FOSSILS, FAIRY TALES AND A QUIET REVOLUTION: CLEMENTINE HELM BEYRICH

Clementine Helm Beyrich

On a grey Berlin morning in the winter of 1863, a young girl named Anna quietly entered her foster mother’s study.

She expected to find Clementine Helm bent over the draft of a gentle domestic tale—something proper, improving and entirely suitable for the young ladies of nineteenth-century Europe.

Instead, she found her deep in conversation with a visiting scientist.

He spoke of fossil beds in Prussia and the strange creatures entombed within them—remnants of vanished worlds written into layers of stone. 

Anna watched, transfixed, as Clementine’s eyes lit up. This was no performance of polite interest. It was the unmistakable spark of genuine curiosity.

After the scientist departed, Clementine returned to her manuscript with renewed purpose.

In that moment, Anna glimpsed what readers across Central Europe would soon discover: her aunt was not simply writing stories. She was quietly—and rather brilliantly—rewriting the boundaries of what women and girls were permitted to know about the natural world.

And she was smuggling fossils into the nursery.

A Childhood Surrounded by Science

Clementine Helm Beyrich was born in 1825 and grew up at the edges of two very different worlds.

One was governed by the strict expectations placed upon girls in the German states: be dutiful, be modest, learn the domestic arts and try not to ask too many inconvenient questions.

The other was alive with scientific discovery.

Orphaned at an early age, Clementine was raised first by one maternal uncle and then another—the renowned mineralogist Christian Samuel Weiss. His Berlin household was steeped in geology, crystallography and energetic intellectual debate. Rocks were not merely rocks; they were evidence. Crystals held mathematical order. The Earth had a history, and that history could be read.

It was an extraordinary environment for a girl of her time, and Clementine absorbed it eagerly.

She later travelled to Berlin to earn a teaching diploma at the Königliche Luisenstiftung, one of the few institutions where a determined young woman could pursue advanced education. She taught for several years, developing the discipline, empathy and instinct for explanation that would later shape her writing.

A good teacher understands that knowledge need not be made dull to be respectable. Clementine seems to have understood this particularly well.

A Household of Geologists, Writers and Ideas

In 1848, Clementine married Heinrich Ernst Beyrich, one of her uncle’s former students. He would become a celebrated geologist and palaeontologist—and the sort of husband whose professional conversations were likely to include ancient seas, extinct organisms and the careful naming of rock layers.

Their Berlin home became a gathering place for scientists, artists and writers. Among their circle were Theodor Fontane, Otto Roquette and Friedrich Eggers, members of the Rütli literary group.

Clementine reportedly held her own in these conversations with warmth, intelligence and a quiet but formidable wit.

One can imagine the scene: earnest gentlemen debating geology over coffee while Clementine listened, questioned, remembered—and later transformed their grand scientific discussions into stories that children could actually understand.

The couple had no children of their own. After Clementine’s sister died in 1851, however, they adopted and raised her nieces, Anna and Elly. Surviving letters and diaries reveal the closeness of their relationship. The girls helped shape Clementine’s understanding of young readers, while she encouraged their intellectual curiosity in return.

This was a household where girls were cared for. It was also one in which they were expected to think.

Science Between the Covers

Clementine published her first work, a collection of children’s songs, in 1861. Over the following three decades, she produced more than 40 books, along with numerous stories, fairy tales and anthologies. She also established an annual almanac for girls with fellow writer Frida Schanz.

Her work travelled well beyond Germany and was translated into English, French, Dutch and Scandinavian languages.

Her best-known novel, Backfischchens Leiden und Freuden, published in 1863, became a beloved example of the Backfischroman—a genre written for adolescent girls. The term Backfisch referred to a girl somewhere between childhood and adulthood: not quite ready for society’s formal table, as it were, but no longer a minnow either.

Yet Clementine’s books offered far more than pleasant entertainment and lessons in good behaviour.

She gave her young readers access to science.

Geology, palaeontology, biology and the emerging debates of the scientific world appeared throughout her stories. Fossils and natural history were woven into narratives about girls learning who they were and what they might become.

In Dornröschen und Schneewittchen, Clementine even referred openly to Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. This was a bold choice. Darwin’s ideas remained deeply controversial, and scientific debate was hardly considered appropriate reading material for girls.

Clementine disagreed—quietly, but quite decisively.

Her heroines were curious, educated and eager to understand the world around them. They were not decorative creatures waiting patiently for life to happen. They observed, questioned and participated in the unfolding story of scientific discovery.

In other words, they behaved like scientists.

Breaking Barriers—Quietly and Brilliantly

During the nineteenth century, women were largely barred from formal study in geology and the other natural sciences. Academic societies, universities and professional appointments were overwhelmingly closed to them.

Clementine found another route.

Imagination became her passport, and literature became her lecture hall.

Through her family and social circles, she encountered many of the people and ideas transforming nineteenth-century science. Her world connected her to figures such as Alexander von Humboldt, Ernst Haeckel, Christian Samuel Weiss, and Heinrich Ernst Beyrich. She absorbed the great debates surrounding geology, deep time, fossils and evolution, then translated them into engaging stories for younger readers.

She may not have held a university position or published geological monographs under her own name, but she became something equally influential: a gifted popularizer of geoscience at a time when most women were denied even the social permission to be curious.

That matters.

Scientific knowledge does not advance only through laboratories, museums and scholarly papers. It also grows through the people who carry ideas beyond those walls—those who make discovery feel possible to someone encountering it for the first time.

Through fairy tales enlivened by fossils and novels threaded with natural history, Clementine carried science into households across Central Europe. Her books reached girls who might never enter a university, attend a geological lecture or be invited into a learned society.

Within those pages, however, they could wander through deep time.

They could encounter vanished worlds, consider evolution and recognize that curiosity was not a masculine trait. Intellect belonged to them, too.

Clementine Helm Beyrich died in 1896, only a month after her husband. Yet the quiet revolution she helped nurture continued long after her final chapter.

Her legacy lives not only in the books she wrote, but in the minds she opened—especially those of the girls who saw themselves reflected in her intelligent, inquisitive heroines and understood that the story of science included them.

ROCK TO MUSEUM: JOURNEY OF A FOSSIL

Finding a fossil is like time-traveling with your hands. 

One moment you’re walking along a riverbank or quarry, scanning the ground, and the next—a fragment of bone, a whorl of an ammonite, or the outline of a fern leaf catches your eye. 

That thrill? It never gets old.

