DEINONYCHUS: THE REAL DINOSAUR BEHIND JURASSIC PARK'S RAPTORS

Deinonychus antirrhopus

If you met Deinonychus in the Early Cretaceous, your first thought might be, “What a splendid bird.” 

Your second thought, if you were a small animal, would probably be, “Oh dear.”

Deinonychus antirrhopus was a two-legged, meat-eating dinosaur that lived in what is now North America roughly 115 to 108 million years ago. 

Its name means “terrible claw”, which is charmingly direct for palaeontology. There is no need to work through three layers of Latin to discover that this animal had a rather alarming feature attached to each foot.

On the second toe of each hind foot sat a large, curved claw. Deinonychus could hold that toe off the ground as it moved, keeping the claw ready for action. 

It also had sharp teeth and a long, stiffened tail that helped it balance. Imagine a feathered predator built for agility, with excellent equipment and absolutely no interest in your personal space.

Deinonychus skull

In the 1960s, palaeontologist John Ostrom found Deinonychus fossils in Montana. 

When he described the animal in 1969, its light build and active-looking anatomy challenged the popular image of dinosaurs as slow, lumbering creatures. 

Deinonychus helped set off the “dinosaur renaissance”: a fresh look at how dinosaurs moved, behaved and, eventually, how closely some were related to birds.

That makes it a scientific celebrity, even if Hollywood gave most of its screen time to someone else. 

The famous “Velociraptors” of Jurassic Park drew heavily on Deinonychus. Actual Velociraptor was smaller. Deinonychus, meanwhile, has spent decades watching another dinosaur accept the applause. 

Fossils of Deinonychus have been found alongside the plant-eating dinosaur Tenontosaurus. Researchers have also identified marks on Tenontosaurus bones that they interpret as Deinonychus bites. It seems clear that Tenontosaurus could end up as food. 

Whether Deinonychus hunted it alone, hunted in groups, scavenged it, or did some combination of these remains harder to pin down.

That is the joy and occasional frustration of palaeontology: a fossil can tell us who came to dinner without providing the seating chart.

We also do not have direct fossil feathers from Deinonychus itself. Its close relatives and its place on the dinosaur family tree make a feathered appearance a strong scientific interpretation, though. The scaly movie raptor may have had good lighting, but a fluffy Deinonychus is much closer to how many picture the real animal.

So give Deinonychus its due. It was a formidable Cretaceous predator, a surprise star of dinosaur science and quite possibly the owner of the most consequential toenail in palaeontology. Cute, deadly and a lovely fossil to behold!

KU'MIS: WARRIOR CRAB

Look how epic this little guy is! 

He is a crab — and if you asked him, the fiercest warrior that ever lived. 

While that may not be strictly true, crabs do have the heart of a warrior and will raise their claws, sometimes only millimetres into the air, to assert dominance over their world. 

Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the Phylum Arthropoda. 

In Kwak'wala, the language of the Kwakwaka'wakw of the Pacific Northwest, this brave fellow is ḵ̓u'mis — both a tasty snack and familiar to the supernatural deity Tuxw'id, a female warrior spirit. Given their natural armour and clear bravery, it is a fitting role.

They inhabit all the world's oceans, sandy beaches, many of our freshwater lakes and streams. Some few prefer to live in forests.

Crabs build their shells from highly mineralized chitin — and chitin gets around. It is the main structural component of the exoskeletons of many of our crustacean and insect friends. Shrimp, crab, and lobster all use it to build their exoskeletons.

Chitin is a polysaccharide — a large molecule made of many smaller monosaccharides or simple sugars, like glucose. 

It is handy stuff, forming crystalline nanofibrils or whiskers. Chitin is actually the second most abundant polysaccharide after cellulose. It is interesting as we usually think of these molecules in the context of their sugary context but they build many other very useful things in nature — not the least of these are the hard shells or exoskeletons of our crustacean friends.

Crabs in the Fossil Record

The earliest unambiguous crab fossils date from the Early Jurassic, with the oldest being Eocarcinus from the early Pliensbachian of Britain, which likely represents a stem-group lineage, as it lacks several key morphological features that define modern crabs. 

Most Jurassic crabs are only known from dorsal — or top half of the body — carapaces, making it difficult to determine their relationships. Crabs radiated in the Late Jurassic, corresponding with an increase in reef habitats, though they would decline at the end of the Jurassic as the result of the decline of reef ecosystems. Crabs increased in diversity through the Cretaceous and represented the dominant group of decapods by the end.

We find wonderful fossil crab specimens on Vancouver Island. The first I ever collected was at Shelter Point, then again on Hornby Island, down on the Olympic Peninsula and along Vancouver Island's west coast near Nootka Sound. 

They are, of course, found globally and are one of the most pleasing fossils to find and aggravating to prep of all the specimens you will ever have in your collection. Bless them.

STELLER’S SEA COW: A GENTLE GIANT LOST TO HISTORY

Steller’s sea cow, Hydrodamalis gigas

The Steller’s sea cow, Hydrodamalis gigas, was an enormous marine mammal that once grazed the kelp forests of the North Pacific. 

