LOADING THE JET RANGER

SUMAS EOCENE SITE

There was a large downpour that hit Washington State causing massive slides. The blocks you see here all came crashing down on the hillside.

Once the skies cleared, hikers found plant impressions in the rock and alerted the local paleo community. I was invited to tag along on a trip to photograph the site while George Mustoe took moulds of the palm trunks and trackways.

The slide site at Sumas Mountain revealed many large exposures of fossil plants. Some exposures were 10 feet across. There was great excitement at seeing shorebird tracks and trackways of the large flightless bird Diatryma. Many of these finds can now be seen at the Burke Museum in Washington State. While less abundant, evidence of the animals that called this ancient swamp home are also found here. Rare bird, reptile, and mammal tracks have been immortalized in the soft muds along ancient riverways.

PERFECTION IN BLEU

CORONICERAS AMMONITE

FOSSIL COLLECTING HORNBY ISLAND

NORTHWEST BAY, VANCOUVER ISLAND

Northwest Bay is located just south of Parksville on Vancouver Island. It is a lovely place to go for a fossil day trip. Purchase a local map to help with directions. Turn east off the Island Highway onto Northwest Bay Road. Continue for 3 km and then turn left onto Wall Beach Road, which ends in a parking area up a short hill. Take the trail to the beach.  

The first beds you'll encounter are yellow-brown sandstones with trigonid bivalves. Overlying these beds are fossiliferous, gritty blue-grey shales with bivalves, gastropods, ammonites and crustaceans.  You’ll want to check the tide tables to arrive for low tide.

ANKYLOSAUR TRACK

FOSSIL 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.