THE GREAT CLALLAM BAY FOSSIL HEIST

Vertipecten fucanus (Dall, 1900)

Some water-worn samples of the bivalve Verdipectin fucanus, Clallam Formation, Clallam Bay, Washington State. Miocene.

It all began one gloriously sunny summer weekend when the planets aligned, the calendar gods smiled, and my mother and I were simultaneously free. 

Naturally, this meant one thing: we were going fossil hunting. I still get out collecting regularly but back in the day it was every weekend of the year with the bigger trips planned a few years in advance. 

Many of those were "reckie trips" scouting out new localities. The Olympic Peninsula was duly scouted and now it was back to the regular haunts. 

We rattled down through Port Angeles and set up camp at the Lyre River—mosquitoes, campfire smoke, and all the rustic feels. 

I took Mom on a grand tour of my favourite haunts: Majestic Beach (where we found some amazing fossil whale verts), a private-land site with ghost shrimp claws and urchins (with permission), and finally down to Clallam Bay and its dreamy beach exposures.

The Clallam Formation stretches along the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula, tracing the rugged edge of the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Slip Point at the eastern end of Clallam Bay to the headland of Pillar Point. Here, sandstone beds push the coastline outward in a subtle bulge, their weathered flanks dropping abruptly to a broad, wave-washed bedrock platform.

Imagine standing on that foreshore: waves crash rhythmically against the stone, sending up bursts of cool spray. The surf’s deep, steady thunder pulses underfoot, while the sharper cries of gulls wheel above, carried on the wind. The air is rich with the briny scent of kelp and cold saltwater, a sharp, clean smell that settles in the back of the throat. Each retreating wave leaves a gleaming sheen on the rock, swirling with foam before sliding back to the sea.

Its cliffs and tidal benches have long drawn geologists—and especially paleontologists—who were captivated by the formation’s abundance of beautifully preserved fossils. 

William Healey Dall, a pioneering American geologist and paleontologist whose career spanned more than six decades. Dall loved to explore this rugged bit of coastline, studying and describing many of the mollusks now known from the Clallam Formation, adding his work to the early scientific tapestry woven from these windswept rocks.

He became one of the most prolific describers of North Pacific mollusks, naming hundreds of new species—from marine snails and clams to chitons—many of which still bear the names he assigned or honour him through genera such as Dallina and Dallididae. His work laid much of the early scientific foundation for the paleontology of the Pacific Coast.

Retracing his footsteps and to catch the tides just right, we collected in the early afternoon, blissfully unaware that we were setting up the perfect comedy plot twist. 

After a full day of hauling home the ocean’s Miocene leftovers, we decided to stash some of our fossil booty under a log—just until morning. A little paleo treasure cache. Perfectly safe. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

The next morning, we strolled back down the beach, coffees in hand, ready to retrieve our hoard like triumphant pirates.

Enter: A very enthusiastic gaggle of high school students.

There they were, marching toward us, each clutching a fossil like they’d just won the geological lottery. “Look what we found!” they cried, beaming, displaying our carefully cached treasures.

Yes. Our stash. Our carefully curated, lovingly positioned, absolutely-not-meant-for-public-consumption stash.

But honestly? They were so thrilled, we couldn’t help but be charmed. Besides, most of what I collect ends up in museums or teaching collections anyway. These young fossil hunters had simply… expedited the process. Efficient, really.

We gathered the Verdipectin together for one glamorous group photo, wished the kids well, and sent them off with pockets full of deep time. 

And our grand prize for the weekend? Some very fetching water-worn whale vertebrae—one of which was briefly enscripted into service as the crown of the King of the Lemon People, while my mother created elaborate beach sculptures to our shared amusement.. All in all, a perfect weekend.

Image: Vertipecten fucanus (Dall, 1900) is the most characteristic mollusk in assemblages from the Clallam Formation.

BENEATH THE MOSS: THE OLYMPIC PENINSULA

If you’ve ever set foot on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, you know it feels like walking into awe inspiring nature—towering evergreens breathing fog, lush moss, and rivers that coil like dragons guarding secrets. 

What most visitors don’t know is that beneath all that soft green wizardry lies one of the wildest geologic patchwork quilts on the continent, stitched together from bits of wandering seafloor, ancient islands, and the sorts of rocks that only a subduction zone could love.

Let’s start with the big mover and shaker: the Juan de Fuca Plate, Earth’s most polite tectonic dinner guest, eternally slipping under North America with the quiet persistence of someone trying not to disturb the table. 

For millions of years, the seafloor has been bulldozed downward, its sediments scraped off, rolled up, smushed, and plastered onto the edge of the continent. 

This collection of recycled deep-ocean debris—sandstones, shales, basalts, the occasional volcano gone rogue—forms the Olympic Subduction Complex, a name that sounds like a niche gymnastics event but is, in fact, the bedrock of the peninsula.

Musashia, Lower Miocene, Clallam Formation

Now here’s where it gets juicy: among all that tectonic tumbleweed lie fossils. Unexpected fossils. Delightful fossils. Fossils that survived a one-way trip toward the mantle and still managed to hang on long enough for you to admire them.

Take the Makah Formation along the peninsula’s rugged northwest edge—a dramatic stretch where Eocene-age marine rocks (think 35–40 million years old) preserve the remains of ancient deep-water creatures. 

Here you can find the ghostly traces of prehistoric whales, fish, and even the occasional bird that took one wrong turn over the Pacific. 

These fossils are often so beautifully preserved that they look like they’ve been waiting under the waves for their close-up. Look at the amazing preservation in the picture perfect gastropod, Musashia, a type of fossil snail or gastropod, belonging to the subgenus Fulgoraria (Musashia) and are part of the larger family Volutidae. The beauty in my hand here is from the Clallam Formation as is the slightly calcified nautiloid, Arturia angustata, though these lovelies are also found in a few other localities along the Olympic Peninsula. 

The Lower Miocene nautiloid Arturia angustata

Adjacent to it lies the Hoshialeah Formation—a rock unit full of deep-sea turbidites, which are basically underwater avalanches that helpfully sorted fine sediments into perfect fossil-pressing layers. 

These rocks carry delicate impressions of fish scales, plankton, and mysterious organic wisps that paleontologists politely argue about at conferences.

