THE CURIOUS TALE OF THE FOSSIL RHINO

The Miocene pillow basalts from the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area of central Washington hold an unlikely fossil. 

What looks to be a rather unremarkable ballooning at the top of a cave is actually the mould of a small rhinoceros, preserved by sheer chance as its bloated carcass sunk to the bottom of a shallow lake just prior to a volcanic explosion.

We have known about this gem for a long while now. The fossil was discovered by hikers back in 1935 and later cast by the University of California palaeontologists in 1948. 

The Dirty Thirties & The Great Depression

These were the Dirty Thirties and those living in Washington state were experiencing the Great Depression along with the rest of the country and the world. Franklin D. Roosevelt was President of the United States, navigating the States away from laissez-faire economics. 

Charmingly, Roosevelt would have his good name honoured by this same park in April of 1946, a few years before researchers at Berkeley would rekindle interest in the site.

Both hiking and fossil collecting was a fine answer to these hard economic times and came with all the delights of discovery with no cost for natural entertainment. And so it was that two fossil enthusiast couples were out looking for petrified wood just south of Dry Falls on Blue Lake in Washington State. 

While searching the pillow basalt, the Frieles and Peabodys came across a large hole high up in a cave that had the distinctive shape of an upside-down rhinoceros.

This fossil is interesting in all sorts of ways. First, we so rarely see fossils in igneous rocks. As you might suspect, both magma and lava are very hot. Magma, or molten rock, glows a bright red/orange as it simmers at a toasty 700 °C to 1300 °C (or 1300 °F to 2400 °F) beneath the Earth's surface.

A Rhinoceros Frozen in Lava

During the late Miocene and early Pliocene, repeated basaltic lava floods engulfed about 63,000 square miles of the Pacific Northwest over a period of ten to fifteen million years. After these repeated bathings the residual lava accumulated to more than 6,000 feet.

As magma pushes up to the surface becoming lava, it cools to a nice deep black. In the case of our rhino friend, this is how this unlikely fellow became a fossil. Instead of vaporizing his remains, the lava cooled relatively quickly preserving his outline as a trace fossil and remarkably, a few of his teeth, jaw and bones. The lava was eventually buried then waters from the Spokane Floods eroded enough of the overburden to reveal the remains once more.

Diceratherium tridactylum (Marsh, 1875)

Diceratherium (Marsh, 1875) is known from over a hundred paleontological occurrences from eighty-seven collections.

While there are likely many more, we have found fossil remains of Diceratherium, an extinct genus of rhinoceros, in the Miocene of Canada in Saskatchewan, China, France, Portugal, Switzerland, and multiple sites in the United States.

He has also been found in the Oligocene of Canada in Saskatchewan, and twenty-five localities in the United States — in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming.  

Diceratherium was a scansorial insectivore with two horns and a fair bit of girth. He was a chunky fellow, weighing in at about one tonne (or 2,200 lbs). That is about the size of a baby Humpback Whale or a walrus.

Back in the Day: Washington State 15 Million-Years Ago

He roamed a much cooler Washington state some 15 million years ago. Ice dams blocked large waterways in the northern half of the state, creating reservoirs. Floodwaters scoured the eastern side of the state, leaving scablands we still see today. In what would become Idaho, volcanic eruptions pushed through the Snake River, the lava cooling instantly as it burst to the surface in a cloud of steam. 

By then, the Cascades had arrived and we had yet to see the volcanic eruptions that would entomb whole forests up near Vantage in the Takama Canyon of Washington state. 

Know Before You Go

You are welcome to go see his final resting site beside the lake but it is difficult to reach and comes with its own risks. Head to the north end of Blue Lake in Washington. Take a boat and search for openings in the cliff face. You will know you are in the right place if you see a white "R" a couple hundred feet up inside the cliff. Inside the cave, look for a cache left by those who've explored here before you. Once you find the cache, look straight up. That hole above you is the outline of the rhino.

If you don't relish the thought of basalt caving, you can visit a cast of the rhino at the Burke Museum in Seattle, Washington. They have a great museum and are pretty sporting as they have built the cast sturdy enough for folk to climb inside. 

The Burke Museum 

The Burke Museum recently underwent a rather massive facelift and has re-opened its doors to the public. You can now explore their collections in the New Burke, a 113,000 sq. ft. building at 4300 15th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105, United States. Or visit them virtually, at https://www.burkemuseum.org/

Photo: Robert Bruce Horsfall - https://archive.org/details/ahistorylandmam00scotgoog, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12805514

Reference: Prothero, Donald R. (2005). The Evolution of North American Rhinoceroses. Cambridge University Press. p. 228. ISBN 9780521832403.

Reference: O. C. Marsh. 1875. Notice of new Tertiary mammals, IV. American Journal of Science 9(51):239-250

Lincoln, Roosevelt and Recovery from The Great Depression

Rural Tennessee has electricity for the same reason Southeast Alaska has totem parks. In order to help the nation recover from The Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, created a number of federal agencies to put people to work. From 1938-1942 more than 200 Tlingit and Haida men carved totem poles and cleared land for the Civilian Conservation Corps in an effort to create “totem parks” the federal government hoped would draw travelers to Alaska.

This odd intersection of federal relief, Alaska Native art and marketing is the subject of Emily L. Moore’s book “Proud Raven, Panting Wolf: Carving Alaska’s New Deal Totem Parks.”

This effort to bring poles out of abandoned villages includes the Lincoln Pole being moved to Saxman Totem Park by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), who established the Saxman Totem Park in 1938.  

The top carving on the Lincoln Pole bears a great likeness of Abraham Lincoln. According to the teachings of many Tlingit elders, this carving was meant to represent the first white man seen in Tlingit territory in the 18th century.  

A century later, in the 1880s, one of my ancestors from the Gaanax.ádi Raven clan of the Tongass Tlingit commissioned the pole to commemorate our ancestor's pride to have seen this first white man—which has become a Gaanax.ádi crest—using a photograph of Abraham Lincoln as the model. 

It is important not only for these various readings of the crests but also because it claims Gaanax.ádi clan territory before the first Europeans and budding Americans came to these shores—territory that Tlingit carvers who were re-carving the pole in the 1940s were trying to assert to the U.S. government as sovereign land.

Interestingly, another pole in that same park is the Dogfish Pole, carved for Chief Ebbits Andáa, Teikweidi, Valley House. The Chief Ebbits Memorial Pole—the Dogfish Kootéeyaa Pole—was raised in 1892 in Old Tongass Village in honour of a great man, Head Chief of the Tongass and my ancestor. It was then moved, re-carved and re-painted at Saxman Totem Park in 1938 as part of Roosevelt's program—and it due to be re-carved again this year. 

It tells the story of his life and the curious way he became Ebbits as he was born Neokoots. He met and traded with some early American fur traders. One of those traders was a Mister Ebbits. The two became friends and sealed that friendship with the exchanging of names.  

If you would like to read more about that pole and others, I recommend, The Wolf and the Raven, by anthropologist Viola Garfield and architect Linn Forrest (my talented cousin), published in 1961 and still in print as I ordered a copy for a friend just this year.

DEVONIAN SEAS: THE AGE OF FISHES

Slip beneath the surface of a Devonian sea—some 419 to 359 million years ago—and you enter a world rightly dubbed the Age of Fishes. 

Life here is abundant, experimental, and just a little bit savage. This is a time when ecosystems are finding their rhythm, and the balance between predator and prey is being written in real time.

