ANCIENT OCTOPUS: KEUPPIA

A sweet as you please example of Keuppia levante (Fuchs, Bracchi & Weis, 2009), an extinct genus of octopus that swam our ancient seas back in the Cretaceous. 

The dark black and brown area you see here is his ink sac which has been preserved for a remarkable 95 million years.

This cutie is in the family Palaeoctopodidae, and one of the earliest representatives of the order Octopoda — and perhaps my favourite fossil. It was this perfect specimen that inspired the logo for the Fossil Huntress brand.  

These ancient marine beauties are in the class Cephalopoda making them relatives of our modern octopus, squid and cuttlefish.

There are two species of Keuppia, Keuppia hyperbolaris and Keuppia levante, both of which we find as fossils. We find their remains, along with those of the genus Styletoctopus, in Cretaceous-age Hâqel and Hjoula localities in Lebanon. 

For many years, Palaeoctopus newboldi (Woodward, 1896) from the Santonian limestones at Sâhel Aalma, Lebanon, was the only known pre‐Cenozoic coleoid cephalopod believed to have an unambiguous stem‐lineage representative of Octobrachia fioroni. 

With the unearthing of some extraordinary specimens with exquisite soft‐part preservation in the Lebanon limestones, our understanding of ancient octopus morphology has blossomed. The specimens are from the sub‐lithographical limestones of Hâqel and Hâdjoula, in northwestern Lebanon. These localities are about 15 km apart, 45 km away from Beirut and 15 km away from the coastal city of Jbail. Fuchs et al. put a nice little map in their 2009 paper that I've included and referenced here.

Palaeoctopus newboldi had a spherical mantle sac, a head‐mantle fusion, eight equal arms armed with suckers, an ink sac, a medially isolated shell vestige, and a pair of (sub‐) terminal fins. The bipartite shell vestige suggests that Palaeoctopus belongs to the octopod stem‐lineage, as the sister taxon of the Octopoda, the Cirroctopoda, is characterized by an unpaired clasp‐like shell vestige (Engeser 1988; Haas 2002; Bizikov 2004).

It is from the comparisons of Canadian fauna combined with those from Lebanon and Japan that things really started to get interesting with Octobrachia. Working with fossil specimens from the Campanian of Canada, Fuchs et al. (2007a ) published on the first record of an unpaired, saddle‐shaped shell vestige that might have belonged to a cirroctopod. 

Again from the Santonian–Campanian of Canada and Japan, Tanabe et al. (2008) reported on at least four different jaw morphotypes. Two of them — Paleocirroteuthis haggarti (Tanabe et al., 2008) and Paleocirroteuthis Pacifica  (Tanabe et al ., 2008) — have been interpreted as being of cirroctopod type, one of octopod type, and one of uncertain octobrachiate type. 

Interestingly Fuchs et al. have gone on to describe the second species of Palaeoctopus, the Turonian Palaeoctopus pelagicus from limestones at Vallecillo, Mexico. While more of this fauna will likely be recovered in time, their work is based solely on a medially isolated shell vestige.

Five new specimens have been found in the well-known Upper Cenomanian limestones at Hâqel and Hâdjoula in Lebanon that can be reliably placed within the Octopoda. Fuchs et al. described these exceptionally well‐preserved specimens and discuss their morphology in the context of phylogeny and evolution in their 2008 paper (2009 publishing) in the Palaeontology Association Journal, Volume 51, Issue 1.

The presence of a gladius vestige in this genus shows a transition from squid to octopus in which the inner shell has divided into two parts in early forms to eventually be reduced to lateralized stylets, as can be seen in Styletoctopus.

The adorable fellow you see here with his remarkable soft-bodied preservation and inks sack and beak clearly visible is Keuppia levante. He hails from Late Cretaceous (Upper Cenomanian) limestone deposits near Hâdjoula, northwestern Lebanon. The vampyropod coleoid, Glyphiteuthis abisaadiorum n. sp. is also found at this locality. This specimen is about 5 cm long.

Fuchs, D.; Bracchi, G.; Weis, R. (2009). "New octopods (Cephalopoda: Coleoidea) from the Late Cretaceous (Upper Cenomanian) of Hâkel and Hâdjoula, Lebanon". Palaeontology. 52: 65–81. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00828.x.

Photo one: Fossil Huntress. Figure Two: Topographic map of north‐western Lebanon with the outcrop area in the upper right-hand corner. Fuchs et al, 2009.  

GINKO: THE MAIDENHAIR TREE

Living and Fossil Ginko biloba

The gorgeous yellow lobed leaf you see here is from a Maidenhair Tree — Ginko. These lovelies grow slowly but are well worth the effort with their delicate and distinctive lobed leaves of green and yellow. 