Then there’s the Clallam Formation, where 15–20 million-year-old marine fossils swirl through the beds: clams, scallops, barnacles, sea lions, and whales. It’s like stumbling into a Miocene farmers’ market, except everything is stone and nobody is selling artisanal kelp jam.

And we mustn’t forget the Olympic hotshot of insect fossils, the Quinault Formation, which holds rare impressions of long-lost bugs—those six-legged pioneers of ancient Washington who never got the memo about the coming Ice Ages.

Neah Bay, Washington State

All of this—all this turmoil, uplift, squish, scrape, and tectonic origami—has created the spectacular mountains we see today. 

The Olympics are not volcanoes like their shouty cousins to the east. They’re a colossal jumble of once-submerged strata, hoisted skyward by subduction and then sculpted by glaciers into the moody, mist-laden peaks you hike now.

The delightful part? Because the rocks started underwater, much of the peninsula’s geology reads like a deep-sea diary. Even 7,000-foot peaks contain sedimentary layers that formed far offshore. 

Imagine standing on Hurricane Ridge, a mountain meadow full of wildflowers and marmots, knowing the rocks under your boots once lay on a cold ocean floor full of strange fish and drifting plankton. It’s an excellent perspective check—and a great excuse to tell your hiking companions dramatic stories about continental accretion until they pretend they need to stop for granola.

But here’s the real charm of the Olympic Peninsula: the sense of transformation. Every fossil here survived unimaginable pressure, heat, tectonic shoving, and glacial erosion—yet remains as a whisper from worlds long gone. Their presence is a quiet reminder that resilience is baked into the natural world. Even the humblest shell or fish scale becomes, given enough time and a few kilometres of uplift, a monument to endurance.

Whale Vertebrae from Majestic Beach, Washington

If you happen to be wandering the driftwood-strewn beaches near Neah Bay or tracing the tide lines near Clallam Bay, know that you’re standing on the upturned archives of ancient oceans. 

Somewhere beneath your feet, a whale vertebra or clam shell from 20 million years ago is patiently waiting for erosion—and your curiosity—to set it free.

And that, dear fellow rock-romantic, is the Olympic Peninsula: part rainforest, part mountain kingdom, part fossil cabinet, part tectonic balancing act. 

A place where the past is always underfoot, the present is draped in moss, and the future will probably require rain boots.

ANCIENT ARAGONITE: FOSSIL PEARLS

One of my favourite pairs of earrings are a simple set of pearls. I have worn them pretty much every day since 2016, when I received them as a gift. 

What is it about pearls that makes them so appealing? I am certainly not alone in this. 

A simple search will show you a vast array of pearls being used for their ornamental value in cultures from all over the world. I suppose the best answer to why they are appealing is just that they are. 

If you make your way to Paris, France and happen to visit the Louvre's Persian Gallery, do take a boo at one of the oldest pearl necklaces in existence — the Susa necklace. It hails from a 2,400-year-old tomb of long lost Syrian Queen. It is a showy piece with three rows of 72 pearls per strand strung upon a bronze wire. 

A queen who truly knew how to accessorize. 

I imagine her putting the final touches of her outfit together, donning the pearls and making an entrance to wow the elite of ancient Damascus. The workmanship is superb, intermixing pure gold to offset the lustre of the pearls. 

It is precious and ancient, crafted one to two hundred years before Christ. Perhaps a gift from an Egyptian Pharaoh or from one of the Sumerians, Eblaites, Akkadians, Assyrians, Hittites, Hurrians, Mitanni, Amorites or Babylonian dignitaries who sued for peace but brought war instead. 

Questions, good questions, but questions without answers. So, what can we say of pearls? We do know what they are and it is not glamorous. Pearls form in shelled molluscs when a wee bit of sand or some other irritant gets trapped inside the shell, injuring the flesh. As a defensive and self-healing tactic, the mollusc wraps it in layer upon layer of mother-of-pearl — that glorious shiny nacre that forms pearls. 

They come in all shapes and sizes from minute to a massive 32 kilograms or 70 pounds. While a wide variety of our mollusc friends respond to injury or irritation by coating the offending intruder with nacre, there are only a few who make the truly gem-y pearls. 

These are the marine pearl oysters, Pteriidae and a few freshwater mussels. 

Aside from Pteriidae and freshwater mussels, we sometimes find less gem-y pearls inside conchs, scallops, clams, abalone, giant clams and large marine gastropods.

Pearls are made up mostly of the carbonate mineral aragonite, a polymorphous mineral — the same chemical formula but different crystal structure — to calcite and vaterite, sometimes called mu-calcium carbonate. These polymorphous carbonates are a bit like Mexican food where it is the same ingredients mixed in different ways. Visually, they are easy to tell apart — vaterite has a hexagonal crystal system, calcite is trigonal and aragonite is orthorhombic.

As pearls fossilize, the aragonite usually gets replaced by calcite, though sometimes by vaterite or another mineral. When we are very lucky, that aragonite is preserved with its nacreous lustre — that shimmery mother-of-pearl we know and love.  

Molluscs have likely been making pearls since they first evolved 530 million years ago. The oldest known fossil pearls found to date, however, are 230-210 million years old. 

This was the time when our world's landmass was concentrated into the C-shaped supercontinent of Pangaea and the first dinosaurs were calling it home. 

In the ancient ocean of Panthalassa, ecosystems were recovering from the high carbon dioxide levels that fueled the Permian extinction. Death begets life. With 95% of marine life wiped out, new species evolved to fill each niche.  

While this is where we found the oldest pearl on record, I suspect we will one day find one much older and hopefully with its lovely great-great grandmother-of-pearl intact. 

FOSSILS OF EGYPT — TRACING ANCIENT LIFE FROM SEA TO SAND

Spinosaurus, Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum

Egypt is often celebrated for its pyramids and pharaohs, but beneath those golden sands lies a much older and equally astonishing legacy — the fossil record of a land that has shifted from lush tropical forests to inland seas and back again.

From the Western Desert to the Fayum Depression and Wadi Al-Hitan (the Valley of the Whales), Egypt’s rocks preserve nearly 100 million years of life on Earth, from the Cretaceous dinosaurs that roamed its river plains to the Eocene whales that swam through the Tethys Ocean.

Over the past few posts, we've looked at the geological wonders of Egypt. Here is a deeper look at some of the many interesting fossil species to be found in this rich paleontological playground.