The waters teem with armoured placoderms, including the formidable Dunkleosteus—a one-ton, bone-plated apex predator with jaws powerful enough to shear through flesh and armour alike. Early sharks glide through the gloom, sleek and efficient, while lobe-finned and ray-finned fishes diversify into an astonishing array of forms, each carving out its niche in this crowded, competitive sea.

Down below, the seafloor is anything but quiet. Brachiopods carpet the substrate, while crinoids sway like living chandeliers in gentle currents. Coral reefs—built by tabulate and rugose corals—form bustling underwater cities, sheltering trilobites, early ammonoids, and a host of other invertebrates that thrive in these warm, shallow waters. It’s a feast… and everything is on the menu.

But something even more remarkable is unfolding at the edges of this watery world. In the shallows, a bold evolutionary experiment is underway. 

The first tetrapods—our distant, four-limbed ancestors—begin their tentative push onto land. Alongside them, early terrestrial arthropods—wingless insects and the earliest arachnids—skitter across the damp margins, claiming new ground.

This episode dives into a pivotal chapter in Earth’s history—a time of innovation, adaptation, and relentless survival. From reef to open ocean to the very first footsteps on land, the Devonian is where the story of modern life truly begins.

If you'd like to listen to a podcast on our Devonian seas, check out the Fossil Huntress Podcast on your favourite stream or link to it at: https://open.spotify.com/show/1hH1wpDFFIlYC9ZW5uTYVL?si=9c3daa4c86cb4fda

BRONZE FROM THE DEVONIAN: PARALEJURUS

This bronzed beauty hails from an early chapter in Earth’s story — a Middle Devonian treasure, Eifelian in age, some 395 million years old. 

Meet Paralejurus rehamnanus (Alberti, 1970), collected from the fossil-rich outcrops near Issoumour, Alnif, in Morocco, where the desert keeps a rather fine archive of ancient seas.

It was the glow of this specimen — that rich, burnished bronze — that first caught the eye of collector and increasingly talented macro photographer, David Appleton. 

At first glance, one might suspect a bit of artistic licence in preparation. That golden sheen seems almost too lovely to be true. But lean in close — as David has — and the story shifts. 

The colour runs through the fossil itself, threading into the surrounding matrix in delicate mineral veins. There are repairs, yes — quite normal for Moroccan trilobites — but the finish here is something rather special. Many specimens from this region carry that classic bronze-on-black palette, but seldom with such confidence.

And what a form it has.

Paralejurus is one of those trilobites that seems to understand aesthetics. Its body is long and gently oval, the exoskeleton arched like a well-made shield. The cephalon — its head — is a smooth, domed half-moon, elegant in its simplicity. Those large compound eyes, capped with crescent-shaped lids, are particularly fetching — you can almost imagine them catching the Devonian light.

Just behind the glabella, there’s a subtle transition — a quiet little occipital node — before the body gives way to that glowing thorax. 

Ten narrow segments make up this middle section, wrapped around a broad, raised axial lobe, or rhachis, giving the whole creature a pleasing sense of structure and strength.

At the rear, the pygidium is broad and beautifully fused — a smooth, unified shield. Unlike its cousins in the genus Scutellum, whose tail segments are etched with distinct furrows like icing on a well-decorated cake (and yes, that comparison may say more about me than the trilobite), Paralejurus opts for a more seamless design. It’s less pastry, more plate armour — efficient, protective, and rather Roman in its sensibility.

Along the sides, the axial regions rise gently, and from them radiate a series of fine furrows — twelve to fourteen delicate lines that complete the poetry of its form. It is, quite simply, a beautifully built animal.

Members of the genus Paralejurus lived from the Late Silurian into the Middle Devonian, wandering ancient seafloors across what is now Africa and Europe. They grew to about nine centimetres in length, though our bronzed friend here is a more modest 5.3 cm — compact, but no less charming.

Trilobites, of course, are among the earliest animals to sport hard skeletons, and they took full advantage of that evolutionary innovation. 

They flourished, diversified, and ruled the oceans for nearly 300 million years — from the Cambrian explosion through to their final curtain call at the end of the Permian, some 252 million years ago.

Now, all that remains are their mineralized echoes — these exquisite forms in stone — each one a small, perfect window into a vanished world.

And this one? A little bronze jewel from a Devonian sea, captured beautifully through David Appleton’s lens.

KELP FORESTS AND CARBON SINKS

Walk along any rocky beach on the Pacific coast after a storm, and you’ll likely find a treasure trove of kelp washed ashore—long ribbons of glossy brown seaweed, glistening in the sunlight like strands of mermaid hair. 

Some pieces stretch for meters, still tangled with small shells and bits of driftwood, while others hold tight, bulbous floats that once kept them buoyant in the underwater forests just offshore. 

When the tide recedes, the air fills with the unmistakable scent of iodine and salt—an ancient perfume carried by the sea.

Kelp is a brown alga, part of the group Phaeophyceae, which evolved roughly 150 to 200 million years ago. 

While kelp itself doesn’t fossilize easily (it’s soft-bodied and decomposes quickly), its ancient lineage can be traced through molecular and microfossil evidence. The earliest relatives of kelp likely appeared in the Jurassic seas, when dinosaurs ruled the land and the oceans teemed with ammonites. 

Microscopic spores and chemical biomarkers in sedimentary rocks tell scientists that brown algae were already photosynthesizing in shallow coastal waters long before the first mammals appeared.

Giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera, holds the title for the fastest-growing marine organism on Earth—it can shoot up more than half a meter a day under ideal conditions! 

These towering underwater forests provide shelter and food for thousands of marine creatures, from tiny snails to sea otters, who wrap themselves in the fronds to sleep without drifting away.

Back when I used to scuba drive a lot around Vancouver Island, they were one of my favourite places to explore as those underwater forests were teeming with life.

If you’re beachcombing in British Columbia, Alaska, or California, you might find bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeana, recognizable by its long, whip-like stipe and single round float. It’s edible and surprisingly tasty. The blades can be dried and used like seaweed chips, while the bulb can be sliced thin and pickled—an oceanic delicacy with a salty, citrusy crunch. 

Other edible seaweeds you might encounter include sugar kelp, Saccharina latissima, which has a slightly sweet flavor, and ribbon kelp, Alaria marginata, often used in soups and salads.

On the foreshore near where I live on Vancouver Island, we have loads of sea lettuce. Sea lettuce, Ulva spp., is one of the ocean’s most vibrant and inviting greens—a delicate, translucent seaweed that looks like bright green tissue paper fluttering in the tide. 

Sea Otter in a Kelp Bed

When you find it washed ashore or swaying just below the surface, it shines an almost neon hue, catching the sunlight in shimmering waves of jade. 

Its thin, ruffled fronds are only a few cells thick, soft to the touch, and often cling to rocks, shells, or docks in intertidal zones where saltwater and freshwater mingle.

Unlike the giant brown kelps that form towering underwater forests, sea lettuce is part of the green algae group (Chlorophyta), sharing pigments more closely related to land plants. 

It grows worldwide in temperate and tropical waters and thrives wherever nutrient-rich water flows—estuaries, tide pools, and shallow bays. When the tide goes out, you might see it draped over rocks like sheets of emerald silk, drying slightly in the sun and releasing a faint, oceanic scent.

Sea lettuce is entirely edible and a favourite among foragers and coastal chefs. Fresh from the sea, it has a mild, slightly salty flavour with a hint of sweetness—similar to spinach or nori. It can be eaten raw in salads, lightly fried until crisp, or dried into flakes and used as a natural salt substitute. 

In many coastal cultures, from Ireland to Japan, Ulva has long been part of traditional cuisine. It’s also rich in vitamins A, C, and B12, along with iron and calcium—proof that sea greens can be as nutritious as they are beautiful. When my little sister was living in County Cork, she shared pictures of folk bathing in tubs of icy sea water and seaweed as a briny health spa treatment.