Closely related to the modern dugong—and more distantly to manatees—it belonged to the order Sirenia, an ancient group of plant-eating mammals whose evolutionary history reaches back more than 50 million years.

Growing to approximately 7.5–9 metres long and weighing several tonnes, Steller’s sea cow was considerably larger than any living sirenian. It possessed a small head, paddle-like forelimbs and a broad, forked tail. Unlike dugongs and manatees, it had no functional teeth. Instead, thick, ridged pads inside its mouth helped it crush and grind kelp.

Its dark, deeply wrinkled hide was reportedly so thick that naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller compared it to the bark of an old oak tree. This was a sensible bit of armour for an animal feeding among sharp rocks, ice and pounding northern surf—but sadly, it offered no protection from hungry sailors carrying harpoons.

The ancestors of Steller’s sea cow evolved in warmer waters. Fossils belonging to its wider hydrodamaline lineage appear in North Pacific rocks dating back to the Miocene Epoch. Over millions of years, these sea cows became increasingly adapted to cooler environments, larger bodies and a diet dominated by kelp.

Fossils of Hydrodamalis and closely related forms have been discovered along the Pacific coasts of Japan, Russia, Alaska, California and Baja California. 

One of its better-known relatives, Hydrodamalis cuestae, lived along the western coast of North America during the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene. These giant sea cows once occupied a much broader area than the tiny refuge in which Europeans eventually encountered them.

Late Pleistocene remains of Hydrodamalis gigas have been recovered from Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The species survived into the Holocene, but its geographic range contracted as sea levels, ocean temperatures and coastal kelp habitats changed following the last Ice Age. 

Fossil remains suggest that scattered populations may have persisted around parts of the Bering Sea long after they disappeared farther south.

Genomic research tells us that the species had experienced a long decline in population size before its final encounter with European hunters. 

By the eighteenth century, its surviving population was already small, isolated and genetically vulnerable. Natural environmental changes may therefore have placed Steller’s sea cow on increasingly thin ecological ice—but humans delivered the final blow.

Western science first learned of the animal in 1741, when Georg Wilhelm Steller observed it around Bering Island in the Commander Islands. Steller was stranded there with survivors of the ill-fated expedition led by Vitus Bering. He carefully documented the enormous animals as they floated close to shore, feeding on kelp in shallow water.

Unfortunately, the sea cows were large, slow, approachable and apparently unable to dive deeply. They also yielded tremendous quantities of meat and fat. Their hides could be fashioned into boats or coverings, while their fat was valued for food and lamp oil. Once Russian fur-hunting crews began visiting the Commander Islands, the animals became convenient floating supply depots.

Hunters harpooned them from small boats and attempted to drag the wounded animals ashore. Many struck sea cows escaped carrying embedded weapons, only to die later. The slaughter was therefore even more wasteful than the number of recovered carcasses suggests.

Their biology offered little chance of recovery. Steller’s sea cows probably matured slowly, produced one calf at a time and depended upon shallow coastal kelp beds. Extinction models indicate that hunters were killing them at many times the population’s sustainable rate. 

Only 27 years after Steller described them, the last reliably recorded individual was killed in 1768.

The commercial hunting of sea otters may also have hastened their disappearance. With fewer otters eating sea urchins, urchin populations could expand and consume more kelp—the very food upon which the sea cows depended. Researchers have modelled this proposed ecological chain reaction, although direct hunting remains the clearest and most immediate cause of extinction.

Steller’s sea cow survived millions of years of climatic change, shifting coastlines and evolving marine ecosystems. It survived the Ice Ages—but it could not survive three decades of industrial-scale human appetite.

GOLDEN TREASURES OF THE FOREST: HUNTING CHANTERELLES ON VANCOUVER ISLAND

Chanterelles: Golden Gems of the Cowichan Forest

Autumn rains drench the mossy forests around Duncan, Cowichan Lake, and Mount Prevost, and suddenly, the forest floor glows with tiny flashes of gold. 

These are the Chanterelle mushrooms—Cantharellus cibarius and its Pacific cousin, C. formosus—fragrant jewels of the woods, with a delicate apricot aroma and buttery, nutty flavor that makes any forager’s heart skip a beat.

Chanterelles thrive in symbiosis with the island’s towering Douglas fir, western red cedar, and hemlock, often tucked beneath sword ferns and huckleberry bushes. 

Their forked gills and wavy, golden caps make them stand out against the deep green and brown of the forest floor—but it takes a sharp eye and a love of wandering to spot them. One sniff of their sweet, fruity scent and you know you’ve found treasure.

These mushrooms are a modern delicacy and ancient residents of the forest. Fossils of their broader group, the Basidiomycota, date back at least 90 million years to the Cretaceous Period, when dinosaurs still roamed. 

While soft-bodied fungi like Chanterelles rarely fossilize, amber-preserved spores and mycorrhizal traces reveal that their underground partnerships with trees were already thriving. Every Chanterelle patch you find today is the living legacy of a lineage that has been nourishing forests for tens of millions of years.

Foraging responsibly is key. Always cut stems rather than pulling mushrooms to protect the underground mycelium. Only take what you can use, and watch out for the False Chanterelle, Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca, its deeper orange hue and true gills are the giveaways. With care, you can savor the golden bounty while keeping the forest alive and thriving.