Petrified Wood — A Forest Turned to Stone

Across Egypt’s deserts, the ground often glitters with fossilized trees. The Petrified Wood Protectorate near New Cairo, along the Cairo–Suez road, and wide stretches of the Western Desert are carpeted in ancient trunks and branches turned to stone.

These fossil forests are vivid evidence that much of Egypt was once a humid, tropical landscape, rich with vegetation. The trees, buried in sediments and permineralized over millions of years, became exquisitely preserved in silica. Today, their polished cross-sections shimmer with bands of reds, browns, and golds — a striking reminder of the region’s deep ecological transformations.

Reptiles of the Fayum — Turtles, Crocodiles, and Giants — The Fayum Depression has yielded a wealth of Eocene reptile fossils that speak of a warm, watery world teeming with life. Land tortoises like Testudo ammon roamed the ancient floodplains, while river turtles such as Podocnemis blanckenhorni and Stereogenys pelomedusa swam through slow-moving channels. 

Even more dramatic are the remains of Gigantophis, one of the largest snakes ever discovered, and Tomistoma, a crocodile-like predator from the Qasr al-Sagha Formation. These reptiles hint at an ecosystem that blended mangroves, lagoons, and river deltas — a mosaic of habitats where both freshwater and marine species thrived.

Birds of an Ancient Delta — The Fayum’s fossil beds also record an impressive diversity of Eocene and Oligocene birdlife. The ancient wetlands once supported ospreys (Pandionidae), flamingos (Phoenicopteridae), herons, cranes (Gruidae), cormorants (Phalacrocoracidae), and even the massive shoebilled stork (Balaenicipitidae).

These avian fossils, comparable to species found today around Lake Victoria and the Upper Nile, suggest a vibrant, subtropical ecosystem rich in lakes and marshes — a far cry from the arid desert we see today.

Mammals of the Fayum — Whales, Elephants, and Early Primates

The mammalian fossils of Egypt are among the most extraordinary in the world. In the Fayum Depression and at Wadi Al-Hitan, paleontologists have uncovered a sweeping record of evolution from land to sea and from primitive mammals to the ancestors of modern species.

At Wadi Al-Hitan, skeletons of early whales — Basilosaurus isis, Dorudon atrox, and Phiomicetus — preserve a pivotal evolutionary moment when whales transitioned from walking on land to swimming in the sea. Their long, streamlined bodies and tiny hind limbs are beautiful testaments to nature’s adaptability.

Meanwhile, the terrestrial Fayum deposits reveal a menagerie of early mammals:

• Arsinoitherium, a massive, rhinoceros-like creature with twin horns;
• Moeritherium, a semi-aquatic ancestor of elephants and manatees;
• Palaeomastodon and Phioma, early proboscideans bridging the gap to modern elephants;
• and Megalohyrax, a giant relative of today’s small hyrax.

Carnivorous mammals also prowled these Eocene landscapes — species like Apterodon, Pterodon, and Hyaenodon, formidable predators of their time.

The Fayum Primates — Our Ancient Cousins — Among the Fayum’s most scientifically valuable discoveries are the fossils of early primates, bridging the gap between ancient prosimians and modern monkeys and apes.

From the lower sequence, we find forms like Oligopithecus savagei and Qatrania wingi, while the upper sequence preserves Catopithecus browni, Proteopithecus sylvia, and the well-known Apidium and Parapithecus species.

Perhaps most famous is Aegyptopithecus zeuxis, a small tree-dwelling primate with forward-facing eyes and a relatively large brain. It is often cited as one of the earliest known ancestors of modern Old World monkeys and apes — and, by extension, of humans.

These fossils from the Jebel Qatrani Formation provide an unparalleled window into primate evolution roughly 35 to 30 million years ago, when Africa’s tropical forests were home to our distant kin.

Dinosaurs of the Cretaceous Desert — Long before the whales and primates, Egypt’s landscape was dominated by Cretaceous dinosaurs. The Bahariya Formation and Nubian Sandstone have yielded fossils of immense sauropods and ferocious theropods, painting a vivid picture of life 95 million years ago.

Among the stars of this ancient cast are:

• The long-necked Aegyptosaurus and Paralititan, massive plant-eating sauropods;
• The sleek, predatory Bahariasaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and Deltadromeus;
• The semi-aquatic Spinosaurus, with its iconic sail-backed spine — perhaps one of the most famous dinosaurs to ever emerge from African rock; and Mansourasaurus, a titanosaur discovered more recently, helping to link Africa’s late Cretaceous fauna with those of Europe and Asia.

These finds demonstrate that Egypt was once a fertile delta world of rivers and floodplains, where dinosaurs thrived long before the Sahara turned to sand.

Egypt’s Fossil Sites — Portals Through Time — Key fossil localities across the country continue to reveal Egypt’s ancient ecosystems:

• Wadi Al-Hitan — Eocene marine fossils, including whales and sea cows.
• Fayum Depression — rich terrestrial and freshwater deposits with early mammals and primates.
• Bahariya Formation — famous for Cretaceous dinosaurs and early vertebrates.
• Jebel Qatrani Formation — Oligocene primates and proboscideans.
• Qasr el Sagha Formation — reptiles, turtles, and early crocodilians.
• Upper Cretaceous Phosphates and Variegated Shale — marine invertebrates and early fish.
• Moghra Oasis — Miocene fossils bridging the gap between ancient and modern fauna.
• Queseir Formation — Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) deposit in the Kharga oasis of the Southwestern Desert where the first side-necked turtle Khargachelys caironensis can be found

Egypt’s fossils offer a spectacular narrative of evolution, climate, and change — from swampy Cretaceous river deltas to lush Eocene seas and forests, to the deserts we see today. 

Each discovery connects the story of Earth’s deep past with the land of the Pharaohs, revealing that Egypt’s most enduring monuments are not her pyramids, nor her simple blocks of stone, but the fossils buried them

Image Credit: Spinosaurus at the special exhibit of Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum by Palaeotaku CC BY 4.0

WADI AL-HITAN: VALLEY OF THE WHALES

Egypt’s Eocene limestones captivate geologists and paleontologists from around the world. 

These pale, fossil-rich rocks hold the story of an ancient sea and the remarkable creatures that once swam through it.

Modern fieldwork in the Fayum Depression, Wadi Al-Hitan — the Valley of the Whales — and the outcrops near Giza and Cairo is revealing how the shoreline of the Tethys Ocean shifted over tens of millions of years — and how life adapted as land and sea traded places again and again.