From a scientific perspective, sea lettuce plays an important ecological role. It provides shelter for small marine creatures like snails, shrimp, and juvenile fish, and it helps absorb excess nutrients from the water, which can help reduce harmful algal blooms. 

However, when too many nutrients enter the ocean—often from agricultural runoff—sea lettuce can grow explosively, creating dense “green tides” that blanket shorelines.

Its lineage stretches deep into the fossil record as well. While soft-bodied algae like Ulva rarely fossilize, green algal relatives appear in rocks over 1.6 billion years old, making them some of Earth’s earliest photosynthesizers.

Beyond their culinary and ecological roles, kelp forests act as powerful carbon sinks, pulling CO₂ from the atmosphere and storing it in the deep ocean. They also buffer coastlines from storms and provide nurseries for fish populations that support global fisheries.

As you stroll the shoreline and your toes brush against that slippery tangle of golden-brown ribbons, remember—you’re touching the living descendant of an ancient lineage that’s been swaying in Earth’s oceans since the age of dinosaurs—beautiful, ancient and tasty!

WHAT KILLED THE DINOSAURS?

Sixty-six million years ago, on an otherwise unremarkable day at the close of the Cretaceous, the world changed in an instant.

If you had been standing in what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, you would not have had time to wonder. 

A mountain-sized asteroid—roughly 10 to 12 kilometres across—tore through the atmosphere at extraordinary speed, brighter than the Sun and hotter than anything on Earth’s surface. In a heartbeat, it struck with a force equivalent to billions of nuclear bombs.

This was the Chicxulub impact.

The collision blasted a crater over 180 kilometres wide, vaporising rock, igniting forests, and sending a shockwave racing across continents. The sky itself seemed to fall. Molten debris—ejecta—was hurled high into the atmosphere before raining back down across the globe, each fragment glowing with the heat of re-entry. For a brief and terrible moment, much of the planet’s surface may have experienced searing temperatures, as if placed beneath a planetary broiler.

But the true devastation unfolded more slowly.

Fine particles—dust, ash, and sulphate aerosols—were lofted into the upper atmosphere, forming a thick veil that blocked sunlight. Photosynthesis faltered. Plants withered. Food webs, delicately balanced and deeply interconnected, began to collapse. The great non-avian dinosaurs, who had dominated Earth for over 160 million years, found themselves in a world that no longer supported them.

This was not a single bad day. It was the beginning of a prolonged ecological crisis.

We call this mass extinction event the Cretaceous–Paleogene, or K–Pg boundary. It marks the end of the Age of Dinosaurs and the dawn of a new world—one that would eventually be shaped by mammals, birds, and, much later, us.

The evidence for this catastrophic impact is written in stone.

All around the world, from Italy to Alberta, a thin layer of sediment marks this boundary. Within it lies an unusually high concentration of iridium, a rare element on Earth’s crust but common in asteroids. Shocked quartz—minerals fractured under immense pressure—and tiny glass spherules formed from vaporised rock tell the same story: something extraordinary happened here.

For decades, scientists debated alternative explanations. Volcanic activity, particularly the vast eruptions that formed the Deccan Traps in India, certainly played a role in altering the climate. These eruptions released enormous quantities of greenhouse gases and aerosols, stressing ecosystems long before the asteroid arrived.

But the consensus today is clear. The asteroid impact was the decisive blow—the coup de grâce in an already struggling world.

And yet, not everything perished.

Some creatures endured. Small mammals, tucked into burrows. Crocodilians, patient survivors of changing waters. Birds—the living descendants of theropod dinosaurs—weathered the storm and carried their lineage forward into the skies of a quieter, recovering world.

It is a humbling thought.

The forests returned. Life, as it always does, found a way to reassemble itself—different, reshaped, but resilient. The absence of the great dinosaurs opened ecological space, allowing mammals to diversify and, over millions of years, to evolve into forms both strange and familiar.

Including us.

So when we ask, “What killed the dinosaurs?” the answer is both simple and profound. A rock from space changed the course of life on Earth.

If you'd like to listen to stories like this on a podcast or stream them on video (sometimes only audio from my podcast and sometimes with visuals), head on over to www.fossilhuntress.com to link to YouTube or the Fossil Huntress Podcast. 

FOSSIL HUNTRESS PALEONTOLOGY PODCAST

Step into deep time with The Fossil Huntress Podcast—a journey through the ancient heartbeat of our planet.

Close your eyes and imagine the world as it once was: strange seas teeming with ammonites and trilobites, ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs, fern-filled forests echoing with the footsteps of dinosaurs, and sun-warmed badlands whispering secrets from ages long past.

Together, we’ll explore Earth’s great fossil treasures—places where time slows and stone remembers. From sacred landscapes to world-famous dig sites, each episode unearths the science and stories that connect us to all who have ever lived, swum, or flown across this incredible planet.

This is a podcast about discovery, deep history, and the wonder of life itself. I'll share what you want to bring with you to enjoy your time in the field and adventure stories from my time there. 

From the tiniest single-celled ancestors to the mighty creatures that once ruled the Earth, you’ll hear how fossils tell the tale of change, resilience, and renewal—the discoveries that had me whoop with joy and the crushing defeat of a poorly split piece of shale.

So grab your curiosity, favourite the show, and come fossil-hunting through time with me—one ancient adventure at a time for some family-friendly fun. 

Head on over to the Fossil Huntress Podcast on Spotify, Apple or your favourite streaming service. The latest episode answers the question, "What Killed the Dinosaurs?" Currently streaming in 116 countries. 

MOSASAURS: PREDATORS OF THE DEEP

Slip beneath the surface of a Late Cretaceous ocean—if you dare—and you enter the domain of one of Earth’s most spectacular marine predators: the mosasaur. 

Long before whales ruled the deep, these muscular, paddle-limbed lizards patrolled warm inland seas with the quiet confidence of creatures that knew very little could challenge them for long.

Picture a body built like a torpedo, jaws hinged like a bear trap, and teeth designed for the twin jobs of slicing and holding. 

Some species stretched more than 15 metres in length—longer than a city bus—yet they moved through the water with the agility of an oversized crocodile on turbo mode. 

With a powerful tail beating side to side, they could lunge forward in explosive bursts, swallowing ammonites whole or ambushing unsuspecting fish, turtles and even sharks. Yes—sharks were on the menu.

Scientifically, mosasaurs are a wonderful paradox. They were reptiles—close cousins of modern monitor lizards—but they evolved flippers, streamlined skulls and powerful tail flukes remarkably similar to those of whales and ichthyosaurs. 

It’s convergent evolution at its flashiest: different lineages arriving at the same sleek design for life in the fast lane of the sea.

Their fossils tell a sweeping story of ancient oceans that once covered vast swaths of the planet. The chalk cliffs of Europe, the phosphate beds of Morocco and the great Western Interior Seaway of North America have all yielded the remains of these sea dragons. Each vertebra and jawbone is a relic of a vanished world where reptiles ruled the waves.

Along the rugged shores of Vancouver Island, mosasaurs left their mark as well. During the Late Cretaceous, much of what is now the island lay beneath a warm coastal sea. 

The rocks of the Nanaimo Group—thick marine sandstones and shales laid down between roughly 90 and 66 million years ago—preserve tantalising traces of the predators that cruised this ancient Pacific margin.

Several mosasaur taxa have been reported from these deposits, including Tylosaurus, Mosasaurus, Plioplatecarpus, and Clidastes, animals that would have prowled these coastal waters alongside plesiosaurs, sharks and vast schools of fish. 