But the real magic happens after discovery. Fossils are often locked away in hard rock, fragile as porcelain and millions of years old. 

Paleontologists and citizen scientists use delicate tools—dental picks, air scribes, and fine brushes—to slowly free them, grain by grain. In some cases, a fossil is encased in plaster field jackets to keep it safe during transport, like a mummy wrapped for a journey through time.

Fossil Prep Lab

Once back in the lab, preparation becomes part science, part art. 

Stabilizing cracks, cleaning away stone, and sometimes even using microscopes to reveal the smallest details—all of this ensures the fossil tells its story clearly. 

For research, every surface and feature matters: teeth reveal diets, bone growth shows age, and even microscopic scratches whisper about ancient ecosystems.

When the work is done, fossils can either stay in collections for study or move into museum galleries. There, preparators mount them with custom armatures or create casts so the originals remain protected. Under lights and glass, these specimens connect us to their history—turning silent stone into storytellers. 

Prepping with an Air Scribe

Sometimes we see the specimen in isolation and other times we see who that creature was living amongst, how it made a living and what the environmental conditions were like. 

We might look at the pollen in the rock next to the fossil or bits of debris that help share these clues. 

Every fossil in a museum has taken this long journey: discovered in the field, carefully freed in the lab, then shared with the world. 

As you walk through the paleo exhibits at museums, you will begin to see the amount of time and patience that goes into preparing those specimens, both for study and display. 

URSUS CURIOUS: TLA'YI

A young Black Bear cub, Ursus americanus, tip-toes toward a frisky (and very startled) Striped Skunk, Mephitis mephitis — two wonderfully charismatic neighbours here in southern British Columbia.

Skunks, despite their reputation as the great olfactory villains of the mammal world, are actually closer to Old World stink badgers than to true polecats. 

Their infamous spray comes from paired anal scent glands capable of delivering a sulphur-rich chemical cocktail with uncanny accuracy — up to three metres, cross-wind. 

A single blast contains thiols so potent that predators learn, very quickly, that curiosity is overrated. Well… most predators. This wee bear clearly didn’t get the memo.

Black Bear cubs are, by nature, little bundles of kinetic joy and overwhelming inquisitiveness. Born in mid-winter, blind and tiny (weighing little more than a can of soup), they spend their first months cozied up in the den. 

By spring, though? Trouble. Pure, adorable trouble. Cubs stay with their mothers for about two years, learning every essential skill — how to climb, what to eat, what not to poke — but sometimes a particularly irresistible mystery will lure one a few metres away for a solo investigation.

Skunks, meanwhile, are far more than their signature scent. They’re accomplished insectivores with surprisingly strong forelimbs, adapted for rooting out beetle larvae, grubs, and other soil-dwelling goodies. 

They’re also bold. A skunk will usually stomp its feet, click its teeth, and arch its tail in a dramatic “Don’t make me do it” warning display. 

And yet — miracle of miracles — nobody got skunked. A karmic win for everyone involved.

This charming moment is also a reminder of the rich biodiversity we’re blessed with on the rugged west coast of British Columbia, where coastal rainforests shelter everything from salmon-loving black bears to nocturnal, grub-snuffling skunks.

Bears and skunks also have deep, fascinating roots in the fossil record. The lineage leading to modern skunks (Mephitidae) first appears in the Oligocene, roughly 30–32 million years ago, with early forms like Promephitis showing many of the skeletal hallmarks — and likely the scent-gland superpowers — of their modern cousins. 

Bears (Ursidae), meanwhile, trace their ancestry back even further. Their earliest known relatives emerge in the late Eocene, around 38 million years ago, with small, doglike proto-bears such as Parictis and later the hemicyonids, sometimes called “dog-bears,” bridging the evolutionary steps toward the true bears we know today. 

By the Miocene, both families were well established across North America, sharing ancient forests and floodplains just as their modern descendants do today — though hopefully with just as few skunk-related mishaps.

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, this playful black bear is t̕ła'yi — a name that captures both its spirit and its place within these lands. 

A perfect word for a perfect little explorer with an arguably questionable sense of danger.

SPISULA FOSSIL CLAMS OF HAIDA GWAII

Some lovely Spisula praecursor (Dall) fossil clams from the Skonun Formation of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, captured from the Miocene when this coastline looked very different from today. 

These fossil bivalves belong to the surf clam lineage, a group well adapted to shallow, energetic marine environments with shifting sands and strong wave action. 

Their robust, equivalve shells and streamlined form speak to a life spent burrowed just beneath the sediment surface, filtering seawater for food while riding out constant motion above.

The Skonun Formation preserves a rich snapshot of nearshore marine life along the northeastern Pacific margin during the Miocene, roughly 23 to 5 million years ago. 

At that time, Haida Gwaii lay along an active tectonic edge, with sediments accumulating in coastal and shelf settings influenced by currents, storms, and abundant nutrient flow. 

Fossils such as Spisula praecursor help us reconstruct these dynamic environments, offering clues about water depth, substrate type, and even paleoclimate.

These particular specimens came from a single block only accessible on a falling tide. Timing, as ever, was everything—and the tide had other ideas. 

The excavation involved equal parts determination and seawater, leaving both collector and fossils thoroughly soaked. Still, there is something fitting about getting wet while freeing marine clams from their ancient shoreline, a small reminder that fieldwork often mirrors the environments we are trying to understand.

EUROPEAN FLAMINGO: STILT WALKERS OF ANTIQUITY

European Flamingo

At dawn along the salt lagoons of the Mediterranean, the European flamingo rises like a soft-feathered sunrise, a sweep of pale rose and ember pink drifting across mirror-still water. 

Their long, reed-thin legs stitch delicate ripples through the shallows, while their downcurved bills — precision tools of evolutionary engineering — sift brine shrimp and algae with gentle, rhythmic sweeps.

But Phoenicopterus roseus, the European flamingo, is more than a creature of luminous wetlands. 

It is the living remnant of a lineage forged in deep time, a story that stretches back more than 30 million years into a world utterly transformed.

For decades, flamingos stood as an evolutionary puzzle — strange in form, stranger still in habit. Their closest relatives were unclear. Then the fossil record began offering clues.

The earliest birds recognizable as flamingo ancestors appear in the Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, a period when the world was cooling and vast salt lakes spread across what is now Europe and North America.

The star of this ancient cast is Palaelodus, a long-legged wader known from deposits in France, Germany, and even North America. Often described as an “unfinished flamingo,” Palaelodus stood tall on slender legs but lacked the extreme bill curvature of modern species.