Ginko are Living Fossils native to China. We find them in the fossil record as far back as the Permian, 270 million years, rising with cycads, seed ferns and early conifers. They were part of the low, open, shrubby canopy covering our world well before the first flowering plants arrived. 

Ginko grew when Weigeltisaurus jaekeli, the oldest gliding vertebrates first soared our ancient skies and the first wee beetles munched on decaying wood on our forest floors. It is the long history of predation by beetles and their friends that have made Ginko what they are today — hardy, stinky and weaponized. 

These trees are truly a wonder. Consider that they have lasted since the Permian, living through multiple extinction events that wiped out millions of species on the planet. They are one of the few living things to survive a recent human-made extinction event — the atomic bomb blast in Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 — weathering one of the most horrifying moments in human history. 

170 Ginko Survived the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima

When the bomb dropped on Hiroshima it created a fireball that bloomed 1,200 feet in diameter, vaporizing most everything in its radius. 

Somehow 170 resident Gingko trees withstood the ferocity and heat of that blast — and they are still standing to this day, 76 years later. Seemingly impossible, and yet quite true. It is because of their hardy nature that we began looking closely at their genetic make-up. 

Plants with seeds are either angiosperms, our showy flowering plants, or gymnosperms, the naked seed plants. Ginkgo are gymnosperms but in their own subclass, Ginkgoidae. The ginkgos we see growing today are the last remaining member of that subclass.

We see Ginko's rise and diversify in the Permian. By the Jurassic, they had spread across Laurasia, the lands that would become modern Asia. It is this lucky foothold in a young Asia that would eventually save their species. 

From the Jurassic to the Pleistocene their numbers slowly dwindled. We have some great Eocene fossils from outcrops at Quilchena, Tranquille and the McAbee Fossil Beds that show them doing quite well in the interior of British Columbia some 50 million years ago, but this pocket of lush growth seems the exception and not the norm. 

By the Pleistocene, just 2.5 million years ago, glaciation threatened to kill off the last of the ginkgo lineages. Their last stand and platform for global distribution once again was rooted in the forests of central China. Every Ginko you see today originated from that small foothold in China. 

While beautiful, Ginkgo are stinky. I was out for a late stroll the night before last to try and catch a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis up at Queen Elizabeth Park. As I walked along one of the darkened pathways, my nose caught a whiff of something smelly. Think vomit mixed with decaying leaf matter. I looked up to confirm the culprit, a gorgeous bright yellow Ginko backlit from above. 

Ginko in Dan & Lena Bowen's Garden

The reason for their terrible smell is quite clever. It is the result of the chemicals they produce to ward off insects, fungi and bacteria. 

Ginko boast a massive genome comprising some 10.6 billion DNA letters within each strand. You and I boast only three billion letters in our human genome.

Written within this vast genetic code are 41,840 genes or templates that the tree’s cells use to make complex protein molecules that build and maintain each tree and give these stinky lovelies an enviable anti-insect arsenal. 

The photo at the top shows the yellow lobed leaves of a Ginko biloba against an Eocene partial lobe from the McAbee Fossil Beds up near Cache Creek, British Columbia, Canada. The bright yellow is this tree's Autumn colour palette. The bright green leaves you see in the bottom photo are the summer colour palette of this same species. The photo was taken in the summer in Dan and Lena Bowen's garden during the VIPS Saber-toothed Salmon Barbeque. This year, Dan-the-Man is saving some of those lovely lobed leaves to make up some tea from one of the oldest living species in the world. I am excited to give it a try. 

LOVE IN THE NORTH

Nunatsiarmiut Mother and Child, Baffin Island, Nunavut

Warm light bathes this lovely Nunatsiarmiut mother and child from Baffin Island, Nunavut. 

They speak Inuktitut, the mother tongue of the majority of the Nunatsiarmiut who call Baffin Island home. 

Baffin is the largest island in the Arctic Archipelago in the territory of Nunavut in Canada's far north—the chilliest region of Turtle Island. 

As part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Baffin Island is home to a constellation of remote Inuit communities each with a deep cultural connection to the land—Iqaluit, Pond Inlet, Pangnirtung, Clyde River, Arctic Bay, Kimmirut and Nanisivik. 

The ratio of Inuit to non-Inuit here is roughly three to one and perhaps the reason why the Inuktitut language has remained intact and serves as the mother tongue for more than 36,000 residents. Inuktitut has several subdialects—these, along with a myriad of other languages—are spoken across the north.  