These remains are often fragmentary—vertebrae, teeth, bits of jaw—but they speak clearly of formidable hunters moving through the same seas that deposited the coal beds and marine fossils of the Nanaimo Basin.

One of the most exciting discoveries came from the Comox Valley. In 1988, local fossil enthusiast Rick Ross discovered mosasaur remains near Dove Creek, just south of Courtenay on Vancouver Island. 

The specimen, preserved in the marine rocks of the Nanaimo Group, included vertebrae and portions of the skeleton that confirmed the presence of these apex predators along our ancient coastline. 

The Dove Creek mosasaur remains one of the most significant mosasaur finds on Vancouver Island and a wonderful reminder that our local rocks still hold secrets from the final chapters of the Age of Reptiles.

Imagine that Cretaceous shoreline for a moment: broad deltas feeding sediment into a shallow sea, ammonites drifting through the water column, and somewhere below the surface a mosasaur gliding silently past—sleek, powerful and very much in charge.

Their reign, however spectacular, was brief in geological terms. When the asteroid struck 66 million years ago, oceans darkened, food chains collapsed, and even these magnificent hunters could not outswim the global catastrophe that followed.

But in stone, they still roar. Their bones—sleek, predatory, impossibly elegant—remind us that the waters around Vancouver Island were once home to sea lizards the size of whales… and that the rocks beneath our feet are pages from an ocean epic still waiting to be read.

If you fancy listening to the story of the Dove Creek Mosasaur, check out the Fossil Huntress Podcast on your favourite listening stream. Tis an epic tale! 

Science owes a great thank you to Rick Ross for his quick thinking and above-and-beyond action in saving that specimen! 

#Mosasaurus #mosasaur #fossilhunting #paleontology #palaeontology

CTENOPHORES: COMB JELLIES

Cannibalistic Comb Jellies

This festive lantern looking lovely belongs to a group of invertebrates known as comb jellies.

Comb jellies are named for their unique plates of giant fused cilia, or combs, which run in eight rows up and down the length of their bodies. 

They are armed with sticky cells or colloblasts, that do not sting but display wonderful bioluminescent colouring as they move through the sea.

Ctenophores or comb jellies are one of the phylogenetically most important and controversial metazoan groups. 

Looks can be deceiving. At first glance you might think you are looking at a jellyfish but this is not the case. Surprisingly, they are not jellyfish and are not closely related, though they do share some characteristics with the gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa. 

Comb jellies are not picky eaters. Their tastes range to what is at hand, including cannibalizing other comb jellies. They will feast on their kin along with tasty plankton, zooplankton, crustaceans and wee fish.

Interest in their fossil record has been catalysed by spectacularly preserved soft-bodied specimens from Cambrian Lagerstätten of the 518-million-years-old Chengjiang Biota, the 505-million-years-old Burgess Shale and other Burgess Shale-like deposits. 

We find them in the Late Devonian Escuminac Formation at Miguasha National Park, Quebec, Canada — a UNESCO world heritage site famous for its abundance of well-preserved vertebrate fossils including most major evolutionary groups of Devonian lower vertebrates from jawless fish to stem-tetrapods.

Based on morphological similarities of this Canadian fossil with stem-ctenophore fossils from the Cambrian Lagerstätte of the Chinese locality Chengjiang, they have been assessed for their affinity to stem-group ctenophores (dinomischids, Siphusauctum, scleroctenophorans) and early crown-group ctenophores. Modern ctenophores and many fossil forms lack mineralized hard parts, which renders the rare fossils that have been extracted from several Lagerstätten quite remarkable. 

Like the soft bodies of jellyfish and the polyps of hydrozoans and anthozoans, the probability for such soft bodies (or body regions) to become fossilized is extremely low. In spite of this low preservation potential, remains of stem-ctenophores have become known from several Cambrian and younger conservation deposits, and with even older candidate ctenophores in the Ediacaran. 

While Cambrian Lagerstätten have yielded several genera, ctenophore remains are much rarer in the Devonian; in particular, two studies, describing material from the German Hunsrück Slate. 

Bioluminescent Comb Jellies

This Early Devonian material, however, appears to belong to crown ctenophores morphologically similar to living forms such as Pleurobrachia, unlike the stem Cambrian taxa and the new Devonian stem taxon described here.

The most basal stem ctenophores are the dinomischids: sessile benthic petaloid invertebrates, many of which are equipped with a stalk. This group first was described from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. Based on the genus Dinomischus, these early stalked forms were commonly called ‘dinomischids’. 

Zhao et al. shared that dinomischids "form a grade in the lower part of the ctenophore stem group” and include taxa such as Xianguangia, Daihua, and Dinomischus that have hexaradiate-based symmetry (e.g., sixfold, 18-fold). 

Some later, skeletonised stem-ctenophores were termed ‘Scleroctenophora’; ‘scleroctenophorans’ have a shorter stalk, lack the ‘petals’ and have no bracts and might be monophyletic. 

To date, all known dinomischids and scleroctenophorans are Cambrian. Remarkably, analysis of the material described here suggests it is a very late-surviving member of this part of the ctenophore tree, occurring in strata over a hundred million years younger with no intervening known record, thus making it a Lazarus taxon with an extensive ghost lineage. 

Palaeozoic sediments yield a growing number of fossil invertebrates with radial symmetries, some being quite enigmatic with body plans differing radically from those of extant organisms.

The morphological similarities to Cambrian forms and the mix of characters regarding overall shape and symmetries render this discovery important. The aims of this study are to describe the only known specimen of this Devonian ctenophore, discuss its phylogenetic and systematic position, and the impact of fossil data for ctenophore affinities, and assess its palaeoecological role.

SMILODON NORTH OF THE 49TH PARALLEL

This fierce predator with the luxurious coat is Smilodon fatalis — a compact but robust killer that weighed in around 160 to 280 kg and was 1.5 - 2.2 metres long.

Smilodon is a genus of the extinct machairodont subfamily of the felids. It is one of the most famous prehistoric mammals and the best known saber-toothed cat. Although commonly known as the saber-toothed tiger, it was not closely related to the tiger or other modern cats.

Up until a few years ago, all the great fossil specimens of this apex predator were found south of us in the United States. That was until some interesting bones from Medicine Hat, Alberta got a second look.

A few years ago, a fossil specimen caught the eye of researcher Ashley Reynolds as she was rummaging through the collections at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. 

Back in the 1960s,  University of Toronto palaeontologist C.S. Churcher and his team had collected and donated more than 1,200 specimens from their many field seasons scouring the bluffs of the South Saskatchewan River near Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Churcher is a delightful storyteller and a palaeontologist with a keen eye. I had the very great pleasure of listening to many of his talks out at the University of British Columbia and a few Vancouver Paleontological Society meetings in the mid-2000s. 

"Rufus" was a thoroughly charming storyteller and shared many of his adventures from the field. 

He moved out to the West Coast for his retirement, first to Gabriola Island then to Victoria, but his keen love of the science kept him giving talks to enthralled listeners keen to hear about his survey of the Dakhleh Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt, geomorphology, stratigraphy, recent biology, Pleistocene and Holocene lithic cultures, insights learned from Neolithic Islamic pottery to Roman settlements.

The specimens he had collected had been roughly sorted but never examined in detail. Reynolds, who was researching the growth patterns and life histories of extinct cats saw a familiar-looking bone from an ancient cat's right front paw. That tiny paw bone had reached through time and was positively identified as Canada's first Smilodon.

These Apex Predators used their exceptionally long upper canine teeth to hunt large mammals. 