So lace up your boots, grab a basket, and wander the damp woods around Duncan. When the golden caps peek through moss and leaf litter, you’re not just finding mushrooms—you’re stepping into an ancient forest story, written in gold on the forest floor.

ECHOES OF 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.

RED PANDAS: AN ANCIENT FAMILY IN THE TREETOPS

Red pandas may look like a charming mixture of fox, raccoon and teddy bear, but they are none of the above. 

The red panda, Ailurus fulgens, is the only living representative of the family Ailuridae—an ancient branch of the carnivore family tree with a fossil history stretching back millions of years.

Fossil ailurids first appeared during the Miocene Epoch. 

Their remains have been found across Europe, Asia and North America, showing that the family once enjoyed a much wider distribution than it does today. 

One spectacular relative was Simocyon batalleri, a puma-sized ailurid that lived in Spain during the Late Miocene. 

Fossils show that it possessed an enlarged wrist bone forming a “false thumb,” much like the one living red pandas use to grasp bamboo. 

Because Simocyon was not a dedicated bamboo eater, researchers think this useful bit of anatomy may have evolved for climbing before being repurposed as a dining utensil. Evolution is wonderfully thrifty that way.

Another extinct relative, Pristinailurus bristoli, lived roughly five million years ago in the forested landscape preserved at Tennessee’s Gray Fossil Site. 

Discoveries like this reveal that ancient red panda relatives once scampered through North American forests—not merely the misty mountains of Asia. Research on fossil ailurids and the false thumb

Today, wild red pandas inhabit cool temperate forests along the Himalayas and adjoining mountain ranges in Nepal, Bhutan, India, northern Myanmar and southwestern China. 

They depend on forests with dense bamboo growing beneath the canopy and spend much of their time climbing, feeding or sleeping draped comfortably across a branch. 

Despite belonging to the mammalian order Carnivora and possessing the digestive system of a meat eater, red pandas survive primarily on bamboo. They must eat a great deal of it because their bodies are not particularly efficient at extracting energy from such fibrous food.

Their long, ringed tails help them balance among the branches and can be wrapped around the body like a warm scarf in chilly mountain weather. Their reddish coats may also provide surprisingly effective camouflage among red mosses, lichens and shadowy tree trunks.

Red pandas are generally solitary, excellent climbers and capable of descending trees headfirst by rotating their ankles—an uncommon and very useful trick when your dining room is several metres above the ground. When alarmed, they may rear onto their hind legs to appear larger. 

It is a bold display from an animal weighing only about as much as a well-fed house cat.

Sadly, these remarkable survivors are endangered. Forest loss, habitat fragmentation, livestock pressure and poaching continue to threaten the remaining wild populations. 

The red panda is all that remains of a once widespread evolutionary dynasty—and a very good reason to protect the mountain forests it still calls home.

FOSSILS AND FIRST NATIONS HISTORY: NOOTKA

Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dan Bowen searching an outcrop. Photo: John Fam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know Before You Go — Nootka Trail

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

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

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

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

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.

Pillar Point, Clallam Bay

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.

CHARIOCRINUS: LA BELLE OF THE BALL

Chariocrinus andrae, Collection: David Appleton

Crinoids are one of my favourite echinoderms. 

It is magical when all the elements come together to preserve a particularly lovely specimen in such glorious detail. 

This impressive block, chock full of lovely, well-preserved specimens of the crinoid, Chariocrinus andrae, hails from Bathonian outcrops in Beaune, Saône-et-Loire in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of central-eastern France. 

They are intertwined to cover most of the surface area of the citrus coloured matrix. 

Crinoids are unusually beautiful and graceful members of the phylum Echinodermata. They resemble an underwater flower swaying in an ocean current. But make no mistake they are marine animals. Picture a flower with a mouth on the top surface that is surrounded by feeding arms. Awkwardly, add an anus right beside that mouth. That's him!

Crinoids with root-like anchors are called Sea Lilies. They have graceful stalks that grip the ocean floor. Those in deeper water have longish stalks up to 3.3 ft or a meter in length.

Then there are other varieties that are free-swimming with only vestigial stalks. They make up the majority of this group and are commonly known as feather stars or comatulids. 

Unlike the sea lilies, the feather stars can move about on tiny hook-like structures called cirri. 

It is these same cirri that allow crinoids to latch to surfaces on the seafloor. Like other echinoderms, crinoids have pentaradial symmetry. The aboral surface of the body is studded with plates of calcium carbonate, forming an endoskeleton similar to that in starfish and sea urchins.

These make the calyx somewhat cup-shaped, and there are few, if any, ossicles in the oral (upper) surface, an area we call the tegmen. 

It is divided into five ambulacral areas, including a deep groove from which the tube feet project, and five interambulacral areas between them. 

Crinoids are alive and well today. They are also some of the oldest fossils on the planet. We have lovely fossil specimens dating back to the Ordovician — if one ignores the enigmatic Echmatocrinus of the Burgess Shale. 

And they can be quite plentiful. Crinoid fossils, and in particular disarticulated crinoid columnals, can be so abundant that they at times serve as the primary supporting clasts in sedimentary rocks

This beautiful 7" x 6" piece was photographed in natural sunlight to help show off the amazing detail. Photo and collection of the deeply awesome David Appleton.