Researchers from the Egyptian Geological Museum, the University of Michigan, and Cairo University are combining cutting-edge tools with time-honored field methods. Satellite imaging and drone photogrammetry provide sweeping, high-resolution views of the fossil beds, while detailed stratigraphic logging, sediment sampling, and fossil excavation bring the story into focus layer by layer.

The work reveals a stunning environmental transformation. The lower rock units record shallow marine deposits packed with Nummulites, corals, and mollusks — life that thrived in the warm, clear waters of the early Eocene Tethys. 

Above these layers, the sediments change in both color and character, grading upward into deltaic and freshwater deposits filled with the fossils of turtles, crocodiles, and early land mammals. It is a geological diary of Egypt’s slow emergence from sea to land.

Wadi Al-Hitan — The Valley of the Whales

Wadi Al-Hitan — The Valley of the Whales

Nestled deep in Egypt’s Western Desert, about 150 kilometers southwest of Cairo, lies Wadi Al-Hitan, one of the world’s most extraordinary fossil sites. 

Once part of the vast Tethys seaway, this now-arid valley was a shallow coastal lagoon some 40 to 50 million years ago, during the Eocene.

Here, teams of paleontologists meticulously map and preserve the articulated skeletons of ancient whales — including Basilosaurus isis and Dorudon atrox — whose bones often lie exactly where the animals came to rest on the seafloor. 

Over time, they were entombed in fine-grained sandstone and limestone, preserving everything from vertebrae and skulls to delicate ribs and vestigial hind limbs.

The surrounding rocks tell a parallel story. Their alternating layers of sandstone, marl, and limestone record shifts in sea level and climate — tidal flats giving way to open marine conditions, then to lagoons choked with vegetation and early mangroves. 

Geochemists analyze the isotopic composition of these sediments to reconstruct ancient seawater temperatures and salinity, while microfossil specialists examine foraminifera and ostracods under the microscope to determine just how deep and warm the waters once were.

Wadi Al-Hitan — The Valley of the Whales

Wadi Al-Hitan’s fossil bounty extends beyond whales. The valley has yielded remains of sharks, sawfish, rays, sea cows (Sirenia), turtles, crocodiles, and even early land mammals, offering a vivid snapshot of an ecosystem in transition — one of the last great marine habitats before North Africa began its slow drift toward desert.

The Valley of the Whales is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, protected both for its breathtaking fossil record and its haunting desert beauty. 

Walking through it feels like time travel: the sandstone cliffs glow golden in the sun, and the bones of whales lie half-exposed in the sand — silent witnesses to a vanished ocean. It is a peaceful place to visit. Bone dry, barren but with a rich history.

Every fossil, every layer of sediment adds a new brushstroke to the portrait of Egypt’s Eocene world — a subtropical paradise where whales swam through mangroves, coral reefs teemed with life, and the ancestors of modern elephants grazed along the shore.

Beneath the desert sands, these rocks still whisper the story of 50 million years of evolution, of seas that rose and fell, and of creatures that bridged the worlds of land and water — all written in stone.

Lead Image Photo Credit: Wadi al-Hitan | Wikimedia Commons

FOSSILS BENEATH THE SANDS: ANCIENT LIFE IN THE GIZA PLATEAU

Fossil Sand Dollar in Limestone

Long before the Nile carved its fertile valley, and before the pyramids rose from the desert sands, Egypt was home to warm tropical seas and lush river deltas teeming with life. 

The rocks surrounding the Giza Plateau preserve fragments of that distant world, offering a window into the deep past beneath one of humanity’s most iconic landscapes.

The limestone used to build the pyramids—particularly the Eocene formations around Giza, Cairo, and Fayum—is packed with marine fossils. 

Most abundant are Nummulites, the large disc-shaped foraminifera that make up much of the Tura limestone. But they are not alone. 

These fossil beds also contain echinoids (sea urchins), gastropods (snails), bivalves (clams), and coral fragments,  showing us the ecosystems that thrived in the shallow, sunlit seas that once lapped across northern Africa some 50 million years ago. 

Just southwest of Giza, the Fayum Depression preserves one of the world’s most remarkable fossil records of Eocene and Oligocene life. 

Eocene Whale, Basilosaurus isis

Here, paleontologists have unearthed the remarkable remains of early whales such as Basilosaurus isis and Dorudon atrox — ancient giants that once ruled the warm, tropical waters of the Tethys Ocean some 40 million years ago. 

These were not the whales we know today, but their distant ancestors, caught in a fascinating stage of evolution as land-dwelling mammals made the final leap to a fully aquatic life.

Basilosaurus, whose name means “king lizard” (a misnomer given before its true identity as a mammal was known), stretched over 18 meters long. 

Its serpentine body, lined with powerful vertebrae, suggests it swam with sinuous, eel-like motions, prowling the ancient seas for prey. Alongside it swam Dorudon, smaller but no less important — a sleek, dolphin-sized whale with sharp conical teeth, thought to have been a juvenile form of Basilosaurus until later discoveries revealed it was a species in its own right.

Both species had vestigial hind limbs — tiny, fully formed legs complete with toes — a beautiful anatomical echo of their terrestrial past. They are some of the clearest fossil evidence of the evolutionary transition from land mammals to marine cetaceans.

The bones of these ancient whales have been found in exquisite detail at Wadi Al-Hitan, the Valley of the Whales, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Egypt’s Western Desert. There, under the scorching desert sun, hundreds of skeletons lie preserved in golden sandstone, exactly where these animals once swam and died. 

The surrounding sediments also hold fossils of early elephants, crocodiles, turtles, and primitive primates, painting a vivid picture of Egypt as a subtropical shoreline rich with mangroves and marine life.

Even closer to Cairo, smaller outcrops of Eocene limestone reveal the same story on a smaller scale—an abundance of microfossils and shell fragments that speak of warm, nutrient-rich waters. These deposits connect the geological dots between Egypt’s marine past and the materials used to build its ancient monuments.

In a poetic sense, the very stones of Giza are part of Egypt’s fossil heritage. The blocks that form Khufu’s pyramid are the lithified remains of ancient organisms that once thrived in the Tethys Sea.

The desert that now seems so still was once a shallow sea teeming with life — a sea whose memory remains written in stone. Every block is a fossil bed in miniature, a silent record of a vanished ocean that endures now as the foundation of one of the greatest wonders of the world.