Paleontologists see it as a sister lineage — a bird halfway between the ancestral stock and the unmistakable modern flamingo form.

Their environments tell the same tale: shallow, alkaline waters rich with diatoms, crustaceans, and blue-green algae. The perfect proving ground for a future flamingo.

By the Miocene, true flamingos had fully arrived. Fossil flamingos — many nearly indistinguishable from modern species — appear in the lakebeds of Spain, Italy, Hungary, and Greece.

Some highlights of Europe’s deep flamingo past include:

• Phoenicopterus minutus, an elegant early species known from the Late Miocene of Hungary
• Phoenicopterus gracilis, which stalked ancient Iberian wetlands

Abundant trackways in Miocene lakebeds of Spain, showing flocks wading and foraging as they do today

What’s striking is how little the flamingo body plan has changed. Once their ecological niche crystallized — the brackish shallows, the sieving bill, the social flocking behaviour — evolution held its breath. Flamingos became masters of a lifestyle so successful it needed no further remodeling.

Until recently, the flamingo’s closest living relatives were uncertain. For years, hypotheses bounced between storks, herons, waders, and even waterfowl. Then genetics reshaped the field.

Flamingos are now grouped with grebes in a clade called Mirandornithes.

It’s a pairing that initially seems improbable — one bird is a pink desert ballerina, the other a compact diver of northern lakes. Yet the fossil record supports it: early grebe-like birds and Palaelodus share key skeletal traits, hinting at a common aquatic ancestor before their lineages diverged.

Today the European flamingo thrives in the wetlands of:

• The Camargue, France
• Doñana, Spain
• Sardinia and Sicily
• The salt pans of Turkey
• Coastal lagoons of North Africa

Their pink colour, borrowed from carotenoid pigments in their prey, is a living reminder of their deep bond with saline waters. Their massive colonial nests, sculpted from mud into miniature towers, echo the behaviour of flamingos preserved in Miocene fossil beds.

Each bird, elegant and improbable, embodies a lineage honed by climate shifts, vanished lakes, and ancient ancestors who once stepped cautiously through Europe’s long-lost wetlands.

From the lithified sediments of the Oligocene to the shimmering pink flocks drifting across the Mediterranean today, flamingos stand as one of the great evolutionary constants: birds whose story is etched into stone, water, and sunlight.

BEAUTY IN STONE: ANAHOPLITES PLANUS

There are fossils that whisper and then there are those that positively sing.

This interesting beauty is a splendid specimen of Anahoplites planus (Mantell, 1822), drawn from Albian-aged sediments at Courcelles-sur-Voire in the Aube region of north-central France. 

And sing, it does! There are so many things going on here!

Roughly 105 million years ago, when warm Cretaceous seas spread across much of Europe, this elegant cephalopod cruised ancient waters with all the poise of a creature that knew it wore excellent tailoring.

Anahoplites, first named by Sowerby in 1815, is a delightfully refined genus of hoplitid ammonite. 

Its shell is compressed and neatly streamlined, with flat flanks, a narrow venter — sometimes grooved, sometimes smooth — and graceful, flexuous ribs rising from modest umbilical tubercles before ending in a fringe of fine ventrolateral nodes. In short: less brute force, more couture. 

Its sturdier cousins in the Hoplitinae favour broader whorls and heavier ornament, but Anahoplites has always struck a finer silhouette.

Today, the genus sits comfortably within the subfamily Anahoplitinae, a taxonomic reshuffle that recognises its more delicate build and distinct style. We find these beauties in Middle to Late Albian rocks from England across Europe and eastward toward the Transcaspian reaches near the Caspian Sea — proof that good design travels.

And what a setting this fossil calls home. The Aube department lends its name to the Albian Stage itself, established by d’Orbigny in 1842. 

Here, the stratotype succession includes the Argiles tégulines de Courcelles, some 82 metres of clay-rich deposits, overlain by the Marnes de Brienne, a further 43 metres of marl. Their boundary is marked by a hardened bed, clear in the field to those with sharp eyes and muddy boots.

This particular shell, measuring 113 mm across, did not rest alone on the seafloor. It became a tiny apartment block after death. 

Two forms of bryozoans encrust its surface, joined by an oyster and industrious serpulid worms, all leaving their marks upon those handsome flanks. Even in death, it was prime real estate.

Lovingly prepared using potash by José Juárez Ruiz of Spain, this fossil now offers us not just the form of one ammonite, but a snapshot of an ancient community. 

One shell. Many stories. And my, what a beauty.

WHALE REMAINS AT JOUGLA POINT, ANTARCTIC PENINSULA

Blue Whale Remains, Balaenoptera musculus

Along the stony shore of Jougla Point, near Port Lockroy on the Antarctic Peninsula, a scatter of great bones lies open to the wind. 

The skeleton is that of a blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus, the largest animal ever known to have lived on Earth, though the assemblage may include bones from other baleen whales discarded during the industrial whaling era. 

Visitors approach in Zodiacs to find vertebrae the size of millstones, jaw elements curved like crossed oars, and ribs arcing across the gravel. 

It is a stark and unsentimental record of the 20th-century hunt that once emptied Antarctic waters of their giants.

Blue whales are baleen mysticetes within the rorqual family, engineered for long migrations and high-volume filter feeding. 

Adults can exceed 30 meters in length and reach masses over 150 tonnes — a scale that eclipses even the largest dinosaurs. Their fossil record is surprisingly young. 

Although whale ancestors arose in the Eocene (~50 million years ago), the lineage leading to modern rorquals, including blue whales, diversifies during the Miocene and Pliocene (roughly 23–2.6 million years ago). 

Fossil mysticetes from California, Italy, Peru, and New Zealand document that transition: from toothed baleen ancestors to fully edentulous filter feeders with vaulting skulls and expandable throats built for krill-rich seas. 

True “blue whale–like” forms appear only in the Pleistocene and Holocene, making these colossal cetaceans a relatively recent evolutionary experiment.

In life today, blue whales occupy vast swaths of the global ocean, moving seasonally between high-latitude feeding grounds and lower-latitude calving areas. Major populations persist in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, eastern tropical Pacific, Southern Ocean, and waters off Australia and New Zealand. 

Their preferred summer feeding grounds lie in zones of upwelling and krill abundance — places like the California Current, the Subantarctic Front, and the Scotia Sea.

The industrial era nearly erased them. 

Prior to commercial hunting, global numbers likely exceeded 250,000 individuals. By the 1970s, after decades of relentless Antarctic whaling, their numbers crashed to less than 1% of pre-exploitation levels. 

