TOROSAURUS: FRILLS, BROW AND HORNS

Torosaurus was a ceratopsian dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous. These fellows look very similar to their Triceratops cousins but are an entirely different species in their own right. 

In 1891, two years after the naming of Triceratops, a pair of ceratopsian skulls with elongated frills bearing holes were found in southeastern Wyoming, Niobrara County, by John Bell Hatcher. 

Hatcher's employer, palaeontologist Professor Othniel Charles Marsh, coined the genus Torosaurus for them. While an estimated 2,000 Triceratops specimens have been collected from the American West, only seven partial skulls of Torosaurus have been found, so they are pretty rare.

Like Triceratops, they had massive skulls. Torosaurus had one of the largest skulls of any known land animal, with the frilled skull reaching 2.77 metres (9.1 ft) in length. Torosaurus were about the same size as Triceratops. 

They had an elongated frill with large openings (fenestrae), long squamosal bones of the frill with a trough on their upper surface, and the presence of five or more pairs of hornlets (epoccipitals) on the back of the frill. Torosaurus also lacked the long nose horn seen in Triceratops prorsus, and instead resembled the earlier and more basal Triceratops horridus in having a short nose horn. Three species have been named, Torosaurus latus, T. gladius and T. utahensis. T. gladius is no longer considered a valid species.

Wyoming Outcrops

The individuals referred to as Torosaurus are all large, comparable to the largest Triceratops specimens. Due to the elongated frill, especially the skull length is considerable. Hatcher estimated the skull of YPM 1830 at 2.2 metres, and of YPM 1831 at 2.35 metres. 

In 1933, Richard Swann Lull increased this to 2.4 metres and 2.57 metres respectively. Based on this, Torosaurus was thought, albeit briefly, to have the longest skull of any known land animal. 

Sixty-five years later in 1998, Thomas Lehman claimed that a Pentaceratops specimen possessed a partial skull that would have been 2.9 metres long in life. This was again doubted by Nicholas Longrich who in 2011 named this exemplar as a separate genus Titanoceratops and concluded its skull had been reconstructed as too long.

In 2006, Andrew Farke, a palaeontologist at the Alf Museum of Paleontology in South Dakota, pointed out that the new skulls described by him were on average even longer than Hatcher's original two: MOR 1122 has a length of 252 centimetres and MOR 981 of 277 centimetres.

Farke’s research interests focus on exploring the Cretaceous continental ecosystems of North America, particularly the ceratopsian (horned) dinosaurs, with active fieldwork in California and Wyoming.

In 2006, Farke published some diagnostic traits of Torosaurus. The frill is extremely long in comparison to the remainder of the skull. The rear, parietal, and edge of the frill bear ten or more epiparietals, triangular osteoderms. A midline epiparietal is absent; likewise, no osteoderm straddles the parietal-squamosal boundary. The parietal bone is thin. It is pierced by parietal fenestrae in the form of circular or transversely oval openings. The parietal bone is about 20% wider than long. 

Farke also identified a single trait in which T. latus differed from both Triceratops horridus and T. utahensis: its squamosal bore a conspicuous ridge on the edge with the parietal combined with a deep longitudinal trough parallel to it.

Farke pointed out that the known Torosaurus specimens are rather variable. The orbital "brow" horns are sometimes large and curved to the front, as with MOR 981, and sometimes short and straight as shown by MOR 1122 and ANSP 15191. 

Also, the position of these horns differs: often they are located directly on top of the eye socket but with YPM 1831 they originate at the rear edge of the orbit. Likewise, there is a variation in the form of the nose horn. YPM 1831 and to a lesser extent YPM 1830 have a straight upright nasal horn but MOR 981, ANSP 15192 and especially MOR 1122 at most possess a low bump. The frill too differs. ANSP 15192 and YPM 1830 have a shield curving upwards at the rear, but the frill of YPM 1831 is nearly flat, though this could be an artefact of restoration. 

The frill of YPM 1831 is also heart-shaped, with a clear midline notch, whereas the rear edge of the other specimens is straight. The frill proportions are quite variable: with YPM 1831 the length-width ratio is 1.26 but MOR 981 has a shield 2.28 times longer than wide. The number of epiparietals is difficult to assess as most fossils seem to have lost them. MOR 981 and MOR 1122 have ten and twelve epiparietals respectively. YPM 1831 has been restored with a fontanelle in the skull roof, which possibly is authentic. Farke also concluded that the degree of variability did not exceed that shown by related genera.

Farke stressed that, apart from the frill, no systematic differences could be found between Torosaurus and Triceratops. All Torosaurus specimens are similar in that they lack a truly long nasal horn and a horizontal arterial groove at the front base of that horn, but Triceratops fossils with the same combination of traits are not uncommon. 

In 2008, Hunt concluded that T. utahensis, contrary to T. latus but similar to Triceratops, possessed a midline epiparietal.

SVALBARD: A WINDOW TO THE END-PERMIAN EXTINCTION EVENT

Trekking in Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic

When the end-Permian extinction struck 252 million years ago, it nearly wiped the slate clean. 

More than 80% of marine species vanished. Coral reefs collapsed. Food webs unraveled. Paleontologists long believed that ocean life, particularly vertebrates, clawed its way back slowly and stepwise, with ecosystems taking millions of years to re-establish complexity.

But new research from the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard is rewriting that narrative.

Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole. One of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas, it's known for its rugged, remote terrain of glaciers and frozen tundra sheltering polar bears, Svalbard reindeer and Arctic foxes. 

It's a place close to my heart as a lover of cold, rugged landscapes and tasty fossils. We've been excavating Jurassic and Triassic marine reptile skeletons here since the early 2000s. 

It is a brutal place to do fieldwork, but the results are worth it, as Aubrey J. Roberts and team (and others) have discovered. The frozen tundra hides the answers to mysteries millions of years in the making.

A study led by Roberts and colleagues reveals a remarkable fossil treasure: a condensed bone bed on the island of Spitsbergen that captures an entire marine ecosystem only ~3 million years after the cataclysmic event. 

Rather than a slow, cautious re-entry into marine ecosystems, vertebrates appear to have surged back in a series of rapid evolutionary radiations—filling ecological niches far sooner than anyone expected.

A Fossil Window Into Early Triassic Seas

The newly described site dates to the early Spathian stage of the Early Triassic (~249 Ma), a time when Earth was still recovering from its worst biological crisis. Yet the bone bed tells a story of surprising ecological richness.

This ecosystem hosted:

• Apex predator ichthyosaurians — large, streamlined marine reptiles at the top of the food chain.
• Small-bodied ichthyopterygians — early relatives of ichthyosaurs, nimble hunters of smaller prey.
• Durophagous ichthyosauriforms — animals with crushing teeth adapted to hard-shelled prey.
• Semiaquatic archosauromorphs — early representatives of a group that later gave rise to crocodiles, dinosaurs, and birds.
• Euryhaline temnospondyls — amphibians comfortable in both fresh and salt water.
• Coelacanths and lungfish — living fossils of a lineage stretching back hundreds of millions of years.
• Ray-finned fish and sharks — the ever-present backbone of marine food webs.

Ichthyosaur Bone Bed

Taken together, these species formed an unexpectedly complex trophic network, one far more diverse and structured than previously assumed for such an early recovery interval.

We had once imagined a slow buildup of post-extinction ecosystems—simple communities giving way to more complex ones as time allowed evolutionary innovation. 

But the Svalbard bone bed challenges this view.