QUARRYING AND TRANSPORTING STONE IN ANCIENT EGYPT

The Pyramids' Limestone Blocks

The logistics behind pyramid construction were as remarkable as the monuments themselves. 

Ancient engineers worked with simple tools but astonishing coordination. Limestone was quarried at nearby Giza and at Tura, while harder pink granite came from Aswan, nearly 900 kilometers to the south.

Workers carved blocks using copper chisels and dolerite pounders, prying each one free from bedrock. 

The massive stones were then hauled to the Nile on sledges and loaded onto wooden barges for transport downstream. 

Once ashore, vast teams of laborers—possibly tens of thousands—dragged the blocks up a series of sloped ramps lubricated with water or oil to reduce friction.

Recent archaeological finds, including ancient harbor remains at Wadi al-Jarf and the 4,600-year-old papyrus of Merer, reveal a highly organized system of supply chains, record-keeping, and manpower—an early example of state-directed engineering on a grand scale.

The result was not only an enduring monument to human ambition but also one of the most sophisticated construction feats of the ancient world.

THE LOST SEA BENEATH THE PYRAMIDS: THE TETHYS OCEAN

Tethys Ocean

Long before the first pharaohs ruled the Nile, Egypt lay beneath the warm, shallow waters of the Tethys Ocean—a vanished sea that once divided the ancient supercontinents of Gondwana and Laurasia. 

Stretching from what is now the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, the Tethys existed from the late Paleozoic through the early Cenozoic, roughly 250 to 50 million years ago.

The concept of this long-lost ocean was first proposed in 1893 by Austrian geologist Eduard Suess, one of the founders of modern geology. While studying the distribution of marine fossils in rocks found high in mountain ranges such as the Alps and Himalayas, Suess realized that these fossils—corals, ammonites, and foraminifera—must once have lived in a vast tropical sea. 

His revolutionary conclusion: the mountains had been uplifted from the floor of an ancient ocean that no longer existed. He named this vanished sea the Tethys, after the Greek sea goddess and wife of Oceanus.

Evidence for the Tethys Ocean comes from both geology and fossil assemblages. Layers of marine limestone rich in Nummulites, ammonites, and other marine fossils are found across Europe, North Africa, and southern Asia—often thousands of meters above current sea level. 

These rocks record an ocean teeming with life during the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic, later compressed and folded as the African, Indian, and Eurasian plates collided to form the Alps, the Himalayas, and the Zagros Mountains.

Its tropical lagoons once hosted coral reefs, sea urchins, mollusks, and the foraminifera that would later become Nummulites. As these tiny organisms lived, died, and settled onto the seafloor, their calcium carbonate shells accumulated in thick beds of lime mud. Over millions of years, these sediments hardened into the fossil-rich Eocene limestones that now form much of Egypt’s geology—including the very stone quarried for the pyramids of Giza.

Today, the remnants of the Tethys survive as the Mediterranean, Black, Caspian, and Aral Seas, but its story lives on in every fossil-bearing limestone block of the Great Pyramid—a geological time capsule of an ocean that vanished long before humankind emerged.

THE GREAT PYRAMIDS OF GIZA

Aerial View of the Great Pyramids of Giza

From above, the Giza Plateau unfurls like a map of human ambition etched into the desert. 

Three monumental pyramids dominate the landscape — the great limestone giants of Menkaure, Khafre, and Khufu — their geometry so precise that even from orbit they align almost perfectly with the stars of Orion’s Belt.

To the south stands the smallest of the trio, the Pyramid of Menkaure, built for the grandson of Khufu. Its base once gleamed with granite casing stones — a mark of royal distinction. 

Just north of it rises the Pyramid of Khafre, easily recognized by the remnants of its original white Tura limestone casing that still clings to its summit. 

Great Sphinx of Giza

At its feet lies the enigmatic Great Sphinx, carved directly from the bedrock, guarding the necropolis for over four and a half millennia.

Towering above them all is the Great Pyramid of Khufu, or Cheops, the oldest and largest of the three — a structure so immense that it remained the tallest man-made monument on Earth for nearly 4,000 years.

Surrounding these colossal tombs are smaller queens’ pyramids, each one dedicated to the royal consorts who shared the pharaoh’s lineage and legacy. Scattered among them are mastabas — flat-topped rectangular tombs built for nobles, priests, and royal officials who served Egypt’s rulers in life and sought to rest eternally in their shadow. 

From the air, these secondary tombs form a vast honeycomb of stone, extending outward from each pyramid like satellites around a planet, all oriented toward the rising sun and the eternal life it symbolized.

Seen from above, Giza is both breathtaking and humbling — a city of the dead built to last forever, surrounded by desert sands that once lay beneath the warm waves of an ancient sea.

THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZA: FOSSILS IN BUILDING 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.

LIMESTONE AND LIGHT: EGYPT BEFORE THE PHARAOHS

Much of Egypt’s history is carved in her rock. We think of Egypt as ancient—a land of pharaohs, pyramids, and hieroglyphs etched in stone—but the land itself tells a far older story. 

Long before kings rose and dynasties fell, before the Nile carved its fertile ribbon through desert sands, the foundations of Egypt were being forged deep within the Earth.

Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, occupies the northeastern corner of Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula extending beyond the continental boundary into Asia. 

It is bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba and Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. To the north, the Mediterranean Sea opens toward Europe—Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey—while across the Red Sea lies Saudi Arabia and, beyond the Gulf of Aqaba, Jordan.

To understand Egypt’s true antiquity, one must look not to its monuments, but to its bedrock. 

Five hundred kilometres southwest of Cairo, the flat sabkha plains stretch toward the horizon, scattered with wind-polished pebbles and eerie limestone pillars—natural monuments of a different kind. 

This striking karst landscape, weathered by time and the desert’s relentless breath, tells of ancient seas, tectonic upheaval, and long-vanished ecosystems.

Once the breadbasket of the Pharaohs and now scarred by oil pipelines and rusted trucks, this land has seen empires rise and vanish. Beneath the sand and relics of human ambition lies a deeper record—a geological archive of oceans, volcanoes, and shifting continents.

