatchewan as a pale clay, rich in rare earth elements such as iridium.

In the early Paleogene period (66–56 million years ago), we entered the age of mammals. Paralleling the rise of mammals is the rise of modern flora, which consists overwhelmingly of our glorious flowering plants. One of the most prolific fossil sites for Paleogene flowering plants, fruits and seeds is the Messel pit in Germany. In 2012, a research group found over 140 different plant species, 65 of which were previously unknown.

Early Paleogene fossils are found over much of Alberta —  Red Deer River, Lake Wabamun coalfields and Robb to Coal Valley coalfields —  and southern Saskatchewan —  Eastend area to Estevan coalfield —  to as far north as Ellesmere Island. 

These floras reveal a variety of flowering plants, including members of the sycamore, birch and walnut families, but the most abundant fossil plants are the katsuras and the dawn redwood, now native only to southeastern Asia.

In the mid-Paleogene period (56–34 million years ago) brief climatic warming coincided with the rapid diversification of flowering plants. Eocene fossils in British Columbia (Princeton, Kamloops and Smithers areas) reveal increasing numbers of modern plant families, with extinct species of birch, maple, beech, willow, chestnut, pine and fir.

Fossil Leaves, Princeton, British Columbia, Canada

Exceptionally well-preserved fossil forests found on Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere islands in the Canadian Arctic illustrate clearly the contrast between modern Canadian vegetation and the floras of a much warmer past. 

These fossil forests, 40 to 60 million years old, consist of large stumps, many over 1 m in diameter, preserved where they grew, still rooted in ancient soil.

Thick mats of leaf litter that formed the forest floor reveal the types of plants inhabiting the forests.

Lush redwood and cypress swamps covered the lowlands, while the surrounding uplands were dominated by a mixed conifer and hardwood forest resembling that of modern eastern North America. Even accounting for continental drift, these forests grew well above the Arctic Circle, and bear witness to a time in Canada's past when a cold arctic climatic regime did not exist.

Around 45-50 million years ago, during the middle Eocene, a number of freshwater lakes appeared in an arc extending from Smithers in northern British Columbia, south through the modern Cariboo, to Kamloops, the Nicola Valley, Princeton and finally, Republic, Washington.

The lakes likely formed after a period of faulting created depressions in the ground, producing a number of basins or grabens into which water collected — imagine gorgeous smallish lakes similar to Cultus Lake near Chilliwack, British Columbia.

The groaning Earth, pressured by the collision of tectonic plates produced a series of erupting volcanoes around the Pacific Northwest. These spouting volcanoes blew fine-grained ash into the atmosphere and it rained down on the land.

Eocene Plant Fossils, McAbee, BC

The ash washed into the lakes and because of its texture, and possibly because of low water oxygen levels on the bottoms that slowed decay beautifully preserved the dead remains of plant, invertebrate, and fish fossils —  some in wonderful detail with fascinating and well-preserved flora.

Near the town of Princeton, British Columbia, we see the results of that fine ash in the many fossil exposures. The fossils you find here are Middle Eocene, Allenby Formation with a high degree of detail in their preservation. Here we find fossil maple, alder, fir, pine, dawn redwood and ginkgo material. 

The Allenby Formation of the Princeton Group is regarded as Middle Eocene based on palynology (Rouse and Srivastava, 1970), mammals (Russell, 1935; Gazin, 1953); freshwater fishes (Wilson, 1977, 1982) and potassium-argon dating (Hills and Baadsgaard, 1967).

Several species of fossilized insects can be found in the area and rare, occasional fossil flowers and small, perfectly preserved fish. More than 50 flowers have been reported (Basinger, 1976) from the Princeton chert locality that crops out on the east side of the Similkameen River about 8 km south of Princeton, British Columbia.

The first descriptions of fossil plants from British Columbia were published in 1870–1920 by J.W. Dawson, G.M. Dawson, and D.P. Penhallow. Permineralized plants were first described from the Princeton chert in the 1970s by C.N. Miller, J.F. Basinger, and others, followed by R.A. Stockey and her students. W.C. Wehr and K.R. Johnson revitalized the study of fossils at Republic with the discovery of a diverse assemblage in 1977.