RARE MARBLED POLECAT — VORMELA PEREGUSNA

Looking rather like a tiny carnivore dressed for a masquerade ball, the marbled polecat, Vormela peregusna, is a rare member of the weasel family, Mustelidae. 

Its extraordinary coat is patterned in cream, yellow, brown and black, complete with a dark facial mask and white-edged ears. 

Beneath all that finery is a fierce little predator equipped with long digging claws—and scent glands capable of producing a truly appalling smell when danger comes calling.

I had heard an expression once of someone fighting like a polecat and thought nothing of it at the time. It is only recently that I got to see the fossil remains of one of these cuties up close and put that expression and this adorable one together. 

The fossil history of Vormela reaches back to the Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene of Eurasia. Fossils of the extinct Vormela petenyii, a probable ancestral relative of today’s marbled polecat, have been found in Bulgaria. The modern species appeared by around the Pliocene–Pleistocene boundary, roughly 2.6 million years ago.

Marbled polecats are mustelids, making them relatives of weasels, ferrets, badgers and otters. Their closer kin include striped polecats and zorillas—small carnivores that share similarly impressive chemical defences.

Today, these elusive mammals inhabit steppes, dry grasslands and semi-deserts from southeastern Europe through the Middle East and Central Asia to western China. They hunt rodents, birds, reptiles and insects, often sheltering in burrows excavated by their prey. 

Sadly, the marbled polecat is listed as Vulnerable, threatened by habitat loss, agricultural development, rodent-control poisons and declining prey populations. 

Colourful, secretive and powerfully fragrant, this is one little predator you would be extraordinarily lucky to see—and perhaps slightly less lucky to startle.

WHEN DIPLODOCUS CROSSED THE ATLANTIC

Palaeontologists have just identified the first confirmed Diplodocus fossils found outside North America. 

Until this discovery, confirmed Diplodocus fossils were known only from the Morrison Formation of the western United States.

The remains—14 tail vertebrae and several chevron bones—were recovered near El Castellar in Teruel, Spain. 

They belonged to an animal roughly 25 metres long that lived about 150 million years ago.

This is a terrific story because the fossils do more than place a familiar dinosaur somewhere new. They suggest that dinosaurs travelled between North America and Europe while the young Atlantic Ocean was opening, possibly crossing temporary land bridges during periods of lower sea level. 

For more than a century, Diplodocus appeared to be a thoroughly North American dinosaur. 

Its fossils were known from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation of the western United States, where these wonderfully long-necked herbivores wandered across ancient floodplains alongside Stegosaurus, Allosaurus and other familiar Jurassic giants.

Now, Diplodocus has turned up somewhere entirely unexpected: Spain.

Palaeontologists from the Fundación Dinópolis identified 14 exceptionally well-preserved tail vertebrae and several chevron bones from the La Tejería fossil site near El Castellar in Teruel. The bones are about 150 million years old and represent the first confirmed Diplodocus discovered outside North America.

The Spanish animal was no dainty traveller. Researchers estimate that it reached approximately 25 metres in length—about the length of two city buses parked end to end. Most of that impressive silhouette consisted of an extraordinarily long neck and an even longer, whip-like tail, balanced around a comparatively compact body and remarkably small head.

The fossil was identified through distinctive features in its tail bones. These included elongated vertebral centra, large air-filled cavities within the vertebrae, deep grooves along their undersides and forked chevrons. 

Chevrons are bones attached beneath the tail vertebrae that helped protect blood vessels while providing anchoring points for muscles. Together, these anatomical clues placed the Spanish specimen firmly within the genus Diplodocus and close to the North American species Diplodocus hallorum.

Its presence in Spain raises a delicious prehistoric question: how did a dinosaur associated with the American West reach Jurassic Europe?

It did not swim across the modern Atlantic—and frankly, a 25-metre sauropod doing the dog paddle would have been memorable. During the Late Jurassic, the Atlantic Ocean was only beginning to open as the supercontinent Pangaea broke apart. 

North America and Europe were much closer together, and changes in sea level may occasionally have exposed islands or temporary land connections. These routes could have allowed dinosaurs to move between the continents in stages.

The discovery supports growing evidence of faunal exchange between North America and the Iberian Peninsula. 

Dinosaurs with close North American connections, including stegosaurs and large theropods, have also been discovered in Portugal and Spain. Iberia may have acted as an important gateway between ancient continents while the young Atlantic widened around it.

The new specimen also adds to the remarkable collection of giant sauropods known from Teruel. These included Turiasaurus, a massive European sauropod belonging to a very different evolutionary branch, and Losillasaurus, another enormous long-necked herbivore. 

Late Jurassic Spain was evidently not short of giants—or of the vegetation required to keep them fed.

This discovery does not yet tell us whether the Spanish animal belonged to a known species of Diplodocus or represents one that is new to science. More fossils will be needed before researchers can answer that question. The bones nevertheless demonstrate something extraordinary: Diplodocus was not confined to North America after all.