Isotopes preserved in the bones of S. fatalis in the La Brea Tar Pits in California tell us that they liked to dine on bison (Bison antiquus) and camels (Camelops) along with deer and tapirs. Smilodon is thought to have killed its prey by holding it still with its forelimbs and biting it. And that was quite the bite!

Their razor-sharp incisors were arranged in an arch. Once they bit down, the teeth would hold their prey still and stabilize it while the canine bite was delivered — and what a bite that was. They could open their mouths a full 120 degrees.

Smilodon died out at the same time that most North and South American megafauna disappeared, about 10,000 years ago. Its reliance on large animals has been proposed as the cause of its extinction, along with climate change and competition with other species. 

ANEMONE: DESCENDANTS FROM THE CAMBRIAN

Anemones—those soft, petaled hunters swaying with the rhythm of the sea, looking more like flowers than animals until you notice the lightning-fast snap of a tentacle.

Sea anemones belong to the class Anthozoa, close kin to corals and jellyfish, and they’ve been holding their ground—quite literally—for a very long time. 

Unlike their free-swimming cousins, anemones anchor themselves to rock, reef, or seafloor, letting the ocean bring dinner to them. Each delicate arm is lined with nematocysts—tiny harpoons loaded with venom—perfect for stunning passing prey.

But here’s where things get tricky for us fossil hunters…

Soft-bodied creatures like anemones don’t fossilize easily. No hard shell, no bones—just tissue and tide. So their story in the fossil record is a rare and precious one.

We find glimpses of them as far back as the Cambrian, over 500 million years ago, often preserved in exceptional deposits like the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, where soft-bodied life was captured in fine-grained sediments under just the right conditions. 

There, strange and beautiful anemone-like creatures hint at early anthozoan life, sharing space with the wonderfully weird cast of Cambrian seas.

Trace fossils—subtle impressions in ancient sea beds—also whisper of their presence. Circular resting marks and burrow-like structures suggest where anemones once anchored themselves, long after their bodies slipped away.

APEX HUNTER OF ITS TIME: ANKYLORHIZA

Back in the 1880s, from fragments of bone weathered by time and tide, a most curious creature emerged into scientific view — an ancient toothed dolphin later named Ankylorhiza tiedemani. 

Its name, drawn from the Greek ankylo — bound or fused — and rhiza — root — hints at one of its more unusual traits: teeth with mostly single, fused roots. 

A formidable grin, and not at all what we might expect from the dolphins we know today.

We often think of dolphins as gentle, clever denizens of the sea. 

But cast your mind back to the Oligocene, and a rather different picture takes shape. Here was a hunter — swift, powerful, and armed with a mouthful of sharp teeth. Ankylorhiza tiedemani stood as the largest member of the Odontoceti — the great lineage of toothed whales that includes dolphins, porpoises, sperm whales, beaked whales, river dolphins, pilot whales, and their kin — all hunters of prey larger than plankton, all bearing teeth instead of baleen.

More clues surfaced in the decades that followed. Fragments in the 1970s and 1990s, and then something far more revealing — a nearly complete skeleton, now resting at the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History. A beautifully preserved skull, ribcage, much of the vertebral column, and even a solitary flipper. 

Rare treasures, these, for creatures of the sea. 

Together, they whisper a clearer story: a 4.8-metre predator, tracing its lineage back some 35–36 million years, diverging from baleen whales yet evolving strikingly similar features through convergence.

This was no languid swimmer. Some 24 million years ago, Ankylorhiza coursed through ancient seas with speed and purpose. 

Its body tells the tale — a narrow tailstock, additional tail vertebrae, and a shortened humerus in its flippers. Like modern dolphins, it likely powered itself with strong, rhythmic thrusts of its flukes, adjusting its course with hydrofoil-like flippers. 

Beneath the skin, robust muscles anchored to a relatively rigid torso — a design honed for movement, for pursuit, for the hunt.

The fossil record, however, does not always give up its secrets easily. Eocene whale skeletons show us the early transition from land to sea — limbs shrinking, bodies streamlining. 

But Oligocene specimens are rare, and with them, much of the story of how whales mastered fluke-powered swimming has remained elusive. 

Did these early dolphins possess the same refinements for speed? For a long time, we could only speculate.

Then came the work of Robert Boessenecker and colleagues. Their study of this remarkable skeleton reveals an animal poised between worlds — its forelimb structure bridging stem cetaceans and modern whales, its spine showing the beginnings of rigidity at the tail while retaining flexibility through the lower back. 

A body in transition, yet already capable.

And what a role it played. Its skull, teeth, vertebrae, and size all point to a macrophagous predator — one that hunted large prey and moved with relative speed. 

In life, Ankylorhiza may well have filled a niche much like that of today’s killer whales — an apex hunter of its time, commanding the ancient seas with quiet authority.

A fossil, yes — but also a story. One of innovation, convergence, and the relentless shaping of life in motion.

HOLLARDOPS: LE MAÎTRE

Hollardops sp. Devonian Trilobite

Hollardops is a genus of trilobite in the order Phacopida that lived during the Eifelian of the Middle Devonian. It was described by Le Maître in 1952 under type species Metacanthina mesocristata. 

The genus underwent reclassification in 1997 and emerged as Hollardops. We find this extinct arthropod in present-day Morocco. They share similarities with Greenops of New York and Canada but are generally larger than most Greenops species.

Hollardops have schizochroal eyes and a glabella that is slightly raised on the surface of the cephalon. Genal spines extend from the cephalon and extend to approximately the 6th thoracic segment.

Hollardops has eleven thoracic segments and also has five pairs of spines extending from the segments of the pygidium. Length ranges from approximately 3 to 9 cm.

Palaeo Coordinates — If you are a keen bean to head out in search of this lovely yourself, head to the Tazoulait Formation at Jbel (Jebel) Oufatène 30.8374368°N 4.9018067°W and Issimour 30.9669834°N 5.0373266°W SE of Alnif, western of Oued Alnif, Ma'ider region, Morocco.

CRETACEOUS PREDATORS: KOURISODON PUNTLEDGENSIS

Kourisodon puntledgensis

You would be a brave soul to be swimming in the warm, shallow seas of the Late Cretaceous—and braver still to linger near the surface. 

These waters belonged to the mosasaurs—sleek, powerful marine reptiles that ruled the global oceans with quiet authority. 

Since their first discovery in 1766, their bones have surfaced from nearly every corner of the world—New Zealand to Antarctica, Africa to Europe, the Americas to Japan—whispers of a dynasty that once circled the globe.

And yet, some of their most intriguing stories are written close to home.

Along the banks of the Puntledge River on Vancouver Island, a remarkable assemblage has come to light. Here, tucked into ancient marine sediments, we find the remains of both elasmosaurids and mosasaurs—echoes of a coastal ecosystem long vanished beneath forest and freshwater flow. 

As Dan Bowen of the Vancouver Island Paleontological Society notes, this stretch of river has yielded not one, but multiple marine reptiles from a time when this land lay beneath a teeming inland sea.

The first mosasaur material recovered here—around ten vertebrae belonging to Platecarpus—was discovered by Tim O’Bear and carefully excavated by a dedicated team led by Dr. Rolf Ludvigsen. Later prepared by Bowen and Joe Morin, these bones offer a tantalising glimpse of fast-moving predators that once patrolled these waters.

But it is a second discovery that truly sharpens the tale.

Kourisodon photo by Roland Tanglao

In 1993, upstream from the elasmosaur site, Joe Zembiliwich uncovered something altogether special on a field excursion led by the legendary Mike Trask. 