The story begins deep in time, during the Archaean Eon, when the Earth’s crust was first beginning to cool, between 4 and 2.5 billion years ago. The rocks from this period, preserved as ancient inliers in Egypt’s Western Desert, are among the oldest on the African continent. Later, during the Proterozoic, when oxygen was only just beginning to fill the planet’s atmosphere, new rocks were laid down in the Eastern Desert—igneous and metamorphic foundations formed when bacteria and marine algae were the dominant life on Earth.

These ancient crystalline roots form the basement complex upon which Egypt’s later history—both geological and human—would unfold. 

Over this foundation lie younger Palaeozoic sedimentary rocks, followed by widespread Cretaceous outcrops that speak of warm inland seas and lush river deltas. 

Still younger Cenozoic sediments record the rhythmic rise and fall of global sea levels—cycles of transgression and regression that alternately drowned and exposed the land. 

Each layer marks a new chapter in the story of water, time, and transformation. It is from these Cenozoic limestones, formed some 50 million years ago in the shallow seas of the Eocene epoch, that the stones of the Great Pyramids were quarried. Composed largely of the fossilized remains of ancient marine organisms—especially the large, coin-like foraminifera known as Nummulites—these rocks are both geological and biological archives. 

Every pyramid block is built from the remains of an ancient ocean, each fossilized shell a fragment of life that once thrived beneath the waters of the long-vanished Tethys Sea.

The pyramids of Giza, with their luminous exteriors of fine-grained white limestone from the quarries of Tura, stand as enduring testaments to human ingenuity and Earth’s deep-time creativity. They are monuments raised from the bones of microscopic life, shaped by hands that would have been surprised to know they were building with the remnants of a vanished world.

From the glittering deserts of Giza to the fossil beds of the Fayum, Egypt’s landscapes tell stories written in stone—of ancient oceans, shifting continents, and the eternal dialogue between life, death, and time. The Great Pyramid may have been built for eternity, but its foundations were set in motion eons before humanity’s first spark.

Beneath the gaze of the Sphinx and the shadow of Khufu’s towering pyramid, the story of Egypt’s limestone deepens. Those pale, gleaming blocks that once caught the desert sun are more than architectural marvels—they are the fossilized remains of an ancient sea, built from the microscopic shells of creatures that lived and died millions of years before the first pharaoh dreamed of eternity.

It is here, in the very stone of the Great Pyramid, that Egypt’s human history meets Earth’s geological past.

FOSSILS, GLACIERS AND GRIZZLIES: MOUNT ROBSON

Mount Robson

If mountains could preen, Mount Robson would be standing in front of a mirror right now, admiring its reflection in Berg Lake and saying, “Yes, I am the tallest peak in the Canadian Rockies, thank you for noticing.” 

Rising to 3,954 metres, this snow-crowned monarch of the Rockies reigns over Mount Robson Provincial Park—a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most geologically fascinating places in British Columbia. 

It’s a paradise for hikers, geologists, paleontologists, and anyone who’s ever wanted to meet a marmot that looks mildly unimpressed by your trail snacks.

Mount Robson, rises from the Traditional territories of several First Nations, including the Secwépemc (Shuswap), the Ktunaxa, the Lheidli T’enneh, and the Aseniwuche Winewak peoples. 

For millennia, these Nations have travelled, hunted, and held ceremony in the shadow of this sacred mountain, which marks a meeting place of waterways, trade routes, and stories. 

In Secwépemctsin, the mountain is known as Yuh-hai-has-kun, often translated as “The Mountain of the Spiral Road,” a reference to the swirling clouds that frequently wrap around its summit. 

To the First Nations of the region, Mount Robson is a living ancestor, a keeper of weather and water, whose glaciers feed the rivers that sustain salmon, elk, and human life far downstream.

Approaching Mount Robson

But this majestic mountain has a deeper past long before the first humans walked her hills. 

Mount Robson’s story begins more than half a billion years ago, long before its current icy grandeur. Back in the Cambrian and Ordovician, the area that would become the Rockies was a shallow tropical sea—think Bahamas, but with trilobites instead of tourists. 

Fossils near Mount Robson include Ediacaran fossils and Lower Cambrian trilobites. Ediacaran fossils, some of the oldest in the Royal BC Museum's collection, are found at Salient Mountain in Mount Robson Provincial Park. 

The area is also known for well-preserved olenellid trilobites (a personal fav) described by Walcott, which represent a unique subfauna from the upper Lower Cambrian 

Over time, layer upon layer of marine sediments accumulated, forming limestones, dolostones, and shales. These rocks would later be crumpled, twisted, and thrust skyward when the North American plate collided with terranes drifting in from the Pacific.

Mount Robson Park

Those ancient seabed layers form the foundation of Mount Robson itself. The upper slopes consist largely of Cambrian limestone and dolomite, while the base is built of older Precambrian rocks. 

It’s an upside-down cake of deep time—geological inversion courtesy of mountain-building forces so dramatic they’d make a soap opera blush.

Where there’s ancient limestone, there are often fossils—and Robson doesn’t disappoint. Fossilized trilobites, brachiopods, and stromatolites (those beautiful layered mounds built by ancient bacteria) have been found in the area, silent witnesses to an oceanic past. Some outcrops near the park boundary preserve the remains of early marine life forms from the Paleozoic Era—creatures that swam when this landscape was still submerged under saltwater.

While Mount Robson isn’t as famous for its fossil beds as nearby sites like the Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park, paleontologists have long been drawn to the region. Early researchers such as Charles Doolittle Walcott (the same fellow who discovered the Burgess Shale in 1909) made expeditions through the Rockies, mapping, collecting, and occasionally cursing the local mosquitoes. 

More recent work by Canadian geologists and Parks staff continues to uncover fossils that add texture to the province’s complex geological story—a story that stretches from ancient coral reefs to modern alpine tundra.

For those itching to get a closer look (without lugging a rock hammer through a vertical kilometre of switchbacks), Mount Robson Provincial Park offers guided tours and interpretive programs during the summer months. 

Mount Robson

The Robson Visitor Centre—perched right at the base of the mountain—features displays on geology, local fossils, and glaciology. 

Knowledgeable staff can point out safe and accessible fossil-bearing outcrops nearby, though collecting is not permitted within the park.

If you’re keen to dig deeper (figuratively, not literally), groups such as the British Columbia Paleontological Alliance and the BC Fossil Management Office occasionally host field trips and educational events. 