Diversity analyses by Roberts et al. show that heterogeneous marine vertebrate communities were already present by the late-earliest Triassic (Dienerian–Smithian, ~251 Ma).

These fully variegated tetrapod niches were re-established by ~3 million years after the extinction. Meaning vertebrates rebounded quickly, diversifying explosively into vacant ecological spaces left behind by the crisis. The recovery was not slow and linear—it was dynamic, fast, and opportunistic.

The discovery suggests that the complexification of marine ecosystems occurred through rapid radiations, not gradual, stepwise escalation. This is a new vision of our post-extinction oceans.

Picture the Early Triassic seas of Spitsbergen: warm, oxygen-stressed waters swirling with predators and prey, from sleek ichthyosaurs to ancient coelacanths. Against a backdrop of environmental turmoil, these animals built ecosystems every bit as intricate as the ones that existed before the extinction.

The implications reach far beyond Svalbard. They reshape our understanding of how life rebounds from global crises, hinting at a resilience and evolutionary adaptability more powerful than previously imagined.

The world after the end-Permian extinction was bruised, battered, and biologically diminished—but not for long. Within a geological blink, vertebrates were back in force, pioneering new ways of life in oceans still recovering from near-total collapse.

Life, as ever, found a way.

Reference: Earliest oceanic tetrapod ecosystem reveals rapid complexification of Triassic marine communities. https://scim.ag/4i1IKqK

CORDOBA: FOSSILS, ROMANS AND SWEET SECRETS BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

In the sun-warmed hills and river valleys around Córdoba, the rocks are doing what they do best—keeping secrets for half a billion years, then spilling them to anyone curious enough to listen. 

This corner of southern Spain sits tucked into the Baetic Cordillera, a place where continents once nudged, collided, and reshaped the map with slow, relentless determination. Beneath your feet, ancient limestones, marls, and sandstones whisper of vanished seas. 

Wander back into the Paleozoic and you’ll find Córdoba submerged beneath warm, equatorial waters, alive with trilobites scuttling along the seafloor, brachiopods filtering the currents, and crinoids swaying like elegant underwater chandeliers. 

Shift forward into the Mesozoic and Cenozoic and the cast evolves—ammonites coil through ancient oceans, bivalves cluster in quiet seabeds, and microscopic foraminifera quietly log the passing of time in the Guadalquivir Basin. 

It’s a story of rising mountains, retreating seas, and ecosystems endlessly reinventing themselves—layer by lovely layer.

Now, while it is the fossils and geology that drew me here (as they so often do), Córdoba has a way of charming you sideways. Between ancient stones and sunlit streets, you’ll spot something wholly unexpected—old world nuns slipping quietly along the cobbled lanes. 

At the Convento de Santa Isabel, these cloistered women carry on a delicious tradition, crafting sweets from recipes passed down through Roman and Moorish hands. 

You won’t see them when you visit—only a humble room, a price list, and a delightfully mysterious lazy Susan built into the wall. Ring the bell, place your order, spin your coins, and—like magic—confections appear. It’s equal parts ritual and theatre, and entirely delightful.

Beyond the sweets (though truly, do not skip the sweets), Córdoba is a feast in every sense. Try the salmorejo—thick, garlicky, tomato-rich and gloriously simple—an echo of Moorish culinary roots with a modern Andalusian flourish. 

Then wander, because this is a city made for wandering. Roman bridges still stride confidently across the Guadalquivir, defying time with elegant engineering. Convents like Santa Cruz layer centuries of architectural styles—Roman, Muslim, Moorish, Baroque—into something that feels less like a building and more like a conversation across time. 

Everywhere you look, Córdoba reveals itself in pieces: a fossil sea beneath your feet, a Roman arch overhead, and somewhere nearby, a hidden kitchen quietly spinning sugar and history into something sweet.

Roman Bridge on Guadalquivir River, Córdoba

The entire city is walkable and a picture postcard from every view. It is also a lovely testament to Roman engineering and building structures that last. Most of the bridges in Spain and certainly those in Córdoba all hail from Roman times.

The Convento de Santa Cruz, a convent n the historic centre, barrio de San Pedro, Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain, is well worth a visit. It was founded in 1435, by Pedro de los Ríos y Gutiérrez de Aguayo and his wife, Teresa Zurita. 

The building has maintained close ties to the Ríos family who have worked to maintain it. They have added to the complex to interesting effect. It is notable for its originality, its architecture, and the artistic setting. 

These include the cloister, convent, church, house of the novices of the eighteenth century, and courtyard. In the main structure, there are architectural elements in Roman, Muslim, Moorish and Baroque styles, which witness the historic and artistic development of Córdoba. The retablos which decorate the church interior, tiling, and paintings are of note. It was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural site in 2011.

Photos: Nuns taking a stroll & the Roman Bridge on the Guadalquivir River and The Great Mosque — Mezquita Cathedral — at twilight in the city of Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain by the Fossil Huntress.

HORSESHOE CRABS: LIVING FOSSILS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ORANGUTANS: THE FOREST PHILOSOPHERS

High in the emerald canopy, a branch sways and sunlight spills through a mosaic of leaves. There—an orangutan moves with unhurried grace, her long auburn hair catching the light in fiery streaks. 

She pauses, selecting a cluster of figs with deliberate fingers, inspecting each one as though weighing its worth. 

A peel, a bite, a slow, thoughtful chew. She shares these and some tasty leaves with her young who stays close, learning the art of foraging.

Beneath them, the forest hums—cicadas buzz, hornbills beat their wings overhead, and the musk of damp bark and fruit hangs heavy in the air. 

Today, orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus of Borneo and Pongo abelii of Sumatra, with the recently described Pongo tapanuliensis in Sumatra as well) are the only great apes found outside Africa. 

They are primarily arboreal, moving through the canopy with long, flexible arms and an ease born of a life spent above ground. 

Solitary compared to their African cousins, orangutans live in loose social networks, with males maintaining large territories and females caring for their young for up to eight years—the longest period of maternal dependence of any non-human primate. 

Their diet is largely fruit-based, supplemented by leaves, bark, insects, and occasionally small vertebrates.

The story of orangutans stretches back several million years. Their genus, Pongo, is part of the great ape family Hominidae, which also includes chimpanzees, gorillas, and humans. Fossil evidence shows that orangutans were once far more widespread than their current island ranges. 

During the Pleistocene (about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), Pongo species were found across much of Southeast Asia, from southern China to Java. Fossilized teeth and jaw fragments discovered in caves in Vietnam, Laos, and China reveal a larger-bodied orangutan relative, sometimes referred to as Pongo weidenreichi or Pongo hooijeri. These orangutans thrived in forested environments but declined as habitats shifted and humans expanded.

The deeper roots of orangutans trace back to the Miocene epoch (about 23 to 5 million years ago), often called the "Golden Age of Apes." 

During this time, Asia hosted a rich diversity of hominoids. Among the most important to orangutan ancestry are species of the genus Sivapithecus, found in the Siwalik Hills of India and Pakistan. 

Fossils of Sivapithecus dating from 12 to 8 million years ago reveal striking similarities in facial structure to modern orangutans: a concave face, oval-shaped orbits, and narrow interorbital distance. These features strongly suggest that Sivapithecus was a direct ancestor—or at least a very close relative—of modern orangutans.

In contrast, other Miocene apes such as Gigantopithecus blacki, the largest primate ever known, were distant cousins. Fossils of Gigantopithecus, discovered in China and Southeast Asia, show a massive ape up to three meters tall, likely related to orangutans but representing a side branch that went extinct around 300,000 years ago.