What emerged was Kourisodon puntledgensis—a name drawn from the Greek kourís and odon, meaning “razor tooth,” and an apt one at that.

Small by mosasaur standards—roughly 3.75 to 4.5 metres in length—Kourisodon was nonetheless a nimble and capable predator. 

First described within the “Leiodontini” and now placed among the clidastines, it hunted with precision in Pacific waters rich with life. Alongside it swam long-necked elasmosaurids, turtles, and other mosasaurs, though notably absent were the polycotylids so common elsewhere.

What makes this animal especially intriguing is its story of place—and of connection.

The type specimen of Kourisodon puntledgensis comes from a single locality within the Santonian-aged Pender Formation along the Puntledge River—the very place that lends the species its name. And yet, across the vast Pacific, its relatives appear again in the Upper Cretaceous rocks of Japan’s Izumi Group. 

There, fragmentary remains—including those of juveniles—hint at at least one additional, as-yet-unnamed species, distinguished by features such as longer maxillary teeth (Tanimoto, 2005; Caldwell & Konishi, 2007).

We see a similar trans-Pacific kinship echoed in the ammonites of these regions—shared lineages linking distant shores. But curiously, this connection does not extend inland. The marine reptiles of the Western Interior Seaway tell a different story entirely.

This is provinciality in action—ancient ecosystems shaped by geography, currents, and isolation. As detailed by Nicholls and Meckert (2002), the Pacific faunas of British Columbia evolved along their own path, distinct from their contemporaries to the east.

Today, a full-scale replica of Kourisodon puntledgensis—a sleek, 12-foot echo of those razor-toothed hunters—resides at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, Manitoba. A long way from the Puntledge, perhaps, but still tethered to that riverbank story.

And the Puntledge continues to give.

It is also the home of a newly described elasmosaur—Traskasaura—named in honour of Mike, Pat, and Heather Trask. Discovered in 1988 and formally described in 2025, it adds yet another layer to this rich and ever-unfolding story of Vancouver Island’s ancient seas.

Stand along the Puntledge now, with the river slipping quietly past your boots, and you can almost feel it—the weight of deep time, the flicker of ancient oceans, the swift shadow of something moving just beneath the surface.

And, if you’ve spent enough time in the field, you’ll feel something else too.

The memory of those who walked these shores with you—who swung their last hammer, shared their last laugh, and left their stories folded gently into the stones we still turn over today.

References

Nicholls, E. L. and Meckert, D. (2002). Marine reptiles from the Nanaimo Group (Upper Cretaceous) of Vancouver Island. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 39(11):1591–1603.

Tanimoto, M. (2005). Mosasaur remains from the Upper Cretaceous Izumi Group of Southwest Japan. Netherlands Journal of Geosciences 84(3):373–378.

Caldwell, M., & Konishi, T. (2007). Taxonomic re-assignment of the first-known mosasaur specimen from Japan, and a discussion of circum-Pacific mosasaur paleobiogeography. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 27(2):517–520.

CBC News (2018). “Ferocious” new mosasaur skeleton coming to Morden.

CJOB (2018). “Ferocious, razor-like teeth”: new mosasaur comes to Morden's fossil centre.

Winnipeg News (2018). Morden museum's collection of mosasaur skeletons grows with new addition.

Image Two: By Roland Tanglao from Vancouver, Canada - Dinos at Courtenay Museum -20090628-7Uploaded by FunkMonk, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10364342

SAKARA MADAGASGAR: OXFORDIAN OUTCROPS

Lobolytoceras costellatum

This big beastie is a superb specimen of the ammonite Lobolytoceras costellatum showing the intricate fractal pattern of its septa. 

This lovely measures to a whopping 230 mm and hails from Oxfordian outcrops near Sakara, Madagascar. Lovingly prepped by the supremely talented José Juárez Ruiz.

Ammonites were predatory, squidlike creatures that lived inside coil-shaped shells. 

Like other cephalopods, ammonites had sharp, beak-like jaws inside a ring of squid-like tentacles that extended from their shells. They used these tentacles to snare prey — plankton, vegetation, fish and crustaceans — similar to the way a squid or octopus hunt today.

Catching a fish with your hands is no easy feat, as I'm sure you know. Ammonites did the equivalent, catching prey in their tentacles. They were skilled and successful hunters. They caught their prey while swimming and floating in the water column. 

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.

They were a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids — octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish) then they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species.

Lobolytoceras costellatum

Ammonites have intricate and complex patterns on their shells called sutures. The suture patterns differ across species and tell us what time period the ammonite is from. 

If they are geometric with numerous undivided lobes and saddles and eight lobes around the conch, we refer to their pattern as goniatitic, a characteristic of Paleozoic ammonites.

Ammonites first appeared about 240 million years ago, though they descended from straight-shelled cephalopods called bacrites that date back to the Devonian, about 415 million years ago, and the last species vanished in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

They were prolific breeders that evolved rapidly. If you could cast a fishing line into our ancient seas, it is likely that you would hook an ammonite, not a fish. 

They were prolific back in the day, living (and sometimes dying) in schools in oceans around the globe. We find ammonite fossils (and plenty of them) in sedimentary rock from all over the world.

In some cases, we find rock beds where we can see evidence of a new species that evolved, lived and died out in such a short time span that we can walk through time, following the course of evolution using ammonites as a window into the past.

For this reason, they make excellent index fossils. An index fossil is a species that allows us to link a particular rock formation, layered in time with a particular species or genus found there. 

Generally, deeper is older, so we use the sedimentary layers rock to match up to specific geologic time periods, rather the way we use tree-rings to date trees. A handy way to compare fossils and date strata across the globe.

BARNACLES: CUVIER TO DARWIN

Barnacles All Closed Up

One of the most interesting and enigmatic little critters we find at the seashore are barnacles. 

They cling to rocks at the waters' edge, closed to our curiosity, their domed mounds like little closed beaks shut to the water and the world.

They choose their permanent homes as larvae, sticking to hard substrates that will become their permanent homes for the rest of their lives. 

It has taken us a long time to find how they actually stick or what kind of "glue" they were using.

A clever fellow from Duke University's Marine Laboratory in Durhan, North Carolina finally cracked that puzzle. 

Instead of chopping up barnacles to see what makes them stick, he observed and collected the oozing glue from some Amphibalanus amphitrite as they secreted it.

Remarkably, the barnacle glue sticks to rocks in a similar way to how red cells bind together. Red blood cells bind and clot with a little help from some enzymes. These work to create long protein fibres that first blind, clot then form a scab. The mechanism barnacles use, right down to the enzyme, is very similar. That's especially interesting as about a billion years separate our evolutionary path from theirs.

So, with the help of their clever enzymes, they can affix to most anything – ship hulls, rocks, and even the skin of whales. If you find them in tidepools, you begin to see their true nature as they open up, their delicate feathery finger-like projections flowing back and forth in the surf.

Barnacle Cirri Seeking Tasty Plankton

Those wee feather-like bits you see are called cirri. Eight pairs of these thoracic limbs help barnacles to filter tasty bits of plankton from the surrounding water into their mouths.

Barnacles are cirripedes, a kind of crustacean that is covered with hard plates of calcium carbonate. Named for their cirri, they live stuck to hard surfaces in and around our world's oceans. While they do not look like crustaceans, they are definitely part of this taxonomic grouping that includes crab, lobster, crayfish, prawn, krill, and woodlice.

BARNACLES IN KWAK'WALA

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, barnacles are known as k̕wit̕a̱'a and broken barnacle shells are known as t̕sut̕su'ma.