With international protections in place, blue whales are recovering slowly but unevenly. 

Current estimates hover around 10,000–25,000 animals worldwide — still critically small for a species of such enormous ecological footprint.

Despite their rarity, blue whales remain visible to those who seek them. They are encountered off California and Baja, around Sri Lanka, in the Gulf of Corcovado, the Tasman Sea, the Kerguelen Plateau, and sporadically across the Southern Ocean. 

In these places, the sea shines with plankton and the long low blows of a whale may hang in the air like cold breath.

At Jougla Point, the story is told through bones weathering in chilly silence — a natural museum without walls. I am generally in search of fossil remains, but these hit all those same emotions. Barring our intervention and natural disaster, these great beasts can live to be more than 100 years old. What they must see over those long years.   

And, how do we know how old they are? We can estimate age by reading earplug layers (like tree rings) in deceased whales — each waxy layer marks a period of life, helping confirm those long lifespans.

AVES: LIVING DINOSAURS

Cassowary, Casuariiformes

Wherever you are in the world, it is likely that you know your local birds. True, you may call them des Oiseaux, pássaros or uccelli — but you'll know their common names by heart.

You will also likely know their sounds. The tweets, chirps, hoots and caws of the species living in your backyard.

Birds come in all shapes and sizes and their brethren blanket the globe. It is amazing to think that they all sprang from the same lineage given the sheer variety. 

If you picture them, we have such a variety on the planet — parrots, finches, wee hummingbirds, long-legged waterbirds, waddling penguins and showy toucans. 

But whether they are a gull, hawk, cuckoo, hornbill, potoo or albatross, they are all cousins in the warm-blooded vertebrate class Aves. 

The defining features of the Aves are feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. The best features, their ability to dance, bounce and sing, are not listed, but it is how I see them in the world.

These modern dinosaurs live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m (9 ft) ostrich. 

There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have wings whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds.

Wings evolved from forelimbs giving birds the ability to fly

Wings, which evolved from forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. 

The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming.

Wee Feathered Theropod Dinosaurs

We now know from fossil and biological evidence that birds are a specialized subgroup of theropod dinosaurs, and more specifically, they are members of Maniraptora, a group of theropods that includes dromaeosaurs and oviraptorids, amongst others. As palaeontologists discover more theropods closely related to birds, the previously clear distinction between non-birds and birds has become a bit muddy.

Recent discoveries in the Liaoning Province of northeast China, which include many small theropod feathered dinosaurs — and some excellent arty reproductions — contribute to this ambiguity. 

Still, other fossil specimens found here shed a light on the evolution of Aves. Confuciusornis sanctus, an Early Cretaceous bird from the Yixian and Jiufotang Formations of China is the oldest known bird to have a beak.

Like modern birds, Confuciusornis had a toothless beak, but close relatives of modern birds such as Hesperornis and Ichthyornis were toothed, telling us that the loss of teeth occurred convergently in Confuciusornis and living birds.

The consensus view in contemporary palaeontology is that the flying theropods, or avialans, are the closest relatives of the deinonychosaurs, which include dromaeosaurids and troodontids.

Together, these form a group called Paraves. Some basal members of this group, such as Microraptor, have features that may have enabled them to glide or fly. 

The most basal deinonychosaurs were wee little things. This raises the possibility that the ancestor of all paravians may have been arboreal, have been able to glide, or both. Unlike Archaeopteryx and the non-avialan feathered dinosaurs, who primarily ate meat, tummy contents from recent avialan studies suggest that the first avialans were omnivores. Even more intriguing...

Avialae, which translates to bird wings, are a clade of flying dinosaurs containing the only living dinosaurs, the birds. It is usually defined as all theropod dinosaurs more closely related to modern birds — Aves — than to deinonychosaurs, though alternative definitions are occasionally bantered back and forth.

The Earliest Avialan: Archaeopteryx lithographica

Archaeopteryx, bird-like dinosaur from the Late Jurassic

Archaeopteryx lithographica, from the late Jurassic Period Solnhofen Formation of Germany, is the earliest known avialan that may have had the capability of powered flight. 

However, several older avialans are known from the Late Jurassic Tiaojishan Formation of China, dating to about 160 million years ago.

The Late Jurassic Archaeopteryx is well-known as one of the first transitional fossils to be found, and it provided support for the theory of evolution in the late 19th century. 

Archaeopteryx was the first fossil to clearly display both traditional reptilian characteristics — teeth, clawed fingers, and a long, lizard-like tail—as well as wings with flight feathers similar to those of modern birds. It is not considered a direct ancestor of birds, though it is possibly closely related to the true ancestor.

Unlikely yet true, the closest living relatives of birds are the crocodilians. Birds are descendants of the primitive avialans — whose members include Archaeopteryx — which first appeared about 160 million years ago in China.

DNA evidence tells us that modern birds — Neornithes — evolved in the Middle to Late Cretaceous, and diversified dramatically around the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 mya, which killed off the pterosaurs and all non-avian dinosaurs.

In birds, the brain, especially the telencephalon, is remarkably developed, both in relative volume and complexity. Unlike most early‐branching sauropsids, the adults of birds and other archosaurs have a well‐ossified neurocranium. In contrast to most of their reptilian relatives, but similar to what we see in mammals, bird brains fit closely to the endocranial cavity so that major external features are reflected in the endocasts. What you see on the inside is what you see on the outside.

This makes birds an excellent group for palaeoneurological investigations. The first observation of the brain in a long‐extinct bird was made in the first quarter of the 19th century. However, it was not until the 2000s and the application of modern imaging technologies that avian palaeoneurology really took off.

Understanding how the mode of life is reflected in the external morphology of the brains of birds is but one of several future directions in which avian palaeoneurological research may extend.

Although the number of fossil specimens suitable for palaeoneurological explorations is considerably smaller in birds than in mammals and will very likely remain so, the coming years will certainly witness a momentous strengthening of this rapidly growing field of research at the overlap between ornithology, palaeontology, evolutionary biology and the neurosciences.

Reference: Cau, Andrea; Brougham, Tom; Naish, Darren (2015). "The phylogenetic affinities of the bizarre Late Cretaceous Romanian theropod Balaur bondoc (Dinosauria, Maniraptora): Dromaeosaurid or flightless bird?". PeerJ. 3: e1032. doi:10.7717/peerj.1032. PMC 4476167. PMID 26157616.