In 1987, J.A. Wolfe and Wehr produced a United States Geological Survey monograph on Republic, and Wehr cofounded the Stonerose Interpretive Center as a venue for public collecting. Systematic studies of the Okanagan Highlands plants, as well as paleoecological and paleoclimate reconstructions from palynomorphs and leaf floras, continue to expand our understanding of this important Early Eocene assemblage.

One of the sister sites to McAbee, the Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park Fossil Beds, offers an honours system for their site. Visitors may handle and view fossils but are asked to not take them home. 

Both Driftwood Canyon and McAbee are part of that arc of Eocene lakebed sites that extend from Smithers in the north, down to the fossil site of Republic Washington, in the south. 

The grouping includes the fossil sites of Driftwood Canyon, Quilchena, Allenby, Tranquille, McAbee, Princeton and Republic. Each of these localities provides important clues to our ancient climate.

The fossils range in age from Early to Middle Eocene. McAbee had a more temperate climate, slightly cooler and wetter than other Eocene sites to the south at Princeton, British Columbia, Republic in north-central Washington, in the Swauk Formation near Skykomish and the Chuckanut Formation of northern Washington state. The McAbee fossil beds consist of 30 metres of fossiliferous shale in the Eocene Kamloops Group.

The fossils are preserved here as impressions and carbonaceous films. We see gymnosperm (16 species); a variety of conifers (14 species to my knowledge); two species of ginkgo, a large variety of angiosperm (67 species); a variety of insects and fish remains, the rare feather and a boatload of mashed deciduous material. Nuts and cupules are also found from the dicotyledonous Fagus and Ulnus and members of Betulaceae, including Betula and Alnus.

We see many species that look very similar to those growing in the Pacific Northwest today. You can find well-preserved specimens of cypress, dawn redwood, fir, spruce, pine, larch, hemlock, alder, birch, dogwood, beech, sassafras, cottonwood, maple, elm and grape. If we look at the pollen data, we see over a hundred highly probable species from the site. Though rare, McAbee has also produced spiders, birds (and lovely individual feathers) along with multiple specimens of the freshwater crayfish, Aenigmastacus crandalli.

For insects, we see dragonflies, damselflies, cockroaches, termites, earwigs, aphids, leafhoppers, spittlebugs, lacewings, a variety of beetles, gnats, ants, hornets, stick insects, water striders, weevils, wasps and March flies. The insects are particularly well-preserved. Missing are the tropical Sabal (palm), seen at Princeton.

200 km to the south, fossil leaves and fish were first recognized at Republic, Washington, by miners in the early 1900s. We find the impressive Ensete (banana) and Zamiaceae (cycad) at Eocene sites in Republic and Chuckanut, Washington. 

Many early workers considered these floras to be of Oligocene or Miocene age. C.A. Arnold described Canadian occurrences of conifers and Azolla in the 1950s. Palynological studies in the 1960s by L.V. Hills, G.E.Rouse, and others and those of fossil fish by M.V.H. Wilson in the 1970–1980s provided the framework for paleobotanical research at several key localities.

With the succession of ice ages that swept down across North America in the Pleistocene, there were four intervening warm periods. These warmer periods help many species, including the genus Oenothera, enjoy four separate waves of colonization — each hybridizing with the survivors of previous waves. This formed the present-day subsection Euoenothera. The group is genetically and morphologically diverse and contains some of the most interesting of the angiosperms.

Today, there are about 145 species of herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Oenothera, all native to the Americas. It is the type genus of the family Onagraceae. We know them by many names — evening primrose, suncups, and sundrops  —  but they are not closely related to the true primroses (genus Primula).

Oenothera flowers are pollinated by insects, such as moths and bees. One of the most interesting things I have learned (thank you, Jim Barkley) is a clever little evolutionary trait exhibited by the beach evening primrose, Oenothera drummondil. 

These lovelies can actively sense and respond to the buzzing of bees. Marine Veits et al. were able to show that this species has evolved to respond to the sound of bees by producing nectar with a higher sugar concentration, certainly yummy by bee standards — therein attracting more pollinators and increasing the plant species reproductive success.

David R. Greenwood, Kathleen B. Pigg, James F. Basinger, and Melanie L. DeVore: A review of paleobotanical studies of the Early Eocene Okanagan (Okanogan) Highlands floras of British Columbia, Canada, and Washington, USA.