Joining a local paleontology club or volunteering with a regional museum is another way to learn the ropes and handle fossils ethically. You’ll meet passionate experts who can tell a trilobite pygidium from a bit of gravel at ten paces—a skill worth cultivating.

Of course, not all of Mount Robson’s treasures are fossilized. Wildlife photographers come here for the living wonders: mountain goats balancing on impossible ledges, black bears grazing on huckleberries, and elk posing like they’ve just wandered off a nature calendar. 

In the alpine meadows, hoary marmots whistle warnings, Clark’s nutcrackers chatter in the pines, and if you’re lucky, you might glimpse a bald eagle soaring against the glacier-blue sky.

Black Bear

In late summer, the wildflowers turn the meadows into a painter’s palette—Indian paintbrush, fireweed, and glacier lilies sway in the breeze, each one a living descendent of ancient lineages that have persisted through ice ages and uplift. 

It’s hard not to be moved by that sense of continuity, from fossilized coral reefs to alpine blooms, from trilobites to grizzlies.

Mount Robson is a place that humbles even the most talkative geologist. It’s a cathedral of stone and time, shaped by forces far beyond us. 

Whether you come to hike the Berg Lake Trail (currently undergoing restoration after flood damage), marvel at Emperor Falls, or simply sit beside the Fraser River’s headwaters and listen to the water’s cold, glacial song—do so with curiosity and care.

The fossils here remind us that worlds come and go, seas rise and vanish, and yet life continues to adapt, to thrive, and to leave behind beautiful traces.

So pack your camera, your curiosity, and maybe a sense of humour—because if there’s one thing Mount Robson teaches us, it’s that deep time has a way of putting all our little worries into perspective.

Remember, it is illegal to collect or remove any fossils, plants, or rocks from provincial and national parks in Canada. So pack a camera with a good macro lens for any goodies you do find. If you find something significant, report it, but do not collect it. The Fossil Management Office would love to hear of your find. You can reach them at www.gov.bc.ca. If you have GPS in your phone, you can also drop a pin to mark the spot.

• Link to Recreational Fossil Management Guidelines: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/natural-resource-use/land-water-use/crown-land/fossil-management/guidelines_for_recreational_collecting.pdf

BONES, BREATH AND BUFFALO: JOURNEY OF BISON BISON

Across the open grasslands, the earth trembles. A low rumble builds into a rolling thunder as a herd of bison surges across the plain—massive, shaggy, and magnificent. 

Their dark eyes glint beneath heavy brows, breath rising in clouds against the dawn. Each hoof step on the prairie is both ancient and new as the ever-evolving story of the bison unfolds.

The bison—Bison bison—are North America’s great survivors, the largest land mammals on the continent today. Once numbering in the tens of millions, they roamed from Alaska to Mexico, shaping entire ecosystems with their grazing patterns. Their wallows created microhabitats for wildflowers, insects, and birds, while their hooves churned the soil, spreading seeds and rejuvenating the grasslands.

But the story of the bison stretches far deeper into time. Their lineage reaches back more than two million years. Fossils of ancestral species such as Bison priscus, the steppe bison are found across the Pleistocene strata of North America, Europe, and Asia. 

These Ice Age giants crossed the Bering Land Bridge during glacial periods, eventually giving rise to Bison antiquus, a species that roamed the Great Plains alongside mammoths, mastodons, and saber-toothed cats. 

In places like Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming, Rancho La Brea in California, and the Old Crow Basin in Yukon, their bones tell stories of migration, climate change, and resilience.

When the last Ice Age faded, Bison antiquus evolved into the modern plains and wood bison we know today. 

For thousands of years, Indigenous Peoples have lived in relationship with these animals—honouring them as a source of food, clothing, tools, and shelter—and as sacred relatives. 

For many Plains Nations, the bison are central to Creation stories and cultural teachings, symbolizing abundance, respect, and balance with the natural world. 

Every part of the animal is used, and ceremonies of gratitude ensure the cycle of life continues in harmony.

Bison are once again returning to their ancestral lands. Through restoration projects and conservation efforts across North America, herds now graze protected grasslands and reserves. 

Restoration Projects in North America

In Canada, my home, we have both caribou and Bison Restoration Projects ongoing:

Poundmaker Cree Nation (Saskatchewan)

Poundmaker Cree Nation reintroduced plains bison (Bison bison bison) to their traditional territory in 2019. 

The herd represents both cultural renewal and food sovereignty, reconnecting community members to traditional practices and ceremonies involving the buffalo.

Tsuut’ina Nation (Alberta)

The Tsuut’ina Nation has long maintained a strong relationship with bison, working to conserve prairie grasslands and re-establish herds that support ecological balance and cultural revitalization. Their herd is used for both ceremonial and educational purposes.

Łutsel K’e Dene First Nation (Northwest Territories)

Łutsel K’e Dene Guardians work alongside Parks Canada to protect the Atsabya tué, or wood bison, Bison bison athabascae, populations within and around Thaidene Nëné National Park Reserve—an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA).

Piikani Nation & Kainai (Blood Tribe), Blackfoot Confederacy (Alberta)

Members of the Blackfoot Confederacy are deeply involved in the Iinnii Initiative, an international partnership to restore iinnii (bison) to their ancestral range on both sides of the US–Canada border. Their work reconnects land, language, ceremony, and ecological stewardship.

Saulteau and West Moberly First Nations (British Columbia)

These Nations co-lead the Klinse-Za Caribou and Bison Restoration initiatives in the Peace Region. Their conservation leadership helped bring the local wood bison population back from near extinction through habitat protection and collaborative management.

Our neighbours to the south in Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming are making considerable restoration efforts. To all who are doing this important work, I raise my hands in thanks.

GARGOYLEOSAURUS: THE SPIKED GUARDIAN OF THE JURASSIC FOREST

Gargoyleosaurus by Daniel Eskridge

Step back into the lush forests of the Late Jurassic, about 155 million years ago, where ferns brushed the ankles of giants and the air buzzed with the calls of ancient insects. 

In the shade of towering conifers, a low-slung, tank-like creature ambled through the undergrowth — Gargoyleosaurus parkpini, one of the earliest known ankylosaurs.

A quiet forest dweller but no easy meal, Gargoyleosaurus was proof that sometimes survival comes not from speed or strength, but from a good suit of armour.

Unlike its later Cretaceous cousins, Ankylosaurus and Euoplocephalus, this Jurassic pioneer was smaller and a little more lightly built — about 3 metres long and weighing as much as a cow. 