Its enormous feet once touched European soil, and its tail stretched across more than a landscape. It reached across our assumptions about how Jurassic dinosaurs travelled, dispersed and responded to a planet whose continents were slowly becoming worlds apart.

The research was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology on September 15, 2026. 

The original fossils are now displayed at the Museo Aragonés de Paleontología in Dinópolis, Teruel. 

If you're planning a visit, Teruel is about:

• 145 km northwest of Valencia
• 180 km south of Zaragoza
• 300 km east of Madrid

Valencia is the nearest major international city and the most convenient reference point for travelers. It is off the beaten track but worth the trip.

The research was published on September 15, 2026, making it wonderfully fresh. It gives us giant dinosaurs, continental drift, prehistoric migration and a splendid tail—all excellent ingredients for a tasty read.

Here's the paper for your enjoyment: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1143855?utm_source=chatgpt.com

SUGAR GLIDERS: TINY MARSUPIALS WITH THEIR OWN BUILT-IN PARACHUTES

Sugar gliders may look like someone crossed a mouse with a flying squirrel and then equipped it with enormous night-vision goggles, but these remarkable little mammals are neither rodents nor squirrels. 

They are marsupials—pouched mammals belonging to the order Diprotodontia and the family Petauridae.

The true sugar glider, Petaurus breviceps, lives in the forests and woodlands of eastern Australia, primarily along the coastal side of the Great Dividing Range. 

Its closest living relatives include the squirrel glider, Petaurus norfolcensis; yellow-bellied glider, Petaurus australis; mahogany glider, Petaurus gracilis; savanna glider, Petaurus ariel; and Krefft’s glider, Petaurus notatus. 

More distant members of the family include the striped possums and Leadbeater’s possum, Gymnobelideus leadbeateri.

Sugar gliders were once believed to form a single, widely distributed species across Australia and New Guinea. Genetic and anatomical research revealed that several populations formerly called Petaurus breviceps actually represent distinct species. 

The name Petaurus breviceps is now applied more narrowly, while the savanna glider and Krefft’s glider are recognized separately. Taxonomy is a bit like cleaning out an old fossil cabinet: occasionally one label turns out to be covering several different animals.

The fossil history of sugar gliders is somewhat patchy because small forest mammals are not ideal candidates for fossilization. Their delicate bones are easily destroyed, scattered or eaten, and humid forest environments tend to break down organic remains before they can be buried and preserved.

The oldest confidently identified fossils of the genus Petaurus come from the Hamilton Local Fauna of Victoria, Australia. These fossils are approximately 4.46 million years old and date to the early Pliocene. 

Some of the fossil teeth and jaws resemble those of living squirrel gliders, sugar gliders and yellow-bellied gliders, although we need to be cautious as they may represent one variable ancestral species rather than several modern species living side by side.

Fossils attributed to Petaurus breviceps have also been recovered from Pleistocene cave deposits in Australia and New Guinea. 

These younger remains tell us that small gliding possums were already established across the forests of Sahul—the ancient landmass that included Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania—during the Ice Age.

Genetic studies suggest that the evolutionary history of Petaurus is considerably older than its confirmed fossil record. Molecular estimates place the origin of the lineage roughly 24–18 million years ago, during the Miocene or perhaps near the Oligocene–Miocene boundary. 

The gap between DNA estimates and known fossils is not especially surprising: a tiny arboreal marsupial can live an excellent life in the canopy while leaving us almost nothing to work with.

Older possible relatives are known from the extraordinary Oligocene and Miocene deposits at Riversleigh in northwestern Queensland. Some fossils have been proposed as early members or close relatives of the petaurid family, but their exact position remains uncertain because many are represented mainly by isolated teeth and partial jaws. 

Riversleigh preserves ancient rainforest communities dating back tens of millions of years and has helped reveal that many characteristically Australian mammal groups began their evolutionary journeys in lush forests.

GLIDING, NOT FLYING

Sugar gliders cannot produce powered flight like bats. Instead, they possess a sheet of skin called the patagium stretching along each side of the body between the forelimbs and hindlimbs. When a glider leaps from a tree, it spreads its limbs and turns this membrane into a living airfoil.

By adjusting the position of its legs, membrane and long, bushy tail, a sugar glider can steer through the forest and land feet-first on another trunk. Glides of around 50 metres are possible—an impressive commute for an animal that can fit comfortably in two hands.

This resemblance to the flying squirrels of North America and Eurasia is an outstanding example of convergent evolution. Sugar gliders are marsupials, while flying squirrels are placental rodents. 

The two groups evolved their gliding membranes independently because spreading a biological parachute is an extremely useful solution to the problem of moving between widely separated trees.

A SWEET TOOTH—WITH A SIDE OF INSECTS

The “sugar” in their name refers to their fondness for energy-rich foods such as flower nectar, pollen, plant sap and tree gum. Their lower incisors are adapted for gouging bark, allowing them to open feeding wounds and lick up the sap that flows from the tree. They also eat beetles, moths, spiders and other small animals, making them opportunistic omnivores rather than tiny airborne candy addicts.

Sugar gliders are nocturnal and spend the daylight hours sleeping in leaf-lined tree hollows. Several adults and their young may share a nest, helping one another conserve warmth. During cold weather or food shortages, they can enter torpor, temporarily lowering their body temperature and metabolic rate to save energy.