Sauquet H, von Balthazar M, Magallón S, et al. The ancestral flower of angiosperms and its early diversification. Nat Commun. 2017;8:16047. Published 2017 Aug 1. doi:10.1038/ncomms16047

Marine Veits  Itzhak Khait  Uri Obolski, et al. Flowers respond to pollinator sound within minutes by increasing nectar sugar concentration. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13331

PETALS FROZEN IN TIME: THE PRINCETON CHERT

It began with a bloom, Florissantia quilchenensis, its petals splayed across a creamy, beige-brown matrix like a fossilized whisper from a warmer world. 

This precious bloom was hard-earned. Covered in dust and sweat, I grinned and held this elusive beauty to the light to take in its exceptional preservation and dusty beauty!

It was day three of my travels. I was hiking the hills around the town of Princeton in the Similkameen region of southern British Columbia, Canada. 

The former mining and railway hub lies at the confluence of the Tulameen into the Similkameen River, just east of the Cascade Mountains. It is dry, arid country covered by native grasslands and low scrub. 

Princeton, BC is located in the traditional territories of the Nlaka’pamux and Syilx (Okanagan) peoples. 

The region has historical significance for the Syilx, particularly the Upper and Lower Similkameen Indian Bands, and has been an important area for gathering red ochre for thousands of years. I had first explored the region looking for red ochre deposits to photograph, always with an eye to the local fossils.

On this particular trip, I was searching for fossils and the iconic flower, Florissantia, in the slopes known locally as Hospital Hill.

A lucky split brought a eureka moment. Is it? Could it be? Yes! Peeling back the layers, I had uncovered a near perfect flower and the treasure I had long been seeking. Searching for Florissantia had brought me to the Princeton area on many occasions but my first was found on this trip. 

Under a hand lens, its details unfurl: each vein etched in silica, each contour revealed with startling fidelity. 

I had uncovered a perfect flower, a time capsule telling us about the landscape as it once was, lush, tropical, and steaming with life.

This singular fossil, preserved in almost impossibly fine detail, is one of the jewels of the Princeton Chert, a fossil treasure hidden in the hills of British Columbia. 

Here, an entire ancient ecosystem—plants, fungi, fish, and the delicate traces of vanished warmth—was captured in stone with such precision that cell walls, stomata, and even parasitic fungi remain visible 48 million years later.

The Princeton Chert lies tucked along the east bank of the Similkameen River, 8.5 km south of the town of Princeton, B.C. At first glance, the exposures of the Allenby Formation appear unassuming: thinly layered bands of shale, coal, and pale chert. 

But within these layers, we've discovered something extraordinary—an anatomically preserved flora, fossilized in three dimensions. Unlike typical compression fossils, these organisms were permeated by silica-rich waters so quickly and so thoroughly that even their internal structures survived.

Since the 1950s, collectors and researchers have pulled back the curtain on this Eocene world, but it was in the 1970s and onward that the Chert achieved global attention. Scientists recognized that the Princeton Chert wasn’t just another fossil site. 

It was a Lagerstätte of unparalleled richness—one of the few places on Earth where entire plant communities are preserved down to the microscopic level.

Thin-sectioned under a microscope, these fossils show xylem vessels, aerenchyma, reproductive organs, pollen, seeds, roots, and fungal pathogens—all exquisitely intact. Few fossil floras in the world rival this clarity.

The Princeton Chert formed in a landscape shaped by fire and water. Its 49 known chert layers, ranging from thin wafers to thick beds over half a metre, alternate with volcanic ash, coal, and shale. Each layer represents a momentary pause in time—a lake or pond basin repeatedly drowned in silica-rich waters after nearby volcanic eruptions.

Radiometric dating now places the site at 48.7 million years old, deep within the Early Eocene Ypresian Stage, a time when Earth’s climate simmered near its all-time warmest. Greenhouse gases were high, ice was nearly absent, and tropical warmth lapped into polar regions.

