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| Modern Whale Vertebrae |
Thick layers of sandstone and conglomerate preserve a rich assemblage of marine fossils. Local collectors have long explored these beaches, spotting fossilized ribs and vertebrae protruding from the cliffs.
My first trip here was back in the mid 1990s with the Vancouver Paleontological Society. It is a regular haunt for the Victoria Paleontological Society and other regional fossil collecting groups.
It’s a place where the modern Pacific feels timeless—but buried in the cliffs are the remains of creatures that swam here more than 25 million years ago.
They are whales, yes, but not quite the whales we know today. Their bones tell the story of an ocean in transition and of whales caught mid-evolution—halfway between toothed predators and the filter-feeders that now dominate the seas.
Southern Vancouver Island’s fossil-bearing rocks belong largely to the Sooke Formation, a marine deposit dating to the late Oligocene (around 25–23 million years ago). At that time, much of the region lay beneath shallow coastal waters. Sediments settled over the remains of sea creatures, entombing shells, bird bones, shark teeth, and occasionally the massive bones of early whales.
These are not fossils of the gigantic blue whales or humpbacks we know today, but their ancestors—smaller, stranger, and crucial to the story of whale evolution.
One of the most remarkable finds from Vancouver Island is Aetiocetus, a small whale that lived during the late Oligocene. Aetiocetus is a classic “transitional fossil”—a whale that still had teeth, yet also shows evidence of developing baleen. This makes it a key player in understanding how modern filter-feeding whales (like gray whales and blue whales) evolved from their toothed ancestors.
Imagine a creature about 3–4 meters long, sleek like a dolphin but with a skull showing both sharp teeth and grooves that hint at primitive baleen plates. It likely hunted fish and squid but may have supplemented its diet by gulping in small prey from the water column.
Fossils of Aetiocetus have been found in Oregon and Japan, but southern Vancouver Island provides some of the northernmost evidence of this important lineage.
Alongside these early baleen whales, researchers have also found evidence of primitive odontocetes—the group that includes dolphins, porpoises, and sperm whales. These small, agile predators were experimenting with echolocation, the same sonar-like ability modern toothed whales use to hunt in dark or murky waters.
The whales preserved on southern Vancouver Island belong to a lineage with an extraordinary backstory. Around 50 million years ago, in what is now Pakistan and India, the ancestors of whales were land-dwelling, hoofed mammals (related to early hippos). Over millions of years, these animals waded into rivers and seas, evolving into the fully aquatic forms we recognize as whales.
By the time the Sooke Formation was laid down, whales had already colonized oceans worldwide. But the fossils here capture them in the middle of another transformation—the split between toothed whales (odontocetes) and baleen whales (mysticetes). Vancouver Island’s cliffs are, in a sense, a library shelf containing one of evolution’s most important chapters.
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| Fossil Gastropods, Photo: John Fam |
Standing at Muir Creek today, it’s hard not to draw parallels between past and present. Offshore, humpback whales spout on their summer migration. Orcas patrol the Strait of Juan de Fuca, hunting salmon with precision. Gray whales feed along kelp beds in shallow waters. These are the direct descendants of the fossil whales entombed in the cliffs.
That continuity of life—millions of years stretching unbroken from fossil Aetiocetus to the humpback breaching offshore—gives southern Vancouver Island a special place in the story of the Pacific.
The cliffs of Muir Creek and other fossil sites are constantly eroding, revealing new fossils—but also destroying them. Without careful collection and preservation, many specimens are lost to the sea.
It is for this reason that we encourage citizen scientists to report significant finds rather than attempt to remove them — and in the case of the Muir Creek fossil site, to avoid collecting from the cliffs.
Fossils are protected under British Columbia’s Heritage Conservation Act, meaning they belong to the province and its people.
Next time you stand on those windswept cliffs, watching an orca’s dorsal fin slice through the surf, remember: you are standing on an ancient whale highway. Beneath your feet, locked in stone, are the bones of their ancestors—whales that swam here long before the Salish Sea had a name.