BARNACLES IN THE FOSSIL RECORD

They have an old history. Their ancestors can be traced back to animals such as Priscansermarinus that lived during the Middle Cambrian – some 510 to 500 million years ago. 

I found my first barnacle fossil at a fossil site called Muir Creek on the south end of Vancouver Island. The fossil exposures at Muir are Oligocene, 20-25 million years old. This is about the time that barnacles can be found more readily as skeletal remains.

One of the reasons for the limited number of barnacle remains in the fossil record is their preferred habitat – high energy, shallow ocean environments. These tend to see a lot of tidal action that leads to erosion and barnacles being broken apart, slowly eroded down to bits too small to recognize for what they are.

One of the fossil remains we do find are not the barnacles themselves, but trace fossils of acrothoracican barnacle borings from Rogerella. These are commonly found in the fossil record beginning in the Devonian right up to today. Rogerella is a small pouch-shaped boring (a type of trace fossil) with a slit-like aperture currently produced by acrothoracican barnacles. 

These crustaceans extrude their legs upwards through the opening for filter-feeding (Seilacher, 1969; Lambers and Boekschoten, 1986). They are known in the fossil record as borings in carbonate substrates (shells and hardgrounds) from the Devonian to the Recent (Taylor and Wilson, 2003).

Barnacle Ancestry Goes Back to the Middle Cambrian

FROM MOLLUSCA TO ARTICULATA

Barnacles were originally classified by Linnaeus and Cuvier as Mollusca, but in 1830 John Vaughan Thompson published observations showing the metamorphosis of the nauplius and cypris larvae into adult barnacles. 

He noted how these larvae were similar to those of crustaceans.

In 1834 Hermann Burmeister published further information, reinterpreting these findings. The effect was to move barnacles from the phylum of Mollusca to Articulata, showing naturalists that detailed study was needed to reevaluate their taxonomy.

Charles Darwin took up this challenge in 1846 and developed his initial interest in a major study published as a series of monographs in 1851 and 1854. 

Darwin undertook this study, at the suggestion of his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, to thoroughly understand at least one species before making the generalizations needed for his theory of evolution by natural selection.

BARNACLES IN A NUT SHELL

Barnacles are suspension feeders, sweeping small food into their mouth with their curved 'feet'. They are cemented to rock (usually), and covered with hard calcareous plates, which they shut firmly when the tide goes out. 

Barnacles reproduce sexually and produce little nauplius larvae that disperse in the plankton. Eventually, the larvae change into cypris form and attach on other hard surfaces to form new barnacles.

HUMPBACK WHALES: GWA'YAM

Look deep into the knowing eye of this magnificent one. 

He is a Humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, a species of baleen whale for whom I hold a special place in my heart. 

Baleens are toothless whales who feed on plankton and other wee oceanic tasties they consume through their baleens, a specialised filter of flexible keratin plates that frame their mouth and fit within their robust jaws.

Baleen whales, the mysticetes, split from toothed whales, the Odontoceti, around 34 million years ago. The split allowed our toothless friends to enjoy a new feeding niche and make their way in a sea with limited food resources. 

There are fifteen species of baleen whales who inhabit all major oceans. Their number include our humbacks, grays, right whales and the massive blue whale. Their territory runs as a wide band running from the Antarctic ice edge to 81°N latitude. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, and my cousins on my father's side, whales are known as g̱wa̱'ya̱m, and revered along the coast. 

Both the California grey and the Humpback whale live on the coast. Only a small number of individuals in First Nation culture had the right to harpoon a whale. This is a practice from many years ago. It was generally only the Chief who was bestowed this great honour. Sometimes the whales would pass at sea and wash up on shore with this bounty to be shared by all.

Humpback whales like to feed close to shore and enter the local inlets. Around Vancouver Island and along the coast of British Columbia, this made them a welcome food source as the long days of winter passed into Spring.

Humpback whales are rorquals, members of the Balaenopteridae family that includes the blue, fin, Bryde's, sei and minke whales. The rorquals are believed to have diverged from the other families of the suborder Mysticeti during the middle Miocene. 

While cetaceans were historically thought to have descended from mesonychids—which would place them outside the order Artiodactyla—molecular evidence supports them as a clade of even-toed ungulates—our dear Artiodactyla. 

It is one of the larger rorqual species, with adults ranging in length from 12–16 m (39–52 ft) and weighing around 25–30 metric tons (28–33 short tons). The humpback has a distinctive body shape, with long pectoral fins and a knobbly head. It is known for breaching and other distinctive surface behaviours, making it popular with whale watchers and the lucky few who see them from the decks of our local ferries.

Both male and female humpback whales vocalize, but only males produce the long, loud, complex "song" for which the species is famous. Males produce a complex soulful song lasting 10 to 20 minutes, which they repeat for hours at a time. 

I imagine Gregorian Monks vocalizing their chant with each individual melody strengthening and complimenting that of their peers. All the males in a group produce the same song, which differed in each season. Its purpose is not clear, though it may help induce estrus in females and bonding amongst the males.

Humpback Whale, Megaptera novaeangliae

Found in oceans and seas around the world, humpback whales typically migrate up to 25,000 km (16,000 mi) each year. 

They feed in polar waters and migrate to tropical or subtropical waters to breed and give birth, fasting and living off their fat reserves. Their diet consists mostly of krill and small fish. 

Humpbacks have a diverse repertoire of feeding methods, including the bubble net technique.

Humpbacks are a friendly species that interact with other cetaceans such as bottlenose dolphins. They are also friendly and oddly protective of humans. 

You may recall hearing about an incident off the Cook Islands a few years back. Nan Hauser was snorkelling and ran into a tiger shark. Two adult humpback whales rushed to her aid, blocking the shark from reaching her and pushing her back towards the shore. We could learn a thing or two from their kindness. We have not been as good to them as they have been to us.

Like other large whales, the humpback was a tasty and profitable target for the whaling industry. My grandfather and uncle participated in that industry out of Coal Harbour on northern Vancouver Island back in the 1950s. So did many of my First Nation cousins. My cousin John Lyon has told me tales of those days and the slippery stench of that work.

Six whaling stations operated on the coast of British Columbia between 1905 and 1976. Two of these stations were located at Haida Gwaii, one at Rose Harbour and the other at Naden Harbour. 

Over 9,400 large whales were taken from the waters around Haida Gwaii. The catch included blue whales, fin whales, sei whales, humpback whales, sperm whales and right whales. In the early years of the century, primarily humpback whales were taken. In later years, fin whales and sperm whales dominated the catch. 

Whales were hunted off South Moresby in Haida Gwaii, and on the north side of Holberg Inlet in the Quatsino Sound region. 

We squirm at this reality today but it was the norm at the time and a way to make a living—especially for those who had hoped to work in the local coal mine but lost their employment when it shut down. 

While my First Nations relatives hunted whales in small numbers and many years ago, my Norwegian relatives participated in the hunt on a scale that nearly led to their extinction before the process was banned. 

The Coal Harbour Whaling Station closed in 1967. Once it had closed, my grandfather Einar Eikanger, my mother's father, took to fishing and my uncle Harry lost his life the year before when he slipped and fell over the side of the boat. He was crushed between the hull and a Humpback in rough seas. 

Humpback populations have partially recovered since that time to build their population up to 80,000 animals worldwide—but entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with ships, and noise pollution continue to negatively impact the species. So be kind if you see them. Turn your engine off and see if you can hear their soulful cries echoing in the water.

I did up a video on Humpback Whales over on YouTube so you could see them in all their majesty. Here is the link: https://youtu.be/_Vbta7kQNoM

CAMBRIAN SUBMARINES: OPABINIA REGALIS

Meet one of the most wonderfully peculiar animals to ever grace our ancient seas. 