The Princeton Chert flora thrived in shallow lakes and quiet backwaters. Many species were fully aquatic or semi-aquatic, and the fossils show unmistakable features of plants adapted to waterlogged conditions:

• Reduced vascular tissue (because buoyant plants need little support)
• Aerenchyma—honeycombed air chambers for floatation
• Protoxylem lacunae, ringed by thick-walled cells

Many of these plants have close relatives today:

• Allenbya – a water lily
• Keratosperma – an arum with curling, sculptural leaves
• Alismataceae – water plantains
• Ethela – rush-like monocots and sedges

Seeds, fruits, and roots appear in beautiful profusion. Meanwhile, terrestrial plants—those carried in by floods or dropped by birds—are rare but present.

The chert also preserves snippets of the animals that lived alongside these aquatic gardens. In the overlying shale beds, paleontologists have recovered Amia (bowfins), Amyzon, Libotonius, and even a soft-shelled turtle—a small but telling cast of freshwater neighbours.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Princeton Chert is its preservation of fungi. Here, we have identified:

• Tar spot fungi parasitizing Uhlia palm leaves
• Cryptodidymosphaerites princetonensis, a mycoparasite attacking the tar spot fungus
• Ectomycorrhizae—the first ever documented fossil mycorrhizal symbiosis with Pinus

In Metasequoia milleri, the Eocene ancestor of modern dawn redwood, mycorrhizal relationships appear nearly identical to those in modern forests. It is as though 50 million years have passed with hardly a change.

The Princeton Chert has attracted generations of paleobotanists, sedimentologists, and fossil enthusiasts, each drawn to its exquisite three-dimensional preservation and its window into Eocene ecosystems. 

Charles William “Chuck” Basinger, a Canadian paleobotanist renowned for his work on anatomically preserved plants and early conifer evolution. His meticulous studies helped illuminate the internal structures of Princeton Chert flora at cellular resolution. 

Ruth A. Stockey, a leading paleobotanist specialising in fossil conifers, seed plants, and reproductive biology, has published (along with her many grad students) extensively on the chert’s gymnosperms and angiosperms, reconstructing entire plants from roots to reproductive organs. 

Together with many collaborators over the decades, these scientists have pieced together a vivid portrait of ancient wetland forests—lush, diverse, and humming with microscopic and macroscopic life. 

The site is also beloved within the fossil-collecting community. The Vancouver Paleontological Society (VanPS) has organized field trips here for decades. 

Many members remember their first visit: crouched on a hot summer slope, poking about the roadcuts, collecting fossil insects and plants. One of the first large scale field trips to the region by the VanPS was part of the first BCPA Symposium held in 1998 at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. 

Smaller field trips became a regular occurrence, usually one every year or two, and that trend continues. The result of all that exploration is a greater understanding of the many fossil species to be found here.

Dan Bowden of the VanPS has done some wonderful work cataloguing the many fossils found here, with a particularly good eye in identifying the fossil insects. 

These excursions have helped train new generations of citizen scientists, fostering a deep respect for the site’s scientific importance.

If you plan to head to Princeton, be sure to include the Princeton & District Museum on your travels. The museum holds a good selection of the local fossils. It is located at 167 Vermillion Avenue, Princeton, BC, V0X 1W0. You can confirm their house on their website at princetonmuseum.org

Know Before You Go: Exploring the Fossil Lakes of British Columbia

Getting There from Vancouver

• Drive east on Highway 1 through Hope, then continue along Highway 3 (the Crowsnest Highway). The town of Hope offers a good place to stop for a meal and gas up your vehicle.
• Pass through Manning Park and descend into the Similkameen Valley toward Princeton.
• The Princeton Chert itself is on private and protected land; access requires permission and often participation in sanctioned society trips.
• Surface collecting yields a wonderful assortment of fossils. 

ETHELDRED BENETT: ENGLISH GEOLOGIST & CITIZEN SCIENTIST

In the early days of paleontology, men were men, and women, quite frankly, were not paleontologists, geologists, members of the Royal Society nor welcome in a male dominated science community. 

Until they were. And sometimes quite by accident.

Meet Etheldred Benett, an early English geologist often credited with being the first female geologist — a fossil collector par excellence.

If you happened to join us for today's VIPS talk with Phil Hadland, Collections & Engagement Curator of Natural Sciences at the Hastings Museum & Art Gallery, UK, on 101 Fossils of Folkstone, you will have heard him mention her in his talk.

