HERMIT CRAB: REAL ESTATE TYCOONS OF THE FORESHORE

This little cutie is a hermit crab and he is wearing a temporary home borrowed from one of our mollusc friends. 

His body is a soft, squishy spiral that he eases into the perfect size shell time and time again as he grows. 

His first choice is always the empty shell of a marine snail but will get inventive in a pinch — nuts, wood, serpulid worm tubes, aluminium cans or wee plastic caps. 

They are inventive, polite and patient. 

You see, a hermit crabs' desire for the perfect bit of real estate will have them queueing beside larger shells — shells too large for them — to wait upon a big hermit crab to come along, discard the perfect home and slip into their new curved abode. This is all done in an orderly fashion with the hermit crabs all lined up, biggest to smallest to see who best fits the newly available shell. 

There are over 800 species of hermit crab — decapod crustaceans of the superfamily Paguroidea. Their lineage dates back to the Jurassic, 200 million years ago. 

Their soft squishy, weakly calcified bodies do not fossilize all that often but when they do the specimens are spectacular. Think of all the species of molluscs these lovelies have had a chance to try on — including ammonites — and all the shells that were never buried in sediment to become fossils because they were harvested as homes.  

On the shores of British Columbia, Canada, the hermit crab I come across most often is the Grainyhand hermit crab, Pagurus granosimanus. 

These wee fellows have tell-tale orange-brown antennae and olive green legs speckled with blue or white dots. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, a shell is known as x̱ala̱'is and gugwis means house on the beach. 

I do not know the Kwak’wala word for a hermit crab, so I will think of these cuties as x̱ala̱'is gugwis — envisioning them finding the perfect sized shell on the surf worn shores of Tsax̱is, Fort Rupert, Vancouver Island. 

BANFF NATIONAL PARK, CANADA

Banff National Park is breathtaking from any angle, but from the air it feels otherworldly—an alpine tapestry of turquoise lakes, braided rivers, and peaks stitched with glacier-light. 

Flying above it, you see the Rockies as the early surveyors must have: raw, immense, and defiantly ancient.

The town of Banff itself began humbly in the 1880s, growing from a railway stop on the new transcontinental line into Canada’s first national park. Railroad workers stumbled upon the Cave and Basin hot springs, sparking a cascade of interest in the area’s geology, wildlife, and deep-time history.

That same geology would soon draw paleontologists into the region’s wild backcountry. Just west of Banff, high on a ridge in Yoho National Park, lies the legendary Burgess Shale—one of the most important fossil sites on Earth. 

Discovered in 1909 by Charles Doolittle Walcott of the Smithsonian, the Burgess Shale preserves exquisitely detailed soft-bodied creatures from over 500 million years ago, offering a rare window into early animal evolution. 

Banff became the nearest hub—its hotels, trails, and later its research community supporting generations of scientists, students, and fossil-hungry adventurers heading into the high passes.

Seen from the sky today, Banff is a quiet modern town nestled among mountains that have been sculpted for hundreds of millions of years. Its story—of hot springs, railways, and extraordinary fossils—is always a delight to explore nestled in Canada's glorious Rockies.

LINGULA ANATINA: PRIMATIVE BRACHIOPOD

Lingula anatina — Primitive Brachiopod 

One of the most primitive and enduring brachiopods alive today is the caramel-and-cream–coloured Lingula anatina. 

Though modest in appearance, this unassuming marine invertebrate tells a story that stretches back over half a billion years — a direct lineage to the dawn of complex animal life.

Brachiopods are marine, stalked (pedunculate) invertebrates with two shells — or valves — hinged at the rear. To the casual observer, they resemble clams or mussels, but this similarity is purely superficial. 

In bivalves such as clams, the two shells sit on either side of the animal, and their plane of symmetry runs along the hinge line. Brachiopods, on the other hand, have shells on the top and bottom, with the line of symmetry running perpendicular to the hinge. This fundamental difference reveals two entirely separate evolutionary paths that converged on a similar shell-bearing lifestyle.

Lingula anatina belongs to one of the oldest known animal groups, with unmistakable brachiopod fossils appearing in rocks dating back some 530 million years, during the early Cambrian. These forms represent the first certain evidence of brachiopods in the fossil record, appearing at a time when most major animal body plans were emerging during the so-called “Cambrian Explosion.”

Unlike most modern shell-bearing animals, Lingula’s shell lacks a locking mechanism. Instead, it relies on a complex system of muscles to open and close the valves with precision. Its shell is composed not of calcium carbonate like most other shelled marine creatures, but of calcium phosphate and collagen fibres — a combination it shares only with vertebrates, making it one of the earliest known examples of animal biomineralisation. 

This process, where organisms harden tissues with minerals, represents a major evolutionary innovation that would later shape the biology of countless marine and terrestrial forms.

Lingula anatina can be found buried in sandy or muddy sediments of shallow marine environments, where it uses its muscular stalk (or pedicle) to anchor itself and burrow down into the seafloor. There it filters plankton and organic particles from the water, much as its ancestors did hundreds of millions of years ago. 

Its remarkable persistence — both in form and ecological niche — has led paleontologists to call Lingula a “living fossil.” Charles Darwin himself used this very term when describing its extraordinary morphological conservatism. Indeed, specimens from the Silurian Period (443–419 million years ago) are nearly indistinguishable from those alive today.

While other brachiopod lineages flourished and faded through the great mass extinctions of Earth’s history, Lingula endured — a small, steadfast witness to 500 million years of changing seas. Its simple elegance hides a profound truth: sometimes survival is not about innovation, but about perfecting a design so well-suited to its environment that evolution has little left to improve.

Photo: Wilson44691 - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8624418

FOSSIL HUNTRESS PALEONTOLOGY PODCAST

Step into deep time with the Fossil Huntress Podcast—your warm and wonder-filled gateway to dinosaurs, trilobites, ammonites, and the astonishing parade of life that has ever walked, swum, or crawled across our planet.

Close your eyes and travel with me through ancient oceans teeming with early life, lush primeval forests echoing with strange calls, and sunbaked badlands where the bones of giants rest beneath your feet. 

Each episode is a journey into Earth’s secret past, where every fossil tells a story and every stone remembers.

Together, we’ll wander across extraordinary fossil beds, sacred landscapes, and timeworn shores that have witnessed the rise and fall of worlds. 

From tiny single-celled pioneers to mighty dinosaurs, from cataclysms to new dawns, this is where science meets storytelling—and where the past comes vividly alive.

So wherever you are—on the trail, by the sea, or cozy at home—bring your curiosity and join me in the great adventure of discovery. Favourite the show and come fossil-hunting through time with me!

Listen now: Fossil Huntress Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1hH1wpDFFIlYC9ZW5uTYVL