Today’s orangutans are the last survivors of a once-diverse Asian ape lineage. Their survival is precarious: deforestation, palm oil plantations, and hunting have driven populations into sharp decline. Where once their ancestors ranged across a continent, now only fragmented pockets of forest in Borneo and Sumatra hold these remarkable primates. 

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: A CENTURY OF WONDER

A century on this Earth, and what a century it has been. Sir David Attenborough turns 100—a milestone that feels almost poetic for a man who has spent his life helping us understand deep time, fragile ecosystems, and the fleeting, extraordinary moment we humans occupy within it all. 

Born in 1926, he grew up in a world still piecing together the story of life on Earth. 

And then, quietly, curiously, he helped tell that story better than anyone who has ever lived.

From the early days of black-and-white broadcasting to the breathtaking high-definition worlds of Planet Earth, Attenborough didn’t just document nature—he invited us into it. He gave voice to the courtship dances of birds-of-paradise, the patient hunt of big cats, the slow, ancient rhythm of forests breathing. He made the hidden visible. He made the distant feel intimate. And somehow, he made science feel like wonder rather than lecture.

His contributions to our understanding of the natural world are immense. Generations have learned about evolution, biodiversity, and the delicate balance of ecosystems through his storytelling. He helped shift public awareness from passive admiration of nature to active concern for its survival. In his later years especially, his voice—gentle, steady, unmistakable—became a clarion call for climate action and conservation. Not alarmist, but deeply honest. Not scolding, but quietly urgent.

And then there is the man himself.

There is something profoundly comforting about David Attenborough. The warmth in his voice. The twinkle of curiosity that never dimmed. The sense that he is still, even now, utterly enchanted by the natural world. That kind of lifelong wonder is rare—and contagious. You listen to him, and suddenly you notice more: the way moss grows along a stone, the flicker of wings overhead, the ancient stories written in rock and bone.

He shares stories with us that reminds us that we are not separate from nature, but part of it—woven into its history, responsible for its future. I have such admiration and respect for that man. 

One hundred years. A life spent in service of curiosity, knowledge, and care for this beautiful, complicated planet.

Happy 100th birthday, Sir David. The world is better, wiser, and infinitely more wondrous because you took the time to show it to us.

SHAGGY TITANS OF THE GRASSLANDS: BISON

Bison move across the prairie like living storms, vast and steady, with the weight of centuries in their stride. 

Their dark eyes hold a quiet, unwavering depth—as if they’ve looked into the heart of time itself and carry its secrets in silence. Look into the eyes of this fellow and tell me you do not see his deep intelligence as he gives the camera a knowing look.

Shaggy fur ripples in the wind, rich and earthy, brushed by sun and shadow, a cloak woven from wilderness. When they breathe, clouds rise in the cold air, soft and ephemeral, like whispered promises that vanish but leave warmth behind.

There is something profoundly romantic in their presence: strength wrapped in gentleness, endurance softened by grace.  To watch them is to feel the wild itself lean closer, reminding us of a love as vast as the horizon, as eternal as the ground beneath our feet.

When we think of bison today, images of great herds roaming the North American plains come to mind—dark, shaggy shapes against sweeping prairies. But the story of bison goes back far deeper in time. 

These massive grazers are part of a lineage that stretches millions of years into the past, their fossil record preserving the tale of their rise, spread, and survival.

Bison belong to the genus Bison, within the cattle family (Bovidae). Their story begins in Eurasia during the late Pliocene, around 2.6 million years ago, when the first true bison evolved from earlier wild cattle (Bos-like ancestors). 

Fossils suggest they descended from large bovids that roamed open grasslands of Eurasia as forests retreated and cooler, drier climates expanded.

The earliest known species, Bison priscus, or the Steppe Bison, was a giant compared to modern bison, sporting long horns that could span over six feet tip to tip. These animals thrived across Europe, Asia, and eventually crossed into North America via the Bering Land Bridge during the Pleistocene Ice Age.

The fossil record of bison stretches back about 2 million years in Eurasia and at least 200,000 years in North America, where they became one of the most successful large herbivores of the Ice Age. Fossil evidence shows that at least seven different species of bison once lived in North America, including the iconic Bison latifrons with its massive horns, and Bison antiquus, which is considered the direct ancestor of the modern American bison (Bison bison).

Some of the richest fossil bison deposits come from Siberia and Eastern Europe – home to abundant Bison priscus fossils, often preserved in permafrost with soft tissues intact. They are also found in Alaska, USA and in Canada's Yukon region – where Ice Age bison fossils are found alongside mammoth, horse, and muskox remains.

The Great Plains of the United States and Canada are rich in Bison antiquus and later species, often in mass bone beds where entire herds perished. We also find their remains in California and the American Southwest at sites like the La Brea Tar Pits. La Brea preserves bison remains from the Late Pleistocene and their museum of the same name has a truly wonderful display of Pleistocene wolves. Definitely worthy of a trip!

One particularly famous fossil site is the Hudson-Meng Bison Kill Site in Nebraska, where remains of over 600 Bison antiquus dating to about 10,000 years ago provide a window into Ice Age hunting practices and herd behavior.

By the end of the Ice Age, many megafauna species disappeared, but bison endured. Bison antiquus gradually gave rise to the modern American bison (Bison bison), which still carries echoes of its Ice Age ancestors. Though smaller than their Pleistocene relatives, today’s bison remain the largest land mammals in North America.

ICE, SNOW AND RHINOS: EPIATHERACERIUM ITJILIK

Julius Csotonyi © Julius Csotonyi

Up in the High Arctic, where the wind cuts clean across a stark polar desert and the ground remembers a very different world, and a most unexpected creature has stepped back into the light.

From ancient lakebed sediments at Haughton Crater on Devon Island in Nunavut comes a beautifully preserved whisper from the Early Miocene — a recently described species of rhinoceros, Epiatheracerium itjilik. 

And not just any rhino, but the northernmost one ever found.

Rhinoceroses, those sturdy browsers we tend to associate with sunbaked savannahs, have a far deeper and more adventurous story. Their lineage stretches back more than 40 million years, once roaming across much of the globe — Europe, North America, Asia — a sprawling dynasty of more than 50 species, now reduced to just five.

Marisa Gilbert and Dr. Danielle Fraser

This Arctic cousin lived some 23 million years ago, in a landscape that would feel almost unrecognizable to us today. 

Where there is now permafrost and silence, there were once temperate forests and freshwater lakes — a place of browsing mammals and quiet, green abundance. 

And this rhino? A curious one.

Smaller, lightly built, and notably hornless, Epiatheracerium itjilik would not have carried the imposing silhouette we imagine. Instead, it likely moved with a gentler presence through its forested home, leaving behind a remarkably complete fossil — nearly 75% of its skeleton recovered, including diagnostic bones such as the teeth, mandibles and parts of the cranium in stunning three-dimensional detail.

Its name, itjilik, meaning “frosty” in Inuktitut, is a fitting nod to both its Arctic resting place and the collaboration with Inuit knowledge holders who helped shape its story. Science, at its best, is a shared endeavour — and this discovery carries that spirit forward beautifully.

Dr. Natalia Rybczynski and Dr. Mary Dawson

By placing this species within the rhino family tree, researchers have uncovered new clues about ancient migration routes — suggesting that rhinoceroses once wandered between Europe and North America via Greenland, long after we thought such pathways had closed.