Females possess a pouch in which the extremely undeveloped young complete their early growth. Twins are common, and after leaving the pouch, the youngsters may ride on their mother’s back until they are ready to begin launching themselves through the treetops.

Social groups communicate through scent marking and an impressive collection of barks, chirps, clicks and alarm calls. For something so small and adorable, a displeased sugar glider can produce a startling racket. Think less “pocket fairy” and more “fur-covered security alarm.”

Their enormous forward-facing eyes gather light beneath the forest canopy, while sharp claws and gripping feet help them cling to bark after landing. They are exquisitely adapted to a three-dimensional world of branches, hollows and open air—a world in which the shortest route between two trees is sometimes a spectacular leap into darkness.

Small, social and wonderfully aerodynamic, sugar gliders remind us that evolution does not always require feathers or true wings to conquer the sky. Sometimes all it takes is a membrane, a rudder-like tail and the confidence to hurl yourself out of a perfectly good tree.

WILD BOAR: TUSKED TANKS ON LEGS

If you’ve ever wandered through an old-growth forest at dusk and felt the hair rise on the back of your neck, there’s a chance you were in wild boar country. 

Sus scrofa—the original tusked tank on legs—has patrolled Earth’s forests, river valleys, and reed-bed hideouts for millions of years. 

They are equal parts ecological engineer, chaos generator, and unexpectedly devoted family unit. 

And yes, they make a noise that can peel paint off a tractor: a startled boar will unleash a rapid-fire “gu-gu-GU! gu-gu-GU!” that sounds like a goose having an existential crisis.

Wild boar society runs on a tidy matriarchy. At the heart of each family unit, or sounder, is an experienced sow who leads daughters, sisters, aunties, and a legion of striped piglets who look like tiny, fuzzy watermelons with legs. 

She decides where they forage, when they rest, and which route they will take when danger looms. 

Adult males? They live solo. Lone rangers. Tusky bachelors. Except in the winter rutting season—then they swagger back into the picture like seasonal pop-ups. For a few chilly weeks each year, the woods resound with grunts, squeals, and the thunderous smack of tusks as these wandering bachelors compete for attention. Once the season winds down, they vanish again, leaving the ladies to raise the next generation of mayhem.

Masters of the Zigzag Arts

Wild Boar: Master of the Zigzag Arts

Boars are heavy and agile. Ridiculously so. When alarmed, they don’t run in a straight line but instead zigzag through vegetation like they were designed by someone who couldn’t choose between “tank” and “parkour athlete.” 

One moment the forest looks peaceful; the next, a 200-pound boar is ricocheting between shrubs, logs, and your sense of personal safety with baffling efficiency. 

Their ability to thread themselves through dense underbrush is so impressive that biologists have joked they could qualify for woodland Formula 1—if the cars were shorter, hairier, and had an attitude problem.

Fossil Footsteps Through Deep Time

Wild boar and their ancestors have a long fossil record stretching back into the Miocene, roughly 20 million years ago. The earliest forms of true pigs appeared in Eurasia and Africa, evolving those iconic tusks, robust skulls, and power-shovel snouts over time. Fossilized teeth and bones show us that ancient boar relatives were already formidable omnivores—capable of rooting through everything from forest floors to floodplains. 

By the Pleistocene, they had spread across much of Eurasia, roaming alongside mammoths, cave bears, woolly rhinoceroses, and the occasional baffled early human who probably discovered very quickly that boars are not to be trifled with.

Their endurance is impressive: climate change, glaciations, and human expansion reshaped continents, yet boars persisted—adapting, thriving, and occasionally terrorizing medieval farmers.

Wild Boar Searching for Delicious Snacks

I stumbled across a wild boar in France—completely by accident, as I suspect is the usual way one meets boars. 

I had rented in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, a Provençal town in the department of Vaucluse, southeast France and was just returning from a visit to Le Thor and the Grottes de Thouzon caves. 

As I arrived at my new home for the summer, my peaceful reverie was shattered when the underbrush erupted with the unmistakable “gu-gu-GU!” of a surprised sow. She glared. I froze. 

We stared at each other across a the driveway with mutual alarm. How does one react to seeing a wild boar? Are they dangerous? Do you run or remain calm? I had no idea.

She zigzagged away at high speed; I zigzagged in a different direction, equally fast. 

A moment of cross-species understanding: neither of us wanted anything to do with the other.

Wild boars are living reminders that evolution sometimes produces creatures that are simultaneously brilliant, hilarious, and mildly terrifying. If you ever meet one, the advice from others (received later) is to stay calm, back away slowly, and whatever you do—don’t try to outrun it. 

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.

ANCIENT OCEAN: SWIMMING IN ORDOVICIAN SEAS

Ordovician Seas

Ordovician seas, some 485 to 444 million years ago, were gloriously alive. 

If the Cambrian was Earth's exuberant dress rehearsal for complex life, the Ordovician was opening night. 

The oceans swelled with innovation, diversity, and a cast of characters that would shape marine ecosystems for millions of years to come.