This five-eyed marvel swam through the Cambrian oceans some 508 million years ago, its soft body drifting above the seafloor of what is now British Columbia—preserved in exquisite detail within the famed Burgess Shale of Yoho National Park.

At first glance, Opabinia regalis feels almost mischievous in its design. I think of them as Cambrian submarines. Five stalked eyes sit atop its head like a crown of periscopes, scanning a world teeming with early life. 

Along its sides, a series of delicate lobes ripple in coordinated waves, propelling it forward with gentle, undulating grace. But it is the feeding apparatus that truly steals the show—a long, flexible proboscis ending in a tiny claw, perfectly suited for plucking soft prey from the seafloor and delivering it to its backward-facing mouth tucked beneath the head.

Yes—five eyes. And a claw-tipped trunk. Nature was experimenting, and Opabinia was one of her boldest sketches.

When Charles Doolittle Walcott first described this curious creature in 1912, it puzzled generations of paleontologists. At the time, he believed it was an anostracan branchiopod. I don't see the resemblance but I wasn't looking at a fossil mystery with his lived experience of the time.

Walcott named the species Opabinia after Opabin Peak in the Canadian Rockies. While his initial classification as a crustacean was later debated and revised by researchers like Harry Whittington in the 1970s—who identified it as a far more enigmatic "weird wonder"—Walcott's 1912 publication remains the initial scientific description of this marvelous fancy of nature.

For decades, its place on the tree of life remained uncertain, its anatomy so unlike anything alive today that it seemed almost alien. 

Thanks to the careful work of Harry Whittington and colleagues—that Opabinia was understood as part of an early branch of arthropod evolution, a relative—albeit a very strange one—of the lineage that would eventually give rise to insects, crustaceans and spiders.

Soft-bodied and delicate, Opabinia would never have fossilized under ordinary circumstances. It is only through the extraordinary preservation of the Burgess Shale—where rapid burial in fine mud and low-oxygen conditions halted decay—that we are gifted this glimpse into deep time’s more experimental chapters.

In Opabinia, we see evolution not as a straight line, but as a riot of possibilities—forms tried, tested, and sometimes abandoned with countless strange and beautiful designs flickering briefly before fading into the stone. I am truly thrilled that we got a chance to see this one as so many never had the chance to fossilize and we'll never get to know their quirky selves. 

CERVUS CANADENSIS: MAGNIFICENT ELK

Nature awes me everyday. Quiet moments often shared solo or if lucky, with a good friend or one of the amazing animals that walk this Earth.

I was especially lucky to have many of them while staying in Banff, Alberta. 

A morning stroll became an epic moment shared with a herd of wild but nonplussed elk enjoying their breakfast.

There is something quietly magnificent about an elk moving through fresh snow — head lowered, breath curling into the cold air, long legs parting the white silence of a winter morning in Banff. It feels timeless. And in a way, it is.

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

Elk are members of the family Cervidae, a group that first appears in the fossil record during the Early Miocene, roughly 20 million years ago. These early deer were small, forest-dwelling creatures, lacking the impressive antlers we associate with their modern kin.

By the Late Miocene and into the Pliocene, cervids began to diversify in both form and habitat. Antlers — those seasonal crowns of bone — became more elaborate, evolving as tools of display and combat. 

The genus Cervus, which includes modern elk, appears later, with fossils known from Eurasia before spreading into North America via the Bering Land Bridge during the Pleistocene, likely within the last 2 million years.

Once here, elk flourished.

Pleistocene deposits across North America — from tar seeps like Rancho La Brea in California to river gravels and cave assemblages further north — preserve their bones alongside an Ice Age cast of giants: mammoths, mastodons, dire wolves and short-faced bears. 

Elk held their own in this formidable company, adaptable grazers and browsers able to navigate shifting climates and changing ecosystems.

In Canada, elk fossils are known from a number of Quaternary sites, including Alberta and the Yukon, where their remains speak to a long history on these lands. 

As the glaciers withdrew at the end of the last Ice Age, elk expanded into newly opened habitats, tracking the spread of grasslands and open forests.

What you are seeing in Banff today is the continuation of that story — a survivor of ice and upheaval, still moving with quiet purpose through a landscape shaped by deep time.

I've been lucky enough to get to spend some time in Banff, looking for fossils, as an artist and exploring nature in all its glory.  It was heartwarming to see Elk most every day there and snow multiple times a week—and all this in April and May!

CAMBRIAN CROWN: THE SPINED ELEGANCE OF ORGMASPIS

This calcified beauty is Orygmaspis (Parabolinoides) spinula (Westrop, 1986), an Upper Cambrian trilobite recovered from the McKay Group near Tanglefoot Mountain in the Kootenay Rockies—one of those quietly extraordinary places where deep time peeks through in layered stone.

A member of the Order Asaphida, Orygmaspis carries the elegant geometry so characteristic of its kin: an inverted, egg-shaped outline, a broad and gently arched cephalon, modestly sized eyes, and a thorax adorned with a procession of finely spined segments. 

Twelve thoracic segments form its articulated middle, each bearing spines that lengthen progressively toward the ninth before tapering again—a subtle rhythm of form that feels almost architectural in its precision.

Asaphids themselves tell a longer, more dramatic story. Emerging in the Cambrian and flourishing into the Ordovician, they diversified into six superfamilies—Anomocaroidea, Asaphoidea, Cyclopygoidea, Dikelocephaloidea, Remopleuridoidea and Trinucleioidea—each experimenting with variations on a successful marine design. 

Some evolved remarkable visual adaptations, including the long-stalked eyes of Asaphus kowalewskii, which would have lifted their gaze above the seafloor haze, scanning for both prey and peril in the shifting Ordovician seas.

By the close of the Ordovician, a great extinction event swept away five of these six lineages, claiming roughly 60% of marine life. Only the resilient Trinucleioidea persisted, carrying the torch a little further into the Silurian before another global upheaval drew the final curtain on the Asaphida (Fortey & Chatterton, 1988).

Returning to our Kootenay traveller, the cephalon of Orygmaspis is parabolic, less than twice as wide as long, with a well-defined glabella—the central raised axis—measuring roughly three-quarters as wide as it is long. Its surface is modestly convex, tapering forward with faint lateral furrows and a clearly expressed occipital ring marking the posterior boundary. The preglabellar field is short, about a quarter the length of the glabella, giving the headshield a compact, purposeful look.

The eyes, small but well placed, sit between the anterior and mid-length of the glabella, positioned about one-third of the way out from the axis. Surrounding cheeks—the fixigenae and librigenae—are relatively flat, divided by facial sutures that trace an elegant path: diverging just before the eyes, running parallel near the border, then sweeping inward again in a graceful convergence. 

Behind the eyes, these sutures arc outward and back at roughly 45°, cutting the posterior margin in classic opisthoparian fashion.

At the rear, a diminutive pygidium—just a third the width of the cephalon—completes the form. It is twice as wide as long, with a central axis composed of up to four rings that nearly reach the margin. The pleural fields are gently expressed, their segmentation subdued, while the posterior edge carries three to four pairs of spines, each diminishing toward the rear like the final notes of a fading refrain.

Altogether, Orygmaspis spinula is a study in balance—armoured, yes, but refined. A small, spined voyager from Cambrian seas, preserved in stone and beautifully calcified yet still whispering of movement, adaptation, and survival in a world more than half a billion years removed from our own.

The fingers you see holding this specimen are those of the deeply awesome Chris Jenkins. If you're reading this, Chris, I owe you a visit!