Even more tantalizing, fragments of ancient proteins have been recovered from its tooth enamel, stretching the limits of how far back we can trace molecular echoes of life. 

These are the quiet revolutions — the kind that reshape how we understand the great unfolding of mammals across time.

Lead Image: Epiatheracerium itjilik standing at the edge of a pool of water in a forested lake habitat, Devon Island, by the superbly talented Julius Csotonyi (© Julius Csotonyi). Here he has chosen to show the plants and animals based on fossils found at the site, including the transitional seal Puijila darwini.

Second Image: Marisa Gilbert (left) and Dr. Danielle Fraser with the fossil of Epiaceratherium itjilik laid out in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Nature. Photo by Pierre Poirier © Canadian Museum of Nature.

Third Image: Dr. Natalia Rybczynski and Dr. Mary Dawson sift fossils at Haughton Crater. Photo by Martin Lipman © Canadian Museum of Nature.

EAGER FORMATION IN THE KTUNAXA HOMELANDS

They rise quietly from the earth—tall, time-carved sentinels shaped by wind, water, and patience. 

They lean, they shift, they endure. Not in haste, never in spectacle, but in a slow and ancient rhythm. 

A dance measured not in years, but in centuries.

Many who pass through call them Hoodoos. But that name only scratches the surface.

For the Ktunaxa People, who have lived with and known this land since time beyond memory, these formations are something far more profound. 

They are the ribs of Yawuʔnik̓—the great water being whose story is woven into the very bones of this landscape. 

Across the Ktunaxa Homelands, these stone forms stand not as curiosities, but as living reminders of Creation, of story, of law, and of relationship.

The land is not a possession to be claimed—it is a relative to be cared for. There is reciprocity here. 

The people depend on the land, and the land, in turn, depends on the people. This balance is held with deep respect, responsibility, and care.

In the time before humans walked this earth, spirit beings governed these homelands. 

Among them was Yawuʔnik̓, whose great size and restless nature brought imbalance. When it was foretold that humans would soon arrive, Naⱡmuqȼin—the Chief of the spirit beings—made a decision. Yawuʔnik̓ must be stopped.

What followed was the Big Chase.

It carved rivers, shaped valleys, and etched movement into the land itself. When Yawuʔnik̓ was finally overcome, Naⱡmuqȼin scattered the remains across the territory. 

Those ribs—weathered, lifted, revealed—are what many now call the Hoodoos. 

They remain throughout ʔaq̓am, Kukamaʔnam, the Columbia Valley, and ʔa·kisk̓aqǂiʔit, standing as markers of that ancient and powerful story.

And then—if you look closely—there are older stories still.

Tucked into a modest roadcut within Ktunaxa territory lies a glimpse into a much deeper past. 

The Lower Cambrian Eager Formation, exposed in small outcrops near Fort Steele and Mount Grainger, holds traces of life from over half a billion years ago. 

These rocks were laid down long before the Big Chase, long before even the earliest human stories—but they rest now within lands that are, and have always been, Ktunaxa.

Even when the fossils we seek predate human presence by unimaginable spans of time, the land they rest in is not empty, not neutral. It is held. It is known. It is cared for. And so we enter gently.

We stopped only briefly—ten quiet minutes. Enough to observe, to photograph, to listen.

Among the fragments were pieces of Olenellus—early trilobites, their forms preserved in stone. Not whole creatures, but traces: moulted shells, shed as they grew. 

Some were slightly warped, their delicate structures bent by ancient currents—perhaps laid down in a restless seabed where sediment shifted and surged.

Olenellus lived in the Early Cambrian, some 542 to 521 million years ago. They were among the early architects of complex life—arthropods with crescent-shaped eyes, a well-formed head shield, and a modest tail. 

The piece held here, a partial cephalon, was likely left behind in the quiet act of growth—a creature stepping, quite literally, out of its former self.

There is something humbling in that.

To stand in a place where deep time and living story meet. Where half-billion-year-old fossils rest within landscapes shaped by spirit beings and cared for by people whose connection to this land runs just as deep—though in different ways.

The Hoodoos, the ribs of Yawuʔnik̓, still rise and shift with the wind.

The trilobites rest, silent witnesses to oceans long gone.

And we—if we are paying attention—arrive not as owners, but as respectful guests.

SEAGRASS, SASS AND SIRENIA

Meet one of the ocean’s more charming lawnmowers — the dugong — an endearing aquatic vacuum with a taste for seagrass and a lineage that runs far deeper than its gentle gaze might suggest.

Like their rounder, paddle-tailed cousins, the manatees, dugongs belong to the order Sirenia — a small but storied group of marine mammals that made the rather bold decision to abandon land for a life at sea. 

They are the last whisper of a once more diverse clan that included the enormous Steller’s sea cow, Hydrodamalis gigas, a North Pacific giant hunted to extinction in the 18th century with disheartening efficiency.

Now, if you’re ever sizing one up in the shallows, there’s a tidy little trick to telling them apart. 

Dugongs sport elegant, whale-like fluked tails with pointed tips, built for steady cruising. Manatees, by contrast, carry broad, paddle-shaped tails — think beaver, but supersized and decidedly less industrious on land.

Dugongs glide through warm coastal waters of northern Australia and across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, favouring sheltered bays, lagoons, and estuaries where seagrass meadows flourish. 

Their bodies are beautifully fusiform — streamlined, torpedo-shaped — lacking both dorsal fins and hind limbs, a design tuned for efficient, unhurried grazing. 

Watching them feed is rather like observing a very polite underwater gardener. They uproot entire seagrass plants, roots and all, leaving tidy feeding trails etched into the seabed.

Seagrass is their preferred fare — low in fibre, rich in nitrogen, and delightfully easy to digest — but they are not above the occasional culinary detour. Algae, invertebrates, sea squirts, shellfish, and even the odd jellyfish have all made appearances on the menu. Opportunistic, but with standards.

Their story stretches back into deep time. The earliest sirenians appear in the Early Eocene, roughly 50 million years ago, when warm, shallow seas lapped across what is now North Africa and the Tethys Sea. 

Fossil forms such as Prorastomus from Jamaica and Pezosiren — a delightfully awkward, semi-aquatic walker — show us the transition from land-dwelling herbivores to fully marine grazers. 

By the Oligocene and Miocene, dugong relatives were widespread, leaving their bones scattered through marine sediments across the Caribbean, North and West Africa, Europe, South Asia, and Australia. Today, their fossilized ribs and dense limb bones — wonderfully heavy for ballast — turn up in ancient seagrass deposits, a quiet record of long-vanished coastal meadows.

And here’s the bit that always gives me pause — these gentle giants can live more than 70 years. Seventy years of slow drifting, grazing, and surfacing for breath. 

They are large, unhurried, and, by all appearances, somewhat ill-equipped for drama: poor eyesight, no real defensive arsenal, and an unfortunate resemblance to a floating buffet.

And yet… they endure.

Though their numbers are in decline — habitat loss, boat strikes, and human pressures taking their toll — dugongs persist in these warm, shallow seas, carrying with them a lineage that has weathered tens of millions of years of planetary change. 

Quiet, resilient, and utterly enchanting.

PSEUDOTHURMANNIA: CRETACEOUS AMMONITE

Meet Pseudothurmannia — one of those marvellous Cretaceous ammonites that looks as though nature spent extra time on the details. 

This extinct cephalopod belongs to the subclass Ammonoidea and is tucked neatly within the family Crioceratitidae, part of the wonderfully curly branch of ammonites known as the Ancylocerataceae. 

A proper pedigree, if ever there was one.