Reference: Ivanov, M., Hrdlickova, S. & Gregorova, R. (2001) The Complete Encyclopedia of Fossils. Rebo Publishers, Netherlands. p. 312

DRIFTWOOD CANYON FOSSIL BEDS

Puffbird similar to Fossil Birds found at Driftwood Canyon 

Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park 

Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park covers 23 hectares of the Bulkley River Valley, on the east side of Driftwood Creek, a tributary of the Bulkley River, 10 km northeast of the town of Smithers in northern British Columbia. 

Driftwood Canyon is recognized as one of the world’s most significant fossil beds. 

It provides park users with a fascinating opportunity to understand the area’s evolutionary processes of both geology and biology. The day-use area is open from May 15 to September 2. There is a short, wheelchair-accessible interpretative trail that leads from the parking are to the fossil beds. Pets are welcome on leash. Signs along the trail provide information on fossils and local history. 

Wet'suwet'en First Nation

The parklands are part of the Traditional Territory of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation which includes lands around the Bulkley River, Burns Lake, Broman Lake, and François Lake in the northwestern Central Interior of British Columbia. 

The Wetʼsuwetʼen are part of the Dakelh or Carrier First Nation, and in combination with the Babine First Nation are referred to as the Western Carrier. They speak Witsuwitʼen, a dialect of the Babine-Witsuwitʼen language which, like its sister language Carrier, is a member of the Athabaskan family.

Their oral history or kungax recounts a time when their ancestral village, Dizkle or Dzilke, once stood upstream from the Bulkley Canyon. This cluster of cedar houses on both sides of the river was said to be abandoned because of an omen of impending disaster. The exact location of the village has been lost but their stories live on. 

The neighbouring Gitxsan, collectively the People of Smooth Waters—the Gilseyhu Big Frog Clan, the Laksilyu Small Frog Clan, the Tsayu Beaver Clan, the Gitdumden Wolf and Bear Clan and the Laksamshu Fireweed and Owl Clan—each phratry or kinship group calling the Lax Yip home—33,000 km2 of land and water in northwestern ​British Columbia along the waters of the Skeena River and its tributaries—have a similar tale—though the village in their versions is referred to as Dimlahamid or Temlahan depending on which house group or wilp is sharing the tale—as well as where they are located as dialects differ. 

Gitksan speak Sim'algax—the real or true language. Within the Gitxsan communities there are two slightly different dialects. The Gyeets (Downriver) dialect spoken in Gijigyukwhla (Gitsegukla), Gitwangax, and Gitanyow—and the Gigeenix (Upriver) dialect is spoken in Ansbayaxw (Kispiox), Sik-E-Dakh and Gitanmaax.

Driftwood Canyon Fossil Beds

Driftwood Canyon's Fossil Beds record life in the earlier portion of the Eocene when British Columbia — and indeed our world — was much warmer than it is today. This site was discovered in the beginning of the 20th century and is now recognized as containing significant fossil material. 

I was speaking this week with a friend and classmate recently from a Traditional Ecological Knowledge course through the University of Northern British Columbia, Jessy, about Driftwood Canyon and the fossil resources found here.

The fossils are tremendous—and their superb preservation—provide a fascinating opportunity to understand the area’s evolutionary processes of both geology and biology over the past fifty million years or so. The fossils themselves are 51.7 million years old and look remarkably like many of the species we recognize today. 

The fossil beds are on the east side of Driftwood Creek, C’ide’Yikwah in Witsuwit’en, which has its headwaters in the main, southwest facing basin of the Babine Mountains. The park that contains these beautiful fossils is fifty-seven years old. 

It was created in 1967 by the generosity of the late Gordon Harvey (1913–1976). He donated the land to protect fossil resources that he truly loved and wanted to see preserved. How Harvey came to be in a position to donate lands once part of a First Nation Traditional Territory will need to be explored deeper. I will share as I learn more about this as I learn more from locals and the local history museum in the coming weeks and months.

Metasequoia, the Dawn Redwood

Exploring the region today, we see a landscape dominated by conifers blanketing the area. 

Forests teem with the aromatic Western Red Cedar, Pacific Silver Fir with its many medicinal properties, the tall and lanky Subalpine Fir with its soft, brittle and quickly decaying wood, the slender scaly Lodgepole Pine, the graceful and slightly forlorn looking Western Hemlock. 

Across the landscape you see several species of Spruce, including the impressive Sitka, Picea sitchensis, the world's largest spruce tree who live up to an impressive 800 years. 

The stands of mature Sitka standing here today were just being established in this ground back in 1921 when Smithers was designated as the first incorporated village in British Columbia. They are slow to establish and get going, but once embedded are amongst the fastest growing trees we see on the western edge of Canada, colonizing glacial moraines with their cold resistant stock centuries ago when the glaciers that once covered this land eventually retreated.

Some of the tallest on view would have been mere seedlings, colonizing the glacial moraines centuries ago when the glaciers retreated. Collectively, these conifers tell the tale of the region's cool climate today. 

The Gitsan territory boasts seven of the 14 biogeoclimatic zones of the province—the Alpine Tundra, Spruce-Willow-Birch, Boreal White and Black Spruce, Sub-Boreal Pine-Spruce, Sub-Boreal Spruce, Engelmann Spruce-Subalpine Fir and Interior Cedar-Hemlock. 

The fossil material we find here speaks to a warmer climate in this region's past. We find fossil plants, fish—including specimens of salmon, suckerfish and bowfin, a type of air breathing fish—and insect fossil here—wasps and water striders—fossil plants including Metasequoia, the Dawn Redwood, alder—and interesting vertebrate material. Bird feathers are infrequently collected from the shales; however, two bird body fossils have been found here.

In 1968, a bird body fossil was collected in the Eocene shales of the Ootsa Lake Group in Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park by Pat Petley of Kamloops. 

Pat donated the specimen in 2000 to the Thompson Rivers University (TRU) palaeontology collections. This fossil bird specimen is tentatively identified as the puffbird, Piciformes bucconidae, of the genus Primobucco.

Primobucco is an extinct genus of bird placed in its own family, Primobucconidae. The type species, Primobucco mcgrewi, lived during the Lower Eocene of North America. It was initially described by American paleo-ornithologist Pierce Brodkorb in 1970, from a fossil right-wing, and thought to be an early puffbird. However, the discovery of a further 12 fossils in 2010 indicate that it is instead an early type of roller.