She was also credited with being a man  —  the Natural History Society of Moscow awarded her membership as Master Etheldredus Benett in 1836. The confusion over her name (it did sound masculine) came again with the bestowing of a Doctorate of Civil Law from Tsar Nicholas I.

The Tsar had read Sowerby's Mineral Conchology, a major fossil reference work which contained the second-highest number of contributed fossils of the day, many of the best quality available at the time. Forty-one of those specimens were credited to Benett. Between her name and this wonderous contribution to a growing science, the Russian Tsar awarded the Doctorate to what he believed was a young male scientist on the rise. 

He believed in education, founding Kyiv University in 1834, just not for women. He was an autocratic military man frozen in time — the thought that this work could have been done by a female was unthinkable. Doubly charming is that the honour from the University of St Petersburg was granted at a time when women were not allowed to attend St. Pete's or any higher institutions. That privilege arrived in 1878, twenty years after Nicholas I's death.

Benett took these honours (and social blunders) with grace. She devoted her life to collecting and studying fossils from the southwest of England, amassing an impressive personal collection she openly shared with geologist friends, colleagues and visitors to her home. Her specialty was fossils from the Middle Cretaceous, Upper Greensand in the Vale of Wardour — a valley in the county of Wiltshire near the River Nadder.

Etheldred was a local Wiltshire girl. Born Etheldred Benett on 22 July 1775 at Pyt House, Tisbury, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of the local squire Thomas Benett. Etheldred's interest was cultivated by the botanist Aylmer Bourke Lambert (1761-1842), a founding member of the Linnean Society. 

Benett's brother had married Lucy Lambert, Aylmer's half-sister. Aylmer was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Society of the Arts. He was also an avid fossil collector and member of the Geological Society of London. The two met and got on famously.

Aylmer kindled an interest in natural history in both of Benett's daughters. Etheldred had a great fondness in geology, stratigraphy and all things paleo, whilst her sister concentrated on botany. Etheldred had a distinct advantage over her near contemporary, the working-class Mary Anning (1799-1847), in that Benett was a woman of independent wealth who never married — and didn't need to — who could pursue the acquisition and study of fossils for her own interest.

While Anning was the marine reptile darling of the age, she was also greatly hindered by her finances. "She sells, seashells by the seashore..." while chanted in a playful spirit today, was not meant kindly at the time. Aylmer's encouragement emboldened Etheldred to go into the field to collect for herself — and collect she did. Profusely.

Benett’s contribution to the early history of Wiltshire geology is significant. She corresponded extensively with the coterie of gentlemen scientists of the day —  Gideon Mantell, William Buckland, James Sowerby, George Bellas Greenough and, Samuel Woodward. She also consorted with the lay folk and had an ongoing correspondence with William Smith, whose stratigraphy work had made a favourable impression on her brother-in-law, Aylmer.

Her collections and collaboration with geologists of the day were instrumental in helping to form the field of geology as a science. One colleague and friend, Gideon Mantell, British physician, geologist and palaeontologist, who discovered four of the five genera of dinosaurs and Iguanadon, was so inspired by Benett's work he named this Cretaceous ammonite after her — Hoplites bennettiana.

Benett's fossil assemblage was a valuable resource for her contemporaries and remains so today. It contains thousands of Jurassic and Cretaceous fossil specimens from the Wiltshire area and the Dorset Coast, including a myriad of first-recorded finds. The scientific name of every taxon is usually based on one particular specimen, or in some cases multiple specimens. Many of the specimens she collected serve as the Type Specimen for new species.

Fossil Sponge, Polypothecia quadriloba, Warminster, Wiltshire

Her particular interest was the collection and study of fossil sponges. Alcyonia caught her eye early on. She collected and recorded her findings with the hope that one of her colleagues might share her enthusiasm and publish her work as a contribution to their own.

Alas, no one took up the helm — those interested were busy with other pursuits (or passed away) and others were less than enthusiastic or never seemed to get around to it.

To ensure the knowledge was shared in a timely fashion, she finally wrote them up and published them herself. You can read her findings in her publication, ‘A Catalogue of Organic Remains of the County of Wiltshire’ (1831), where she shares observations on the fossil sponge specimens and other invert goodies from the outcrops west of town.