Now, have a look at those shell lines — the intricate, looping seams known as sutures. These are no random squiggles. 

They are the biological fingerprints of ammonites, each species carrying its own signature pattern. To the trained eye, they tell time as neatly as any watchmaker. 

Compare the sutures of this beauty with its kin, and we know Pseudothurmannia cruised ancient seas during the Early Cretaceous, from the Hauterivian through to the Barremian, some 132 to 125 million years ago.

Like its modern cousins — squid, cuttlefish and octopus — this fellow was no passive floater. Hidden within that elegant shell was a sharp, beak-like jaw surrounded by a ring of grasping tentacles. Those arms were built for business, used to seize prey from the water column: plankton, small fish, crustaceans and whatever else wandered too close.

And catching a fish while swimming is no easy business. Try it yourself and report back. Ammonites, however, were masters of the ambush — swift, buoyant, and gloriously well-equipped for life in the open sea. 

For millions of years, they were among the great success stories of the oceans… until, of course, the curtain came down at the end of the Cretaceous.

Within their shells, they had a number of chambers, called septa, filled with gas or fluid that were interconnected by a wee air tube. By pushing air in or out, they were able to control their buoyancy in the water column. 

They lived in the last chamber of their shells, continuously building new shell material as they grew. As each new chamber was added, the squid-like body of the ammonite would move down to occupy the final outside chamber.

Shells of Pseudothurmannia can reach a diameter of about 4–12 centimetres (1.6–4.7 in). They show flat or slightly convex sides, with dense ribs and a subquadrate whorl section.

We find fossils of Pseudothurmannia in Cretaceous outcrops in Antarctica, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Spain, Russia and the United States. The specimen you see here is in the collection of the deeply awesome Manuel Peña Nieto from Córdoba, Spain and is from the Lower Cretaceous of Mallorca.

ANCIENT SWAMPS AND SOLAR FLARES

If fossil fuels are made from fossils, are oil, gas and coal made from dead dinosaurs? Well, no, but they are made from fossils. 

We do not heat our homes or run our cars on dead hadrosaurs. Instead, we burn very old plants and algae. 

It sounds much less exciting, but the process by which algae and other plant life soak up the Sun's energy, store it for millions of years, then give it all up for us to burn as fuel is a pretty fantastic tale.

Fossil fuel is formed by a natural process — the anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms. These plants and algae lived and died many millions of years ago, but while they lived, they soaked up and stored energy from the sun through photosynthesis. 

Picture ancient trees, algae and peat soaking up the sun, then storing that energy for us to use millions of years later. 

These organisms and their resulting fossil fuels are millions of years old, sometimes more than 650 million years. That's way back in the day when Earth's inhabitants were mostly viruses, bacteria and some early multi-cellular jelly-like critters.

Fossil fuels consist mainly of dead plants – coal from trees, and natural gas and oil from algae, a diverse group of aquatic photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms I like to think of as pond scum. These deposits are called fossil fuels because, like fossils, they are the remains of plants and animals that lived long ago.

If we could go back far enough, we'd find that our oil, gas, and coal deposits are really remnants of algal pools, peat bogs and ancient muddy swamps. 

Dead plants and algae accumulate and over time, the pressure turns the mud mixed with dead plants into rock. Geologists call the once-living matter in the rock kerogen. If they haven't been cooked too badly, we call them fossils.

Kerogen is the solid, insoluble organic matter in sedimentary rocks and it is made from a mixture of ancient organic matter. A bit of this tree and that algae all mixed together to form a black, sticky, oily rock. 

The Earth’s internal heat cooks the kerogen. The hotter it gets, the faster it becomes oil, gas, or coal. If the heat continues after the oil is formed, all the oil turns to gas. The oil and gas then seep through cracks in the rocks. Much of it is lost. 

We find oil and gas today because some happened to become trapped in porous, sponge-like rock layers capped by non-porous rocks. We tap into these the way you might crack into a bottle of olive oil sealed with wax.

Fossil fuel experts call this arrangement a reservoir and places like Alberta, Iran and Qatar are full of them. A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface pool of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. 

Petroleum reservoirs are broadly classified as conventional and unconventional reservoirs. In the case of conventional reservoirs, the naturally occurring hydrocarbons, such as crude oil or natural gas, are trapped by overlying rock formations with lower permeability. 

In unconventional reservoirs, the rocks have high porosity and low permeability which keeps the hydrocarbons trapped in place, so these unconventional reservoirs don't need a rock cap.

Fossil Fuels: Coal

Coal is an important form of fossil fuel. Much of the early geologic mapping of Canada — and other countries — was done for the sole purpose of mapping the coal seams. 

You can use it to heat your home, run a coal engine or sell it for cold hard cash. It's a dirty fuel, but for a very long time, most of our industries used it as the sole means of energy. 

But what is so bad about burning coal and other fossil fuels? 

Well, many things...

Burning fossil fuels, like oil and coal, releases large amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere. 

They get trapped as heat, which we call the greenhouse effect. This plays havoc with global weather patterns and our world does not do so well when that happens. 

The massive end-Permian extinction event, the worst natural disaster in Earth's history — when 90% of all life on Earth died —  was caused by massive volcanic eruptions that spewed gas and lava, covering the Earth in volcanic dust, then acid rain. Picture Mordor times ten. This wasn't a culling of the herd, this was full-on decimation. I'll spare you the details, but the whole thing ended poorly.

Dirty or no, coal is still pretty cool. It is wild to think that a lump of coal has the same number of atoms in it as the algae or material that formed it millions of years ago. Yep, all the same atoms, just heated and pressurized over time. When you burn a lump of coal, the same number of atoms are released when those atoms dissipate as particles of soot. 

You may wonder what makes a rock burn. It's not intuitive that it would be possible, and yet there it is. Coal is combustible, meaning it is able to catch fire and burn. Coal is made up mostly from carbon with some hydrogen, sulphur — which smells like rotting eggs — oxygen and nitrogen thrown in.

It is just that the long-ago rain forest was far less dense than the coal you hold in your hand today, and so is the soot into which it dissipates once burned. The energy was captured by the algal pool or rain forest by way of photosynthesis, then that same energy is released when the coal is burnt. So the energy captured in gravity and released billions of years later when the intrinsic gravity of the coal is dissipated by burning. It's enough to bend your brain.

The Sun loses mass all the time because of its process of fusion of atomic content and radiating that energy as light. Our ancient rain forests and algal pools on Earth captured some of it. So maybe our energy transformations between the Earth and the Sun could be seen more like ping-pong matches, with energy, as the ball, passing back and forth.

As mass sucks light in (hello, photosynthesis), it becomes denser, and as mass radiates light out (hello, heat from coal), it becomes less dense. Ying, yang and the beat goes on.

AMMONITES IN CONCRETION

At first glance they look like ordinary stones—rounded, weathered, unassuming. 

But then you notice the delicious hints: a spiral ghosting through the surface, a faint rib, a seam where time is ready to split wide open—it's magic!

Ammonites, long extinct cephalopods, so often appear this way because, shortly after death, their shells became chemical centres of attraction on the seafloor. 

As the soft tissues decayed, they altered the surrounding sediment, triggering minerals—often calcium carbonate or iron-rich compounds—to precipitate rapidly around the shell. 

This early cementation formed a concretion, a protective stone cocoon that hardened long before the surrounding mud was compressed into rock. 

While everything around it flattened, cracked, and distorted under pressure, the ammonite inside remained cradled and whole.