Related fossils from the European Messel deposits have been assigned to the two species P. perneri and P. frugilegus. Two specimens of P. frugilegus have been found with seeds in the area of their digestive tract, which suggests that these birds were more omnivorous than the exclusively predaceous modern rollers. The Driftwood specimen has never been thoroughly studied. If there is a grad student out there looking for a worthy thesis, head on down to the Thompson Rivers University where you'll find the specimen on display.

Another fossil bird, complete with feathers, was collected at Driftwood Canyon in 1970, This one was found by Margret and Albrecht Klöckner who were travelling from Germany. Theirs is a well-travelled specimen, having visited many sites in BC as they toured around, then to Germany and finally back to British Columbia when it was repatriated and donated to the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria. 

I am not sure if it is still on display or back in collections, but it was lovingly displayed back in 2008. There is a new grad student, Alexis, looking at Eocene bird feathers down at the RBCM, so perhaps it is once again doing the rounds. 

This second bird fossil is of a long-legged water bird and has been tentatively identified by Dr. Gareth Dyke of the University of Southampton as possibly from the order Charadriiformes, a diverse order of small to medium-ish water birds that include 350 species of gulls, plovers, sandpipers, terns, snipes, and waders. Hopefully, we'll hear more on this find in the future.

A Tapir showing off his prehensile nose trunk

Tapirs and Tiny Hedgehogs

The outcrops at Driftwood Canyon are also special because they record a record of some of the first fossil mammals ever to be found in British Columbia at this pivotal point in time. 

Wee proto-hedgehogs smaller than your thumb lived in the undergrowth of that fossil flora. They shared the forest floor with an extinct tapir-like herbivore in the genus Heptodon that looked remarkably similar to his modern, extant cousins (there is a rather cheeky fellow shown here so you get the idea) but lacked their pronounced snout (proboscis). I am guessing that omission made him the more fetching of his lineage.

In both cases, it was a fossilized jaw bone that was recovered from the mud, silt and volcanic ash outcrops in this ancient lakebed site. And these two cuties are significant— they are the very first fossil mammals we've ever found from the early Eocene south of the Arctic.

How can we be sure of the timing? The fossil outcrops here are found within an ancient lakebed. Volcanic eruptions 51 million years ago put loads of fine dust into the air that settled then sank to the bottom of the lake, preserving the specimens that found their way here — leaves, insects, birds, mammals.

As well as turning the lake into a fossil making machine—water, ash, loads of steady sediment to cover specimens and stave off predation—the volcanic ash contains the very chemically inert—resistant to mechanical weathering—mineral zircon which we can date with uranium/lead (U/Pb). 

The U/Pb isotopic dating technique is wonderfully accurate and mighty helpful in dating geologic events from volcanic eruptions, continental movements to mass extinctions. This means we know exactly when these lovelies were fossilized and, in turn, their significance.

Know Before You Go

If you fancy a visit to Driftwood Canyon Park, the park is accessible from Driftwood Road from Provincial Highway 16. You are welcome to view and photograph the fossils found here but collecting is strictly forbidden. 

Driftwood Canyon is recognized as one of the world’s most significant fossil beds. It provides park users with a fascinating opportunity to understand the area’s evolutionary processes of both geology and biology. The day-use area is open from May 15 to September 2. There is a short, wheelchair-accessible interpretative trail that leads from the parking are to the fossil beds. Pets are welcome on leash. Signs along the trail provide information on fossils and local history. 

Below a cliff face at the end of the trail is a viewing area that has interpretive information and viewing area overlooking Driftwood Creek.

This park proudly operated by Mark and Anais Drydyk

Email: kermodeparks@gmail.com / Tel: 1 250 877-1482 or 1 250 877-1782

Palaeo Coordinates: Latitude: 50° 51' 59" N / Longitude: 116° 27' 37" W

Lat/Long (dec): 50.86665,-116.46042 / GUID: d3a6bd3e-68d6-42cf-9b2c-d20a30576988

Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park Brochure: 

https://bcparks.ca/explore/parkpgs/driftwood_cyn/driftwood-canyon-brochure.pdf?v=1638723136455

Sheila Peters: Driftwood Creek – and the ways we cross it; here Sheila Peters shares a wonderful lived history which I have not had the pleasure to yet fully explore as of 09 February 2025. I do recommend you checking out her post as it contains information and photographs worthy of a newcomers visit to the area.

Link: https://sheilapeters.com/tag/peavine-harvey/

SAXMAN TOTEM PARK AND TLINGIT HISTORY

In the hard-edged years of the Great Depression, when darkness settled across the American economy and hope felt threadbare, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched an unprecedented experiment. 

His New Deal programs sent electricity into rural Tennessee, built schools and dams across the nation, and—far to the northwest in the dripping rainforests of Southeast Alaska—sparked a cultural resurgence few federal planners could have imagined.

Between 1938 and 1942, more than two hundred Tlingit and Haida artists were hired through the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). 

Their charge was to carve monumental cedar poles and restore others standing in the mossy remains of unoccupied villages. 

Officials imagined the creation of “totem parks” that would lure American tourists northward. Perhaps not in the short term, as the recession raged across the nation and the world, but eventually, these parks would bring new visitors and their welcome dollars to the north.

Instead, the project became something far more profound: a revitalization of cultural memory, clan identity, and sovereignty, expressed through carving, paint, story, and the spirits of crest beings older than the United States itself.

Historian Emily L. Moore explores this unlikely convergence in her landmark book Proud Raven, Panting Wolf: Carving Alaska’s New Deal Totem Parks. 

Her research reveals the New Deal not as a moment of cultural salvage, but as one of Indigenous resurgence—an era when Tlingit families reclaimed their visual histories and reaffirmed their relationships to ancestral land.

 
Crests: Living Ancestors, Sacred Property

To understand the poles of Saxman Totem Park, one must understand the Crests depicted upon them. Among the Tlingit, a Crest is not a symbol in the Western sense. 

It is a living being—an animal person, a supernatural entity, or a powerful natural force—encountered by clan ancestors in the ancient past. 

 Dogfish Memorial Pole for Chief Ebbits 

These encounters, often world-changing and sometimes life-threatening, established the unique identity, character, and territorial rights of each clan.

The right to depict a Crest is sacred. In many histories, the ownership of a crest was acquired as kaa naawuweidi'—a payment for the life of an ancestor who survived or was lost during the clan's originating event—a death for a crest. 

That payment bestowed upon the clan not only the right to portray the being, but stewardship over its spirit, the land where the encounter occurred, and all material expressions of that relationship. 

These include carved house screens, frontlets and headdresses, Chilkat robes (naaxein), Chilkat tunics (naaxein k'oodás') spruce root hats, carved cedar war canoes, grave posts, weapons, ceremonial objects, stories, songs, mourning calls at ku.éex’, personal names, and place names.