She shared her ideas freely and donated many specimens to local museums. It was through her exchange of observations, new ideas and open sharing of fossils with Gideon Mantell and others that a clearer understanding of the Lower Cretaceous sedimentary rocks of Southern England was gained.

In many ways, Mantell was drawn to Benett as his ideas went against the majority opinion. At a time when marine reptiles were dominating scientific discoveries and discussions, he pushed the view that dinosaurs were terrestrial, not amphibious, and sometimes bipedal. Mantell's life's work established the now-familiar idea that the Age of Reptiles preceded the Age of Mammals. Mantell kept a journal from 1819-1852, that remained unpublished until 1940 when E. Cecil Curwen published an abridged version. (Oxford University Press 1940). John A. Cooper, Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton and Hove, published the work in its entirety in 2010.

I was elated to get a copy, both to untangle the history of the time and to better learn about the relationship between Mantell and Benett. So much of our geologic past has been revealed since Mantell's first entry two hundred years ago. The first encounter we share with the two of them is a short note from March 8, 1819. "This morning I received a letter from Miss Bennett of Norton House near Warminster Wilts, informing me of her having sent a packet of fossils for me, to the Waggon Office..." The diary records his life, but also the social interactions of the day and the small connected community of the scientific social elite. It is a delight!

Though a woman in a newly evolving field, her work, dedication and ideas were recognized and appreciated by her colleagues. Gideon Mantell described her as, "a lady of great talent and indefatigable research," whilst the Sowerbys noted her, "labours in the pursuit of geological information have been as useful as they have been incessant."

Benett produced the first measured sections of the Upper Chicksgrove quarry near Tisbury in 1819, published and shared with local colleagues as, "the measure of different beds of stone in Chicksgrove Quarry in the Parish of Tisbury.” The stratigraphic section was later published by naturalist James Sowerby without her knowledge. Her research contradicted many of Sowerby’s conclusions.

She wrote and privately published a monograph in 1831, containing many of her drawings and sketches of molluscs and sponges. Her work included sketches of the fossil Alcyonia (1816) from the Green Sand Formation at Warminster Common and the immediate vicinity of Warminster in Wiltshire.

Echinoids and Bivalves. Collection of Etheldred Benett (1775-1845)

The Society holds two copies, one was given to George Bellas Greenough, and another copy was given to her friend Gideon Mantell. This work established her as a true, pioneering biostratigrapher following but not always agreeing with the work of William Smith.

If you'd like to read a lovely tale on William's work, check out the Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester. It narrates the intellectual context of the time, the development of Smith's ideas and how they contributed to the theory of evolution and more generally to a dawning realization of the true age of the earth.

The book describes the social, economic or industrial context for Smith's insights and work, such as the importance of coal mining and the transport of coal by means of canals, both of which were a stimulus to the study of geology and the means whereby Smith supported his research. Benett debated many of the ideas Smith put forward. She was luckier than Smith financially, coming from a wealthy family, a financial perk that allowed her the freedom to add fossils to her curiosity cabinet at will.

Most of her impressive collection was assumed lost in the early 20th century. It was later found and purchased by an American, Thomas Bellerby Wilson, who donated it to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Small parts of it made their way into British museums, including the Leeds City Museum, London, Bristol and to the University of St. Petersburg. These collections contain many type specimens and some of the very first fossils found — some with the soft tissues preserved. When Benett died in 1845, it was Mantell who penned her obituary for the London Geological Journal.

In 1989, almost a hundred and fifty years after her death, a review of her collection had Arthur Bogen and Hugh Torrens remark that her work has significantly impacted our modern understanding of Porifera, Coelenterata, Echinodermata, and the molluscan classes, Cephalopoda, Gastropoda, and Bivalvia. A worthy legacy, indeed.

Her renown lives on through her collections, her collaborations and through the beautiful 110 million-year-old ammonite you see here, Hoplites bennettiana. The lovely example you see here is in the collection of the deeply awesome Christophe Marot.

Spamer, Earle E.; Bogan, Arthur E.; Torrens, Hugh S. (1989). "Recovery of the Etheldred Benett Collection of fossils mostly from Jurassic-Cretaceous strata of Wiltshire, England, analysis of the taxonomic nomenclature of Benett (1831), and notes and figures of type specimens contained in the collection". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 141. pp. 115–180. JSTOR 4064955.