What you see here is a gathering of these time capsules: a cluster of ammonites preserved in their concretions, each one split or weathered just enough to reveal the coiled story within. 

Some are neatly halved, spirals laid bare like fingerprints from ages past; others are only just beginning to show themselves, teasing their presence beneath rough stone skins. 

Together, they tell a familiar fossil-hunter’s tale—of patience, sharp eyes, and the thrill of knowing that this unassuming rock holds an ancient ocean inside.

IN THE FIELD WITH ANY RANDALL: KITSILANO FOSSIL SITE

In the Field with Vancouverite Geoscientist Andy Randell — We were super excited to spend a day with the awesome possum that is Andy Randell filming fossils in the field.

We braved the wet and cold on this fine day to head out in search of fossil plants along the Kitsilano foreshore.

And find them we did! 40 million-year-old pretty as you please plant fossils

The Kitsilano fossil plant sites are intriguing as they hold a mystery... why ONLY plants and NO animal fossils? Nary an insect, mammal or reptile to be found. 

We did find some truly lovely plant fossils that speak to a warmer, wetter environment than the Kitsilano we know today. 

Andy shared that the sediments that lay on the foreshore along Kitsilano Beach are thought to be from the Upper Eocene / Early Oligocene in age (38 to 28 million years old), although opinion varies on the exact age with some folk thinking they may be as much as 40 million-years-old. 

The rocks here are layered in stacks of sand, silt and mudstones associated with a lowland estuarine or deltaic environment. If you look closely, you can see signs of the water meandering into channels and ponds of still water. 

The area would have formed a basin, surrounded by mountains that were drained by rivers into this area. It seems that there are no indications of any marine incursions in the sediment pile, and so the area is assumed to have remained stable for some time.

Plant fossils are common in these beds and are often well preserved. The most common are broadleaved deciduous species such as beech, oak, chestnut and hazel, although several coniferous species are known including redwoods (Sequoia), larch, pine and spruce. The deciduous trees like low, moist landscapes which fit with the basin model. The coniferous species likely lived on the surrounding hills where the ground was somewhat drier and their remains transported by rivers into the depositional basin.

There are also regular signs of burning in the fossils – indicating some kind of forest fire events that must have occurred with some frequency.

You will want to catch his wonderfully engaging interviews. Andy is a professional geologist living in Vancouver who is tailoring his career to bring change to the minerals exploration industry. 

Since 2014, he has established his consulting business, SGDS Hive, which takes on graduate geoscientists and mentors them through a variety of exploration projects to help engage and educate the next generation of geologists. 

Andy is the engine behind Below BC, a non-profit society that provides outreach to the public around Earth Science topics, which now serves several thousand people in British Columbia each year. 

His love of geology and palaeontology started early. Andy is a wealth of knowledge on fossil plants. Growing up on the Isle of Wight, he studied plants that are remarkably similar to those we looked at today—and he is a natural behind the lens!

We were joined by my good friend Lauren, the deeply awesome John Fam, Vice-Chair of the Vancouver Paleontological Society & his two boys, Oliver & Liam. 

It was Liam's first fossil field trip & my 7-month old Flat Coat Retriever's first foray into the field. Both Liam and Coco had a grand time! He found fossils that she inspected and on occasion took a wee bite of to see what all the fuss was about.

We were blessed to have David, Andy's partner, teacher & botany buff, along with their two palaeo puppers — Daisy & Dobby — to complete our escort.

With Andy's guidance, everyone found fossil material and learned a lot about how these fossils were originally laid down in a river system.

A huge thank you to Gabriel Mesquita our talented cinematographer! It was a cold, wet day and the entire crew were troopers. If you are planning to visit the Kitsilano foreshore to look for fossils, know that the stairwell access at the base of Dunbar/Alma Street has been washed away. 

You'll want to head to Waterloo Street and make your way to the beach on the rather steep stairwell found there. Surface collecting is fine at this site. Wear rubber boots and know that the rock is very slippery.

NECKS FOR DAYS: THE LONG GAME OF GIRAFFE EVOLUTION

Tall, spotty, and just a little bit absurd—let’s talk about the giraffe, nature’s own high-rise browser with a flair for the dramatic.

Meet Giraffa camelopardalis, the tallest land animal striding the planet today, reaching a lofty 5–5.5 metres. 

That impossibly long neck? Not a vertebral free-for-all, but the same tidy set of seven cervical vertebrae you and I carry—each one simply stretched into elegant excess. This skyward reach lets them graze on acacia leaves beyond the reach of most herbivores, though it comes with engineering challenges. 

Their hearts—large, muscular, and working against gravity—pump blood up that long column with the help of specialized valves to keep things flowing smoothly when they dip down for a drink. No fainting on the savannah, thank you very much.

Their patchwork coats—those deliciously irregular polygons—are more than just fashion statements. Beneath each patch lies a network of blood vessels that helps regulate body temperature, a built-in cooling system for life under the African sun. 

And while they move with a languid, almost dreamy gait, don’t be fooled—giraffes can bolt at speeds approaching 60 km/h when properly motivated. All elegance, until it’s time to leg it.

Now, let’s wander into deep time, where the giraffe’s family tree gets wonderfully strange. Giraffes belong to the family Giraffidae, a once diverse clan of even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla) that includes their only living relative, the shy, forest-dwelling okapi (Okapia johnstoni). 

But their fossil kin? Oh, they were a motley crew. There’s Sivatherium, a burly, moose-like beast from the Miocene to Pleistocene of Africa and Asia, sporting hefty ossicones and a much shorter neck. Then Samotherium, a mid-Miocene form from Eurasia, showing a modest neck—an evolutionary halfway house on the road to giraffe grandeur. 

And the delightfully odd Bohlinia, from the Late Miocene of Europe and Asia, often cited as one of the closest fossil relatives to modern giraffes, already stretching skyward in anticipation of leaves yet to be munched.

Giraffid fossils pop up across Africa, Europe, and Asia, with their story unfolding from the early Miocene, roughly 20 million years ago. Over time, as climates shifted and habitats opened, longer necks and taller frames proved advantageous—natural selection quietly favouring those who could reach just a little higher than the rest. 

Modern giraffe roams sub-Saharan Africa, from savannahs to open woodlands, while their fossil remains—teeth, limb bones, and those distinctive ossicones—turn up in ancient sediments from Kenya to India, telling a tale of a lineage that once ranged far wider than its current bounds.

And then there’s the business of those necks in combat. Male giraffes engage in “necking,” swinging their heads like slow-motion wrecking balls, using their ossicones as blunt instruments in contests of dominance. It’s part duel, part dance, and entirely mesmerizing.

So here we have them—living periscopes of the savannah, equal parts elegance and evolutionary oddity. A creature that looks almost whimsical at first glance, until you realize it is the finely tuned result of millions of years of adaptation, stretching—quite literally—toward survival.

SALMON CANNERIES IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

Tallheo Cannery

Perched atop weathered, rotting pilings and wrapped in the mist and mood of British Columbia’s wild north coast sits the Tallheo Cannery — a faded red relic standing stubbornly against rain, tide, and time.

It was once a place of steam whistles, clanging machinery, shouted greetings from the docks, and the silver flash of salmon arriving by the boatload from the cold Pacific.

Tallheo rests near the former Nuxalk village of Talyu, at the meeting of the Taleomy and Noerick Rivers where they spill into South Bentinck Arm through Taleomy Narrows. 

It is a place we used see enroute to our favourite fishing spots when I was a child. I heard the stories of its history growing up. How it was once a thriving centre of fish production, along with tales of Talyu and which families used to live here.

