QUIRKY CAMBRIAN CURIOSITIES: OPABINIA

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. 

TAKING IN THE BONES

DINOSAUR DISCOVERIES IN TUMBLER RIDGE

The Fossil Huntress with Daniel & Charles Helm

The story of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, begins not with seasoned paleontologists, but with two young adventurers. 

In the summer of 2000, Mark Turner and Daniel Helm — seen here as the young man on the left wearing the navy hoodie beside his father, Charles Helm — were exploring along Flatbed Creek when they noticed something unusual—large, three-toed impressions pressed deep into the sandstone. 

What looked like curious shapes to them turned out to be the footprints of dinosaurs that had walked the region around 100 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous. Their discovery would soon transform Tumbler Ridge from a quiet mining town into one of Canada’s most important dinosaur trackway sites.

The prints belonged primarily to theropods, the bipedal, meat-eating dinosaurs whose sharp claws and narrow, V-shaped toes left distinct marks in the ancient riverbed. Some sites in the area also preserve sauropod tracks—massive circular impressions from the column-like feet of long-necked giants—and smaller prints from ornithopods, the herbivorous two- or four-legged grazers of the Cretaceous floodplains. 

Rich McCrae, Theropod Track & the Huntress

Together, these trackways offer a dynamic window into an ancient ecosystem once teeming with life, where dinosaurs waded through soft mud near the shores of a vast inland sea.

Following the boys’ discovery, scientists and volunteers from the newly formed Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation began systematic surveys. 

What they found was astonishing: hundreds of tracksites scattered across the Peace Region, preserved in layers of sandstone and shale that once formed river deltas and coastal plains. Some tracks appear in parallel lines, suggesting herding or coordinated movement. 

Others show subtle details such as skin impressions and claw marks, offering direct evidence of the animals’ gaits, weights, and even moments of hesitation.

Dinosaur Track, Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia

Today, visitors can view these remarkable fossils along the Flatbed Creek Dinosaur Trackway Trail, where clear casts of the prints remain visible in the rock. 

The Tumbler Ridge Global Geopark—recognized by UNESCO in 2014—celebrates this natural heritage, blending adventure and science in one of Canada’s most scenic mountain settings. 

Standing among the footprints, it’s easy to imagine the slow rumble of giants passing by, their steps forever recorded in the grey shading to beige stone beneath your feet.

MORNING FOG: CHUCKANUT FOSSIL SITE

LAKE WAKATIPU