But don’t let that fool you: Gargoyleosaurus was well-defended. Its body was draped in thick, bony plates called osteoderms, and along its flanks ran sharp spikes that would make any hungry predator think twice. 

Its head bore a beaked snout perfect for cropping low-growing plants, and behind that, the skull was crowned with rugged armour that gave the dinosaur its gargoyle-like name.

Fossils of Gargoyleosaurus have been unearthed in Wyoming’s Morrison Formation — the same ancient landscape that hosted Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, and Diplodocus. Imagine this spiky herbivore moving slowly through the ferns while massive sauropods grazed nearby and the shadows of meat-eating theropods flickered between the trees.

As one of the oldest ankylosaurs in the fossil record, Gargoyleosaurus gives us a glimpse into the early evolution of these living fortresses. Its mix of primitive and advanced features — such as an early form of its armored skull — hints at the experimentation nature was doing with defense long before the rise of the tail-club-wielding ankylosaurs of the Cretaceous.

ECHOES FROM THE EOCENE: A WHALE BETWEEN WORLDS

Chrysocetus foudasil 

The impressive skull you see here belongs to Chrysocetus foudasil a member of the Basilosauridae, an ancient family of fully aquatic early whales known as archaeocetes. Though it still bore vestigial hind limbs, it no longer depended on land—a critical evolutionary step from its semi-aquatic ancestors such as Ambulocetus and Protocetus.

Basilosaurids like Chrysocetus, Dorudon, and Basilosaurus ruled the seas of the late Eocene, occupying ecological roles much like today’s dolphins and orcas. 

Basilosaurus grew into a serpent-like giant over 15 meters long, while Dorudon was smaller, sleeker, and likely faster. Chrysocetus was somewhere in between—mid-sized, streamlined, and adapted for powerful undulating swimming.

These early whales represent a pivotal stage in cetacean evolution. They bridge the gap between the land-dwelling artiodactyl ancestors (even-toed ungulates like deer and hippos) and the fully marine mysticetes (baleen whales) and odontocetes (toothed whales) that would later diversify in the Oligocene.

Looking at their remains, we are seeing a window into our world when whales were still learning to be whales—a fleeting evolutionary moment preserved in Moroccan stone, where golden bones tell the story of an ocean in transition.

JOSE BONAPARTE: MASTER OF THE MESOZOIC

José Fernando Bonaparte

One of the most delightful palaeontologists to grace our Earth was José Fernando Bonaparte (14 June 1928 – 18 February 2020). 

We often think of those who have shaped our past and found many of the firsts of their region as living in ancient history, but José left us just this past year in February. 

He was a prolific and hard-working Argentinian palaeontologist who you'll know as the discoverer of some of Argentina's iconic dinosaurs — Carnotaurus, along with Amargasaurus, Abelisaurus, Argentinosaurus and Noasaurus. 

His first love was mammals and over the course of his career, he unearthed the remains of some of the first South American fossil mammals from the Mesozoic. 

Between 1975 and 1977, Bonaparte worked on excavation of the Saltasaurus dinosaur with Martín Vince and Juan C. Leal at the Estancia "El Brete."  Bonaparte was interested in the anatomy of Saltasaurus, particularly the armoured plates or osteoderms embedded in its skin. 

Carnotaurus skull

Based on this discovery, together with twenty examples of Kritosaurus australis and a lambeosaurine dinosaur found in South America, Bonaparte hypothesized that there had been a large-scale migration of species between the Americas at the end of the Mesozoic period.

The supercontinent of Pangea split into Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south during the Jurassic. During the Cretaceous, South America pulled away from the rest of Gondwana. 

The division caused a divergence between the northern biota and the southern biota, and the southern animals appear strange to those used to the more northerly fauna. 

Bonaparte's finds illustrate this divergence. His work is honoured in his moniker given to him by palaeontologist Robert Bakker — "Master of the Mesozoic."

HEMICHORDATE HERITAGE: GRAPTOLITES

From the dark shales of the Piranha Formation in Bolivia comes a striking fossil — Isograptus cf. maximus, a graptolite from the Middle Ordovician (Dapingian Stage), some 470 million years ago. 

This specimen, preserved in exquisite detail, is a window into the complex colonial life forms that once drifted through the ancient oceans of Gondwana.

Graptolites (Graptolita) were colonial marine animals, each “colony” composed of numerous tiny individuals called zooids that lived within cup-like structures known as thecae. These thecae were arranged along a central organic skeleton called the stipe, forming intricate branching or saw-blade–like patterns. For centuries, graptolites puzzled paleontologists — were they plants, corals, or something else entirely? 

Early researchers classified them as hydrozoans, but modern studies using ultrastructural and biochemical evidence have firmly placed them within the phylum Hemichordata, closely related to modern pterobranchs such as Rhabdopleura. This group, in turn, shares a distant ancestry with the vertebrates, linking these delicate fossils to our own deep evolutionary story.

In life, many graptolites were planktonic, drifting through Ordovician seas suspended from delicate threads or attached to floating seaweed, catching microscopic food particles as they went. Others were benthic, anchored to the seafloor by root-like structures. 

When they died, their lightweight colonies slowly sank to the ocean floor. Over time, fine muds buried them, and the soft organic skeletons became flattened and carbonized, leaving the characteristic dendritic or “tuning fork” impressions we see in shale today.

The diversity of graptolite morphology is remarkable — from the feathery fronds of Dictyonema to the elegant bifurcations of Didymograptus murchisoni. 

Isograptus cf. maximus, however, stands out even among this varied group. With its bold, symmetrical “wings,” it bears an uncanny resemblance to a stylized emblem — reminiscent of the Batman symbol, the Panem Mockingjay of The Hunger Games, or even an abstract eagle in flight. These forms, though purely natural, invite the human imagination to see something mythic in their symmetry.

This particular specimen, now part of the superb private collection of Gilberto Juárez Huarachi of Tarija, Bolivia, showcases the grace and geometric beauty that made graptolites not only essential tools for Ordovician biostratigraphy but also enduring icons of paleontological art. 

Long extinct, they nonetheless continue to “signal” to us across deep time — reminders of the ancient, drifting colonies that once filled the world’s primordial seas. And, they will always be a favourite of mine as finding my first graptolite remains one of my fondest paleo moments!