This is Nuxalk territory — ancient, rich, and deeply storied. The Nuxalk are a distinct people of this coast, with their own language, traditions, and enduring relationship to land and sea.

Tallheo is the name of a cannery, yes, but it is also the name of a dialect of the Nuxalk language spoken by the Talhyumc people who lived here, and by those at Q'umk'uts' near the Bella Coola River estuary. 

Names matter. They hold memory. They hold history. 

Before European contact, the Nuxalk population was more than 35,000 strong and thriving. Then came disease, violence, and colonial disruption. Smallpox and conflict reduced that number to a devastating few hundred souls. Yet here is the story that matters most: they endured. 

Today the population has rebounded to roughly 3,000 and growing — a powerful testament to resilience, kinship, and cultural strength.

In 1905, Tallheo Cannery opened its doors to the hum and thrum of the industrial age. Founded by a Norwegian immigrant, it employed many local residents — Indigenous and settler alike. 

Boats came heavy with Chinook, Pink, Chum, Sockeye, and Spring salmon, their holds brimming with the wealth of these northern waters.

Inside, skilled hands cleaned, cut, packed, and sealed the catch into tins bound for markets near and far. 

Imagine the delight of some London clerk or prairie farm family cracking open a tin of wild Pacific salmon for the very first time — a taste of the far western edge of Canada.

The canning process itself began in France in the early 1800s, spreading across Europe before arriving in North America. What started as military provisioning became one of the great food revolutions of the modern world. British Columbia embraced it with gusto. 

British Columbia welcomed the first canneries in the 1860s. The industry soon became the bread and butter for many local families and allowed those far from the coast and indeed, across the seas, to dine on fresh-caught salmon. 

At one time, British Columbia boasted more than 200 such canneries. Now, nearly all are gone.

One notable survivor is St. Jean’s Cannery and Smokehouse, the last commercial cannery of its kind in British Columbia. A family favourite in my own household, they once bought oysters and fish from my Uncle Dick and Uncle Doug — transformed into chowders, smoked delicacies, and tins of salmon that sold for a tidy 25 cents each. Honest food. Coastal gold.

St. Jean's got their start selling smoked oysters or smudgies to locals, then expanded to chowder and finally salmon. They were a family favourite of ours growing up on the coast. 

Today, they sell hand-packed wild Pacific salmon, tuna and shellfish in their online store and process fresh-caught salmon from sport fishermen. 

Wild, smoked Pink salmon and wild, skinless, boneless Sockeye salmon will run you $5.95 per tin and wild smoked sockeye a few pennies more at $6.50. They also sell candied salmon, a personal favourite of mine, for $7.95-$27.95 in sealed foil pouches. 

The expansion in products led to an expansion of the business itself. St. Jean's is now in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, a fitting local as this community is known as the Salmon Capital of the World, and Delta along the Fraser Lowland south of the Fraser River in British Columbia's Lower Mainland. 

It would be wonderful to see this industry grow even further to bring back the cannery traditions to British Columbia's wild west coast and the bounty found here.

Today, Tallheo has traded fish barrels for feather duvets. Visitors can stay at the Tallheo Cannery Guest House, a bed and breakfast where one can wander the old cannery grounds, explore the original general store, and soak in the moody grandeur of the north coast.

And perhaps that is fitting.

For places like Tallheo are never truly abandoned. They remain layered with stories — of salmon runs and steam engines, of hard labour and family tables, of loss and endurance, of the Nuxalk people whose roots here run far deeper than any piling driven into the mud.

The tide comes in. The tide goes out. The stories remain and the world evolves.

• References: http://nuxalk.net
• St. Jean's Cannery and Smokehouse: https://stjeans.com
• Tallheo Cannery Guest House: https://www.bellacoolacannery.com
• Alaska Historical Society: https://alaskahistoricalsociety.org/history-in-a-can-2
• The Tyee: https://thetyee.ca/Solutions/2018/08/22/Last-BC-Cannery-Standing/

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.

TERTAPODS AND THE VERTEBRATE HAND

The irresistable tetrapod Tiktaalik

In the late 1930s, our understanding of the transition of fish to tetrapods — and the eventual jump to modern vertebrates — took an unexpected leap forward. 

The evolutionary a'ha came from a single partial fossil skull found on the shores of a riverbank in Eastern Canada. 

Meet the Stegocephalian, Elpistostege watsoni, an extinct genus of finned tetrapodomorphs that lived during the Late Givetian to Early Frasnian of the Late Devonian — 382 million years ago. 

Elpistostege watsoni — perhaps the sister taxon of all other tetrapods — was first described in 1938 by British palaeontologist and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Thomas Stanley Westoll. Westroll was an interesting fellow whose research interests were wide-ranging. He was a vertebrate palaeontologist and geologist best known for his innovative work on Palaeozoic fishes and their relationships with tetrapods. 

Elpistostege watsoni

As a specialist in early fish, Westoll was the perfect person to ask to interpret that single partial skull roof discovered at the Escuminac Formation in Quebec, Canada. 

His findings and subsequent publication named Elpistostege watsoni and helped us to better understand the evolution of fishes to tetrapods — four-limbed vertebrates — one of the most important transformations in vertebrate evolution. 

Hypotheses of tetrapod origins rely heavily on the anatomy of but a few tetrapod-like fish fossils from the Middle and Late Devonian, 393–359 million years ago. 

These taxa — known as elpistostegalians — include Panderichthys, Elpistostege and Tiktaalik — none of which had yet to reveal the complete skeletal anatomy of the pectoral fin. 

Elpistostege watsoni

None until 2010 that is, when a complete 1.57-metre-long articulated specimen was found and described by Richard Cloutier et al. in 2020. 

The specimen helped us to understand the origin of the vertebrate hand. Stripped from its encasing stone, it revealed a set of paired fins of Elpistostege containing bones homologous to the phalanges (finger bones) of modern tetrapods and is the most basal tetrapodomorph known to possess them. 

Once the phalanges were uncovered, prep work began on the fins. The fins were covered in wee scales and lepidotrichia (fin rays). The work was tiresome, taking more than 2,700 hours of preparation but the results were thrilling. 

Origin of the Vertebrate Hand

We could now clearly see that the skeleton of the pectoral fin has four proximodistal rows of radials — two of which include branched carpals — as well as two distal rows organized as digits and putative digits. 

Despite this skeletal pattern — which represents the most tetrapod-like arrangement of bones found in a pectoral fin to date blurring the line between fish and land vertebrates — the fin retained lepidotrichia (those wee fin rays) distal to the radials. 

This arrangement confirmed an age-old question — showing us for the first time that the origin of phalanges preceded the loss of fin rays, not the other way around.

E. watsoni is very closely related to Tiktaalik roseae found in 2004 in the Canadian Arctic — a tetrapodomorpha species also known as a Choanata. These were advanced forms transitional between fish and the early labyrinthodonts playfully referred to as fishapods — half-fish, half-tetrapod in appearance and limb morphology. 

Up to that point, the relationship of limbed vertebrates (tetrapods) to lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygians) was well known, but the origin of major tetrapod features remained obscure for lack of fossils that document the sequence of evolutionary changes — until Tiktaalik. While Tiktaalik is technically a fish, this fellow is as far from fish-like you can be and still be a card-carrying member of the group. 

Tiktaalik roseae

Complete with scales and gills, this proto-fish lacked the conical head we see in modern fish but had a rather flattened triangular head more like that of a crocodile. 