If you look at the helpful visual below you begin to get a feel for the diversity of these many tongues. The languages vary by region. There is the Iñupiaq of the Inupiatun/Inupiat; Inuvialuktun of the Inuinnaqtun, Natsilingmiutut, Kivallirmiutut, Aivilingmiutut, Qikiqtaaluk Uannanganii and Siglitun. Kalaallisut is spoken by many Greenlandic peoples though, in northwest Greenland, Inuktun is the language of the Inughuit.

We use the word Inuktitut when referring to a specific dialect and inuktut when referring to all the dialects of Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun.

Northern Language Map (Click to Enlarge)

Should you travel to the serene glacier-capped wilds and rolling tundra of our far north, you will want to dress for the weather and learn a few of the basics to put your best mukluk shod feet forward. 

The word for hello or welcome in Inuktitut is Atelihai—pronounced ahh-tee-lee-hi. And thank you is nakurmiik, pronounced na-kur-MIIK.  

Perhaps my favourite Inuktitut expression is Naglingniq qaikautigijunnaqtuq maannakautigi, pronounced NAG-ling-niq QAI-kau-ti-gi-jun-naqtuq MAAN-na-KAU-ti-gi. This tongue-twister is well worth the linguistic challenge as it translates to love can travel anywhere in an instant. Indeed it can. 

So much of our Indigenous culture is passed through stories, so language takes on special meaning in that context. It is true for all societies but especially true for the Inuit. Stories help connect the past to the present and future. They teach how to behave in society, engage with the world and how to survive in the environment. They also help to create a sense of belonging. 

You have likely seen or heard the word Eskimo used in older books to refer to the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit or Yupik. This misnomer is a colonial term derived from the Montagnais or Innu word ayas̆kimew—netter of snowshoes. 

It is a bit like meeting a whole new group of people who happen to wear shoes and referring to them all as cobblers—not as a nickname, but as a legal term to describe populations from diverse communities disregarding the way each self-refer. 

Inukshuk / Inuksuk Marker Cairn

For those who identify as Inupiaq or Yupik, the preferred term is Inuit meaning people—though some lingering use of the term Eskimo lives on. The Inuit as a group are made up of many smaller groups. 

The Inuit of Greenland self-refer as Kalaallit or Greenlanders when speaking Kalaallisut. 

The Tunumiit of Tunu (east Greenland), speak Tunumiit oraasiat ("East Greenlandic"); and the Inughuit of north Greenland, speak Inuktun "Polar Eskimo."

The Inupiat of Alaska, or real people, use Yupik as the singular for real person and yuk to simply mean person.

When taken all together, Inuit is used to mean all the peoples in reference to the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit and Yupik. Inuit is the plural of inuk or person. 

You likely recognize this word from inuksuk or inukshuk, pronounced ih-nook-suuk — the human-shaped stone cairns built by the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, and other peoples of the Arctic regions of northern Canada, Greenland, and Alaska—as helpful reference markers for hunters and navigation. 

The word inuksuk means that which acts in the capacity of a human, combining inuk or person and suk, as a human substitute. 

A World of Confusion

You may be disappointed to learn that our northern friends do not live in igloos. I remember answering the phone as a child and the fellow calling was hoping to speak to my parents about some wonderful new invention perfect for use in an igloo. 

The call came while I was in the kitchen of our family home in Port Hardy. He was disappointed to hear that I was standing in a wooden house with the standard four walls to a room and a handy roof topping it off. 

I also had my own room with Scooby-Doo wallpaper, but he was having nothing of it.

"Well, what about your neighbours? Surely, a few of them live in igloos..." 

It seems that some atlases in circulation at the time, and certainly the one he was looking at, simply blanketed everything north of the 49th parallel in a snowy white. His clearly showed an igloo sitting proudly in the centre of the province.

My cousin Shawn brought one such simplified book back from his elementary school in California. British Columbia had a nice image of a grizzly bear and a wee bit further up, a polar bear grinned smugly. 

British Columbia's beaver population would be sad to know that they did not inhabit the province though there were two chipper beavers with big bright smiles—one in Ontario and another gracing the province of Quebec. Further north, where folk do build igloos, their icy domes were curiously lacking. 

Igloos are used for winter hunting trips much the same way we use tents for camping. The Inuit do not have fifty words for snow—you can thank the ethnographer Franz Boas for that wee fabrication—but within the collective languages of the frozen north there are more than fifty words to describe it. And kisses are not nose-to-nose. To give a tender kiss or kunik to a loved one, you press your nose and upper lip to their forehead or cheek and rub gently. 

Fancy trying a wee bit of Inuktitut yourself? This link will bring you to a great place to start: https://inhabitmedia.com/inuitnipingit/

Inuit Language Map:  By Noahedits - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0. If you want to the image full size, head to this link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85587388