Crests are held in perpetuity as at.óow—sacred clan property regarded as very much alive. Their spirits dwell within the objects and narratives that represent them. 

Seen in this way, you begin to understand that a totem pole is a monument, a being, a lineage, a territorial claim, and a continuation of the moment when a human ancestor first encountered a powerful other-than-human life.

 
The Lincoln Pole: A Crest, a Claim, a Lineage

One of the most discussed poles brought into Saxman Totem Park during the CCC era was the Lincoln Pole, relocated in 1938. 

The Lincoln Pole

At its summit, a familiar face gazes outward—a stylized representation of Abraham Lincoln. Many visitors assume the figure references American politics, but Tlingit Elders have long taught that the image originally referred to the first white man seen in Tlingit territory in the 1700s.

By the 1880s, members of the Gaanax.ádi Raven clan of the Tongass Tlingit—my ancestors—commissioned this pole to commemorate the event. Carvers selected Lincoln’s likeness simply because it was widely recognizable. 

As with many Crests, the visual representation is less important than the lineage of the encounter and the rights it affirms. This particular pole claims Gaanax.ádi presence and sovereignty long before American expansion reached Alaska.

When CCC carvers restored the pole in the 1940s, they revived more than cedar. They revived the voice of a clan asserting its ancient rights—rights transmitted through at.óow, through story, and through carved beings whose spirits continue to watch over their homeland.
The Dogfish Pole: Honour for a Chief, Story of a Life

Not far from the Lincoln Pole stands another monument filled with ancestral power: the Dogfish Pole, carved for Chief Ebbits Andáa of the Teikweidi, Valley House. Raised in Old Tongass Village in 1892, the pole memorializes the Head Chief of the Tongass Tlingit, whose crest relationships, titles, and life story are carved into its cedar body.

At birth, he was Neokoots. In adulthood, he inherited the title of Chief Sheiks from his father—Chief of Chiefs among the Tlingit of the region. Tlingit names are tides, earned and bestowed throughout a lifetime. 

Yet the transition from Sheiks to Ebbits was unusual. In the late nineteenth century, while trading with Americans aboard one of John Jacob Astor’s vessels, the Chief formed a deep friendship with a fur trader named Ebbits. In a rare ceremony, the two exchanged names. Their act created a bond that echoed through generations.

Chief Ebbits married Aanseet, Chief-of-All-Women of Drifted Ashore House. Their children—Anisalaga Mary Ebbits Hunt, Gaachnéin, Abbie (Atk'géigee), Keenanúk, Kéilsháawat, and the son Yaashút’, who died tragically in 1876—became ancestors to hundreds of descendants across British Columbia and Alaska. Anisalaga, renowned for her Chilkat weaving, carried many names, as is the way among Tlingit and Kwaguʼł families. 

Seattle Pole in Pioneer Square raised for Aanseet

Her artistry and lineage unite today’s Cadwallader, Spencer, Lyons, Hunt, Henderson, and many families of the Pacific Northwest.

Aanseet drowned on the Nass River in 1870. Two memorial poles, Princess-Shining-on-Copper, were raised in her honour: one in Alaska, and one in Tsaxis (Fort Rupert), raised by her daughter Anisalaga. 

The pole that stands in Pioneer Square in Seattle is a replica of the original pole stolen from Tongass Island back in 1899. The theft was undertaken by a group of Seattle businessmen on an expedition to the north. They moored near the village of Old Tongass and went ashore to cut down the pole. It was later presented to the city of Seattle and erected in Pioneer Square. 

In 1938, it was heavily damaged by arson and a new pole, a replica, was made. Once the families found out where their pole had gone, a court case ensued. A federal grand jury indicated eight men, but the case was dismissed. 

The Dogfish Pole weathered to a silvery grey by the early twentieth century, its paint long stripped by wind and time now stands restored in Saxman Totem Park. 

CCC artists restored it in 1938. In 2022, a new restoration stabilized its cedar and freshened its paint so that coming generations might continue to read its stories and honour its spirit.
Letters Across Time

Chief Abbits to Anisalaga

Not all history is carved. Some is fragile as paper. 

Among our family records is a letter from Chief Ebbits—signed “Abbits”—written in 1876 to his daughter Anisalaga, informing her of her brother’s death. 

The shifting spelling of names in these documents reflects not inconsistency, but the complexity of translating Tlingit sounds into English—a multilingual echo of a time when Indigenous and Euro-American worlds were learning to speak across profound differences.

 
A Legacy of Sovereignty

Today, visitors strolling through Saxman Totem Park near Ketchikan see more than restored poles—they see a forest of living beings, each carrying the spirits of crest ancestors. 

Ironically, a program designed to reshape Indigenous lives helped strengthen them. CCC carvers, many of them young Tlingit and Haida men, used federal wages to carve their clan stories back into visibility.

It also put carving tools back into the hands of artists to use their skills and refine them in the refurbishing of poles that would have (rightly) decayed into the moss and sands of these windswept shores.  

The Tlingit, along with other Northwest Coast peoples, hold the belief that totem poles should be allowed to decay naturally and return to the earth as part of the life cycle of these crests 

Photographer Jeff Whyte, whose work captures the saturated greens and mist-washed cedar of the Pacific Northwest, shared images with me from Saxman. 

His lens reveals what Tlingit communities have always known: the poles are alive, watching over their descendants as steadfastly as the spruce and hemlock rising behind them.

For those seeking deeper understanding, The Wolf and the Raven by anthropologist Viola Garfield and architect Linn Forrest—another talented member of our extended family—remains essential reading.
Cedar Memory

Saxman Totem Park

Alaska’s totem parks do not exist soley because a federal program sought to ease unemployment. That was the action that set them in motion but to carry out the work takes skill honed over many years. 

These parks exist because Tlingit clans chose to pick up their adzes, reclaim their Crests, restore their at.óow, and reassert their sovereignty in a rapidly changing world.

What stands at Saxman today is a story-forest, a lineage made visible, a gathering of ancestral beings raised toward the sky and carried into the future by those who continue to speak their names.

Visiting Saxman Totem Park

Saxman Totem Park is a public park located just south of Ketchikan in the Tlingit community of Saxman, Alaska. Established during the New Deal as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps’ ambitious totem restoration project, the park today houses one of the world’s most significant collections of Tlingit and Haida poles.