Torrens, H. S.; Benamy, Elana; Daeschler, E.; Spamer, E.; Bogan, A. (2000). "Etheldred Benett of Wiltshire, England, the First Lady Geologist: Her Fossil Collection in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and the Rediscovery of "Lost" Specimens of Jurassic Trigoniidae (Mollusca: Bivalvia) with Their Soft Anatomy Preserved.". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 150. pp. 59–123. JSTOR 4064955.

Photo credit: Fossils from Wiltshire.  In the foreground are three examples of the echinoid, Cidaris crenularis, from Calne, a town in Wiltshire, southwestern England, with bivalves behind. Caroline Lam, Archivist at the Geological Society, London, UK. http://britgeodata.blogspot.com/2016/03/etheldred-benett-first-female-geologist_30.html

MASSIVE EXTINCT CERVID: THE IRISH ELK

Irish Elk, Megaloceros giganteus

Imagine cresting a windswept hillside in the fading amber of a Pleistocene sunset. 

The tall grass parts in slow ripples, stirred by a warm evening breeze—then by something far larger. An Irish Elk steps into view, a towering ghost from deep time, its silhouette edged with gold.

This magnificent deer—Megaloceros giganteus—was not, in fact, strictly Irish, nor truly an elk. 

It was a giant among cervids, a member of a lineage that roamed from Ireland to Siberia across vast Ice Age steppes. But Ireland’s bogs preserved their remains so exquisitely that the name stuck, and so did the awe.

Irish Elk fossils appear in abundance in the peatlands of Ireland, the loess plains of Eastern Europe, and far into Central Asia. Their lineage traces back to the genus Megaloceros, a group of large deer that emerged around two million years ago. 

What made M. giganteus the superstar of its clan? Two words: monumental antlers.

Irish Elk, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris

Spanning up to 3.7 metres (twelve feet) from tip to tip, the antlers were not simply oversized decoration—they were evolutionary billboards, broadcasting strength, health, and genetic prowess. They also had a hand in their fossil fame. 

When these massive antlers were unearthed centuries ago, early naturalists were convinced they belonged to mythical beasts or antediluvian monsters. 

The truth turned out to be even better: a deer so grand it nearly defied imagination.

Despite their size and majesty, Irish Elk were true deer, closely related to fallow deer and part of an ancient and diverse cervid family. Their bodies were robust, their legs strong and built for open ground, where visibility mattered and where their spectacular antlers could be displayed in their full glory.

But evolution is a dance with the environment, and as the Pleistocene climate fluctuated, the lush grasslands they depended on began to shrink. Their decline wasn’t sudden but drawn out, a slow waltz toward extinction.

The last of these giants fell only a short time ago. We do not know the exact date but the fossils share their stories as more and more are found. The youngest known fossils come from Siberia and date to about 7,700 years ago—well after most Ice Age megafauna had disappeared. 

Irish Elk, Natural History Museum London

By then, humans were spreading across Eurasia, climates were shifting, and dense forests were overtaking open plains. 

A giant deer with enormous antlers was increasingly out of place in a world thick with trees and rife with hunters.

Climate change, habitat loss, and possibly selective hunting all nudged the Irish Elk toward its final chapter. 

They are one of these species that have been talked about as contenders for using DNA to bring them back. 

Today the Irish Elk lives on in museum halls, in bog-darkened bones, and in our imaginations—a giant stepping through grass, pausing on a Pleistocene hillside as if it might turn its head toward us at any moment. There are several Irish Elk in collections and on display at museums around the world where you can view them at your leisure. 

A particularly impressive specimen is on view at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. The museum is a personal favourite of mine and worthy of a visit for its rich history and marvelous fossils, including the Irish Elk you see in the photo above. There are also wonderful examples in the British Museum in London, also worthy of a visit. 

The sheer grandeur of their size is sure to impress you! These beauties are a reminder that the world once held creatures both familiar and impossibly grand.

Illustration Credit: The lead image above was created by the supremely talented Daniel Eskridge, Paleo Illustrator from Atlanta, Georgia, USA. I share it here with permission as I have licensed the use of many of his images over the years, including this one. 

To enjoy his works (and purchase them!) to adorn your walls, visit his website at www.danieleskridge.com