Shallow seas spreading across vast continental shelves. No birds called overhead. No flowers scented the breeze. The continents themselves sat strangely arranged beneath unfamiliar skies. Yet beneath the waves, life flourished in spectacular fashion.

Trilobites scuttled across the seafloor in astonishing variety, from tiny bottom-dwellers to larger, elaborately ornamented species. 

These armoured arthropods had already survived the tumult of the Cambrian and now diversified into an impressive array of ecological roles. Some burrowed through soft mud in search of food; others prowled the sediment surface like ancient vacuum cleaners with very good posture.

Brachiopods carpeted the seabed in their millions. Though often mistaken for clams, these shelled creatures belonged to their own distinctive branch of the animal kingdom. They clustered alongside bryozoans, delicate colonial animals that built intricate lace-like structures across reefs and hard surfaces.

Crinoids — the elegant "sea lilies" of the Paleozoic and a personal fav — anchored themselves to the ocean floor, extending feathery arms into passing currents to capture drifting morsels. Their relatives, the blastoids, added yet another flourish to these underwater gardens.

The reefs themselves looked rather different from today's coral-dominated ecosystems. Massive stromatoporoid sponges and colonial tabulate and rugose corals began constructing complex reef communities that provided shelter for countless marine inhabitants. These early reef systems bustled with life, serving as both refuge and hunting ground.

Drifting through the water column were the graptolites, delicate colonial organisms that floated like tiny biological calligraphy pens across the ancient seas. Their beautifully preserved fossils now help palaeontologists unravel the relative ages of Ordovician rocks around the globe.

And then there were the cephalopods — the undisputed giants of their day.

Fossil Sea Scorpion, Eurypterid

Long before sharks achieved their cinematic reputation, orthoconic nautiloids ruled the Ordovician oceans. 

Some species stretched several metres in length, their straight shells housing agile predators equipped with powerful tentacles and keen senses. 

One can only imagine the unease inspired in smaller marine creatures as these formidable hunters glided silently overhead like underwater submarines of impeccable design.

The earliest jawless fishes also made their appearance during this period. Small and armour-plated, these primitive vertebrates represented humble beginnings for a lineage that would eventually give rise to salmon, sturgeon, dinosaurs, blue whales, and, much later, us hoomins armed with rock hammers.

Impressive sea scorpions, or eurypterids, were there too, though they would reach their greatest diversity later in the Paleozoic. Worms burrowed through the sediment. Sponges filtered the water. Countless tiny plankton drifted through sunlit surface waters, fuelling food webs of increasing complexity.

This flourishing of life became known as the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event — one of the most significant radiations in Earth's history. Marine diversity surged dramatically as ecosystems grew richer and more interconnected. New ecological strategies emerged. Predators became more specialised. Communities became increasingly sophisticated.

Yet even this golden age would not last forever. Like many times in our Earth's history, life on a mass scale was wiped out.

Toward the close of the Ordovician, shifting climates and widespread glaciation triggered one of Earth's great mass extinctions. Sea levels fell. Habitats vanished. Entire lineages disappeared. It was a sobering reminder that life on our planet has always been both resilient and vulnerable.

Still, for tens of millions of years, the Ordovician seas represented one of evolution's great triumphs — an ancient world of trilobite processions, elegant crinoid meadows, drifting graptolite colonies, and giant nautiloid predators patrolling the depths.

Lead Image: Esteban De Armas (#1945617343)

THE QUAGGA: THE ZEBRA WHO MISPLACED ITS STRIPES

The Extinct Quagga, Equus quagga

The quagga was one of southern Africa’s most distinctive grazing animals—a zebra at the front, a chestnut-brown horse at the back, and something of a fashion rebel throughout. 

Its head, neck and shoulders carried dark stripes, while those stripes gradually faded along the body, leaving the hindquarters largely brown and the legs pale.

Once treated as a separate species, the quagga is now generally classified as an extinct southern form of the plains zebra: Equus quagga quagga. 

Genetic research confirms that it was not a strange half-horse or an evolutionary experiment abandoned halfway through painting. It belonged firmly within the plains zebra family and was less genetically distinct from other plains zebras than its unusual coat might suggest.

The deeper fossil history of the quagga requires a little scientific caution. Fossil teeth and bones rarely preserve the coat markings used to recognize the historical quagga. As a result, we can identify remains as plains zebra—Equus quagga—but cannot confidently determine whether they belonged specifically to the quagga subspecies.

Fossils attributed to Equus quagga are found in Pleistocene deposits across Africa, including numerous cave and karst sites in South Africa. 

The species was present in southern Africa by roughly one million years ago, although older African remains extending beyond two million years have sometimes been assigned to it. Some early identifications remain disputed because zebra teeth are frustratingly similar and heavily worn specimens are not always cooperative witnesses.

At South African sites, plains zebras lived alongside the much larger extinct Cape zebra, Equus capensis, as well as three-toed equids such as Eurygnathohippus cornelianus. Fossil zebra remains are especially useful for reconstructing ancient environments because these animals were predominantly grazers. Their presence usually points towards open grasslands with an ample supply of tough, abrasive vegetation.