Many poles were relocated from unoccupied villages including Old Tongass, Cat Island, Village Island, Pennock Island, and Fox Village. Others were re-carved by master Tlingit artists hired through the CCC in the 1930s, and then again later as the poles once more weathered to show their age. 

Among the cultural treasures recovered from abandoned sites was a marble statue of a grizzly bear—an exceptional example of Indigenous stone carving.

Notable Poles and House Posts

• Sun and Raven
• Raven and Frog
• Tired-Wolf House Posts
• The Beaver Posts
• The Blackfish Pole
• Klawak Blackfish Fin
• The Frog Tree
• Grizzly Bear Monument
• Kats and his Bear Wife
• The Lincoln Totem
• Secretary of State Pole
• Raven Pole
• The Grizzly Bear Post
• The Loon Tree
• Owl Memorial
• Pointing Figure
• Giant Rock Oyster Pole
• Memorials of Eagle Tail House
• Dogfish Totem

Photo Credit: Saxman Totem Park poles courtesy of Jeff Whyte of  www.jeffwhytephotography.com

SEALS OF THE NORTH PACIFIC: FOSSILS AND LIVING STORIES OF THE KWAKIUTL

Along the storm-polished shores of northern Vancouver Island, where cedar-dark forests lean out over the Salt Chuck and the tide breathes in long, tidal sighs, the seal has long held a place of honour—not only as a keystone species of the coast, but as a cultural relative, teacher, and provider to the First Nations of northern Vancouver Island. 

Long before marine biologists began tagging pinnipeds or calculating biomass, Kwakwaka'wakw families, my family, understood the rhythms, migrations, and behaviours of ts’áxwi (harbour seals) intimately. 

Seals were never merely animals of the sea; they were participants in the community of beings, woven through stories, ceremony, and the practical technologies that allowed coastal life to flourish.

This deep relationship is reflected vividly in one of the most important annual institutions of Kwakiutl society: the Seal Society.

The Seal Society (Tsawadi): Winter Dances, Identity, and the First Step Into Knowledge

During the winter tseka—the great ceremonial season—First Nation communities transformed their bighouses into worlds between worlds. Flames swayed across cedar-planked walls. Dancers and masked performers embodied supernatural beings, ancestors, and the animal nations with whom the Kwakiutl share their homelands.

Among these dramatic and spiritually potent societies, the Seal Society (Tsawadi) held special significance.

For younger initiates, it was often the first step on a lifelong path into deeper ceremonial knowledge. Through dance, drama, and story, they learned to see the seal not only as a source of subsistence but as a teacher of adaptability, cooperation, and ocean wisdom.

The performances were more than representations—they were conversations across species, reaffirming relationships renewed each winter.

The Most Useful Animal of the Salt Chuck

Kwakiutl oral historians often remark that no other sea animal has been more consistently useful than the seal. Before the arrival of Europeans, seals provided:

• Meat and fat — rich, nutritious, and vital for winter survival
• Skin and fur — warm, water-resistant, stitched into clothing, blankets, and waterproof gear
• Intestines and sinew — fashioned into floats, fishing nets, and line
• Oil — for lamps, waterproofing, and trade

Because the seal was gentle and could be quietly approached on rocky islets and river-mouth sandbars, it became an essential part of coastal subsistence rounds.

Even feasts—the great ceremonial showcases of wealth, generosity, and status—featured seal meat as a prestige dish. The most tender portions were reserved for honoured guests. Thus, the seal became a motif in carved feast bowls, cooking vessels, and serving dishes, often inlaid with glistening abalone shell. I have a beautiful carved seal bowl that holds a place of honour in my house.

To eat seal at a potlatch was not simply to partake of food; it was to acknowledge relationship, territory, and gratitude.

The Thunder Bird and the Cedar Stump: A Kwakiutl Legend of Hunger and Humility

Stories, like tides, reveal deeper truths beneath the surface. Among the Kwakiutl, one legend tells of Tootooch, the Thunder Bird—a being of immense power and appetite—whose hunger leads to a moment of both humour and humility.

One day, Thunder Bird descended near the mouth of a river where a herd of seals slept on the rocks.

Using a rough club, he struck them down, piled them into a great roast, and consumed the lot.

But even after the feast, he remained ravenous—a reminder that supernatural hunger is never easily satisfied.

Borrowing a man’s canoe and seal spear, he hunted four more seals and placed them atop fire-heated rocks to cook. Needing skunk cabbage leaves to wrap the meat, he left his feast unattended beside a great cedar stump.

Before leaving he teased the stump:

“Don’t you wish you had some?”

But cedar stumps are not as passive as they appear.

While Thunder Bird was away, the stump crept over—quiet as old growth moss—and sat directly on the roasting seals, flattening and spoiling the meal. When Thunder Bird returned, he wept and cursed, fearing the long hunger ahead before he could find more seals.

To the Kwakiutl, the story is a reminder of humility before the natural world—and a playful nudge toward respecting even those beings we think rooted and still. Kwakiutl stories and practices align strikingly with ecological realities that scientists are only now fully appreciating.

Harbour Seals (Phoca vitulina richardsi) 

Common along the BC coast, they haul out on beaches, rocks, and estuaries—the very places described in oral traditions. Genetic studies show strong site fidelity: seals return to the same haul-outs generation after generation, much as families return to ancestral fishing grounds.

Elephant Seals (Mirounga angustirostris)

Once hunted nearly to extinction, they are now returning to Vancouver Island, Haida Gwaii and all the waters of the Pacific Northwest—something First Nation Guardians and researchers alike have noted with fascination.

Today, we Kwakwaka'wakw continue to honour seals through art, stories, and cultural practice. This knowledge offers a vital human perspective to modern marine conservation—our ecosystems are not only ecological networks, but relationships of reciprocity, story, and responsibility.

And in every tale—from scientific surveys to Thunder Bird’s misadventures—one truth remains:

The seal is not merely an animal of the sea. It is a relative, a resource, a teacher, and a partner in the great living web of the Northwest Coast.

SVALBARD: A WINDOW INTO THE END PERMIAN EXTINCTION EVENT

Trekking in Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic

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

More than 80% of marine species vanished. Coral reefs collapsed. Food webs unraveled. 

We've long believed that ocean life, particularly vertebrates, clawed its way back slowly and stepwise, with ecosystems taking millions of years to re-establish complexity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Fossil Window Into Early Triassic Seas

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

This ecosystem hosted:

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

Ichthyosaur Bone Bed

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

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

But the Svalbard bone bed challenges this view.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life, as ever, found a way.

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