Tiktaalik had scales on its back and fins with fin webbing but like early land-living animals, it had a distinctive flat head and neck. He was a brawny brute. The shape of his skull and shoulder look part fish and part amphibian.

The watershed moment came as Tiktaalik was prepped. Inside Tiktaalik's fins, we find bones that correspond to the upper arm, forearm and even parts of the wrist — all inside a fin with webbing — remarkable! 

Its fins have thin ray bones for paddling like most fish, but with brawny interior bones that gave Tiktaalik the ability to prop itself up, using his limbs for support. I picture him propped up on one paddle saying, "how you doing?" 

Six years after Tiktaalik was discovered by Neil Shubin and team in the ice-covered tundra of the Canadian Arctic on southern Ellesmere Island, a team working the outcrops at Miguasha on the Gaspé Peninsula discovered the only fully specimen of E. watsoni found to date — greatly increasing our knowledge of this finned tantalizingly transitional tetrapodomorph. 

E. watsoni fossils are rare — this was the fourth specimen collected in over 130 years of hunting. Charmingly, the specimen was right on our doorstop — extracted but a few feet away from the main stairs descending onto the beach of Miguasha National Park. 

L'nu Mi’gmaq First Nations of the Gespe’gewa’gi Region

Miguasha is nestled in the Gaspésie or Gespe’gewa’gi region of Canada — home to the Mi’gmaq First Nations who self-refer as L’nu or Lnu. The word Mi’gmaq or Mi’kmaq means the family or my allies/friends in Mi'kmaw, their native tongue (and soon to be Nova Scotia's provincial first language). They are the people of the sea and the original inhabitants of Atlantic Canada having lived here for more than 10,000 years. 

The L'nu were the first First Nation people to establish contact and trade with European explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries — and perhaps the Norse as early as the turn of the Millenium. Sailing vessels filled with French, British, Scottish, Irish and others arrived one by one to lay claim to the region — settling and fighting over the land. As each group rolled out their machinations of discovery, tensions turned to an all-out war with the British and French going head to head. I'll spare you the sordid details but for everyone caught in the crossfire, it went poorly.

North America Map 1775 (Click to Enlarge)

Cut to 1760, the British tipped the balance with their win at the Battle of the Restigouche, the last naval battle between France and England for possession of the North American continent — Turtle Island. 

The bittersweet British victory sparked the American War of Independence. 

For the next twenty years, the L'nu would witness and become embroiled in yet another war for these lands, their lands — first as bystanders, then as American allies, then intimidated into submission by the British Royal Navy with a show of force by way of a thirty-four gun man-of-war, encouraging L'nu compliance — finally culminating in an end to the hostilities with the 1783 Treaty of Paris. 

The peace accord held no provisions for the L'nu, Métis and First Nations impacted. None of these newcomers was Mi'kmaq — neither friends nor allies.

It was to this area some sixty years later that the newly formed Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) began exploring and mapping the newly formed United Province of Canada. Geologists in the New Brunswick Geology Branch traipsed through the rugged countryside that would become a Canadian province in 1867. 

It was on one of these expeditions that the Miguasha fossil outcrops were discovered. They, too, would transform in time to become Miguasha National Park or Parc de Miguasha, but at first, they were simply the promising sedimentary exposures on the hillside across the water —  a treasure trove of  Late Devonian fauna waiting to be discovered.

In the summer of 1842, Abraham Gesner, New Brunswick’s first Provincial Geologist, crossed the northern part of the region exploring for coal. Well, mostly looking for coal. Gesner also had a keen eye for fossils and his trip to the Gaspé Peninsula came fast on the heels of a jaunt along the rocky beaches of Chignecto Bay at the head of the Bay of Fundy and home to the standing fossil trees of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. 

Passionate about geology and chemistry, he is perhaps most famous for his invention of the process to distil the combustible hydrocarbon kerosene from coal oil — a subject on which his long walks exploring a budding Canada gave him a great deal of time to consider. We have Gesner to thank for the modern petroleum industry. He filed many patents for clever ways to distil the soft tar-like coal or bitumen still in use today.

He was skilled in a broad range of scientific disciplines — being a geologist, palaeontologist, physician, chemist, anatomist and naturalist — a brass tacks geek to his core. Gesner explored the coal exposures and fossil outcrops across the famed area that witnessed the region become part of England and not France — and no longer L'nu.

Following the Restigouche River in New Brunswick through the Dalhousie region, Gesner navigated through the estuary to reach the southern coast of the Gaspé Peninsula into what would become the southeastern coast of Quebec to get a better look at the cliffs across the water. He was the first geologist to lay eyes on the Escuminac Formation and its fossils.

In his 1843 report to the Geologic Survey, he wrote, “I found the shore lined with a coarse conglomerate. Farther eastward the rocks are light blue sandstones and shales, containing the remains of vegetables. In these sandstone and shales, I found the remains of fish and a small species of tortoise with fossil foot-marks.”

We now know that this little tortoise was the famous Bothriolepis, an antiarch placoderm fish. It was also the first formal mention of the Miguasha fauna in our scientific literature. Despite the circulation of his report, Gesner’s discovery was all but ignored — the cliffs and their fossil bounty abandoned for decades to come. Geologists like Ells, Foord and Weston, and the research of Whiteaves and Dawson, would eventually follow in Gesner's footsteps.

North America Map 1866 (Click to Enlarge)

Over the past 180 years, this Devonian site has yielded a wonderfully diverse aquatic assemblage from the Age of Fishes — five of the six fossil fish groups associated with the Devonian including exceptionally well-preserved fossil specimens of the lobe-finned fishes. 

This is exciting as it is the lobe-finned fishes — the sarcopterygians — that gave rise to the first four-legged, air-breathing terrestrial vertebrates – the tetrapods. 

Fossil specimens from Miguasha include twenty species of lower vertebrates — anaspids, osteostra-cans, placoderms, acanthodians, actinopterygians and sarcopterygians — plus a limited invertebrate assemblage, along with terrestrial plants, scorpions and millipedes.

Originally interpreted as a freshwater lacustrine environment, recent paleontological, taphonomic, sedimentological and geochemical evidence corroborates a brackish estuarine setting — and definitely not the deep waters of the sea. This is important because the species that gave rise to our land-living animals began life in shallow streams and lakes. It tells us a bit about how our dear Elpistostege watsoni liked to live — preferring to lollygag in cool river waters where seawater mixed with fresh. Not fully freshwater, but a wee bit of salinity to add flavour.  

• Photos: Elpistostege watsoni (Westoll, 1938 ), Upper Devonian (Frasnian), Escuminac formation, Parc de Miguasha, Baie des Chaleurs, Gaspé, Québec, Canada. John Fam, VanPS
• Origin of the Vertebrate Hand Illustration, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2100-8
• Tiktaalik Illustration: By Obsidian Soul - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47401797

References & further reading:

• From Water to Land: https://www.miguasha.ca/mig-en/the_first_discoveries.php
• UNESCO Miguasha National Park: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/686/
• Office of L'nu Affairs: https://novascotia.ca/abor/aboriginal-people/
• Cloutier, R., Clement, A.M., Lee, M.S.Y. et al. Elpistostege and the origin of the vertebrate hand. Nature 579, 549–554 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2100-8
• Daeschler, E. B., Shubin, N. H. & Jenkins, F. A. Jr. A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan. Nature 440, 757–763 (2006).
• Shubin, Neil. Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion History of the Human Body.
• Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03972-8