Genetic evidence suggests that living plains zebra populations expanded from southern Africa approximately 370,000 years ago. The quagga appears to have developed its dramatically reduced striping relatively recently—possibly during the last 120,000 to 290,000 years—as plains zebra populations adapted to different environments across the continent. Its coat was therefore not evidence of an ancient halfway stage between horses and zebras. It was a comparatively recent regional variation on the zebra wardrobe.

Quaggas once roamed the grasslands of what is now South Africa, particularly the Cape and Orange Free State regions. European settlers hunted them heavily for meat and hides and killed them because they were considered competitors with domestic livestock. 

By the late nineteenth century, the wild population had disappeared.

The last known captive quagga, a female held at Amsterdam’s zoological garden, died on August 12, 1883. At the time, people did not fully appreciate that she may have been the final living member of her kind. Extinction has an unpleasant habit of being recognized only after the last hoofbeat has faded.

The quagga did achieve a comeback of sorts a century after its extinction. 

In 1984, researchers recovered and sequenced mitochondrial DNA from preserved quagga tissue. It was the first published DNA sequence obtained from an extinct animal and helped launch the modern field of ancient DNA research.

Later genetic studies using several museum specimens demonstrated that quaggas carried relatively little genetic diversity and belonged within the natural variation of plains zebras. Their famous coat was striking, but genetically they were not separated from other plains zebras by a vast evolutionary canyon.

A selective-breeding programme in South Africa has since produced plains zebras with reduced striping and quagga-like colouring. These animals may recreate aspects of the quagga’s appearance, but they are not resurrected historical quaggas. Selective breeding can retrieve a visible coat pattern; it cannot recover every lost gene, behaviour and ecological relationship of an extinct population.

The quagga’s story is both scientifically fascinating and deeply sobering. It moved from living herds, to museum skins, to fragments of DNA in barely a century. 

Fossils preserve the long evolutionary history of its species, while historical specimens record just how quickly human actions can erase a unique animal from the landscape.

FOSSIL SEA LILLIES: CRINOIDS

Uintacrinus socialis from Utah, USA

Crinoids are one of my favourite echinoderms. It is magical when all the elements come together to preserve a particularly lovely specimen in such glorious detail. 

If you look closely at the detail here you can see a stunning example of Upper Cretaceous, Santonian age, Uintacrinus socialis — named by O.C. Marsh for the Uinta Mountains of Utah nearly 150 years ago.  

These lovelies are best known from the Smoky Hills Niobrara Formation of central Kansas.

Crinoids are unusually beautiful and graceful members of the phylum Echinodermata. They resemble an underwater flower swaying in an ocean current. 

But make no mistake they are marine animals. Picture a flower with a mouth on the top surface that is surrounded by feeding arms. Awkwardly, add an anus right beside that mouth. 

Crinoids with root-like anchors are called sea lilies. They have graceful stalks that grip the ocean floor. Those in deeper water have longish stalks up to 3.3 ft or a meter in length. Then there are other varieties that are free-swimming with only vestigial stalks. They make up the majority of this group and are commonly known as feather stars or comatulids. 

Unlike the sea lilies, the feather stars can move about on tiny hook-like structures called cirri. It is these same cirri that allow crinoids to latch to surfaces on the seafloor. Like other echinoderms, crinoids have pentaradial symmetry. The aboral surface of the body is studded with plates of calcium carbonate, forming an endoskeleton similar to that in starfish and sea urchins.

These make the calyx somewhat cup-shaped, and there are few, if any, ossicles in the oral (upper) surface, an area we call the tegmen. It is divided into five ambulacral areas, including a deep groove from which the tube feet project, and five interambulacral areas between them. 

Crinoids are alive and well today. They are also some of the oldest fossils on the planet. We have lovely fossil specimens dating back to the Ordovician — if one ignores the enigmatic Echmatocrinus of the Burgess Shale. And they can be quite plentiful. Crinoid fossils, and in particular disarticulated crinoid columnals, can be so abundant that they at times serve as the primary supporting clasts in sedimentary rocks.

PTEROSAURS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD

Dsungaripterus weii

Pterosaurs were flying reptiles—not birds, nor dinosaurs—that ruled the skies from the Late Triassic until the end of the Cretaceous, roughly 228–66 million years ago. 

They ranged from tiny, bird-sized fliers to giants such as Quetzalcoatlus northropi, whose wings stretched about 10–11 metres—nearly the span of a small aeroplane.

Their delicate, hollow bones were excellent for flight but dreadful for fossilization, so complete skeletons are rare. 

Pterosaur remains have nevertheless been discovered worldwide, with exceptional fossils coming from China, Germany, Brazil, Britain and North America. Fine-grained lake and lagoon sediments sometimes preserved not only bones, but wing membranes, crests and traces of soft tissue.

At the Shanghai Natural History Museum in China, visitors can see Dsungaripterus weii, a wonderfully peculiar Early Cretaceous pterosaur discovered in Xinjiang’s Junggar Basin. It had a wingspan of roughly three metres, a distinctive crest and powerful jaws with rounded teeth suited to crushing hard-shelled prey.

Pterosaurs may have been built lightly, but their fossil record reveals more than 160 million years of aerial experimentation—from little insect hunters to flying reptiles large enough to cast a truly alarming shadow.

Lead Image: Asset ID: 1082017409