HARRY'S FOSSIL ROOM: ANCIENT TREASURES AND THE ART OF FOSSIL PREPARATION

Baltic Amber. Photo: Harry Tabiner

There is something rather wonderful about people who can hold a small piece of stone or amber in their hands and see an entire ancient world waiting to be revealed.

My friend Harry Tabiner, based in the United Kingdom, is one of those people. 

A passionate fossil collector with a particular fondness for amber and fossil preparation, Harry has a wonderful eye for the tiny details that make our prehistoric world so fascinating.

Through his Instagram page, Harry's Fossil Room, he shares glimpses of his collection and the remarkable creatures preserved within it.

And some of those creatures are very small indeed.

A PASSION FOR ANCIENT LIFE

For many of us, collecting fossils begins with curiosity. A curious shape in a rock, an ammonite along a shoreline or a fragment of something that once lived in an ancient sea.

Then comes the wonderful question: What exactly have I found?

That curiosity is part of what makes fossil collecting so rewarding. Each specimen is a little mystery, with clues to its identity, age, environment and evolutionary history.

Amber with Insect & Plant Inclusions

Harry's interests include both fossils preserved in rock and the extraordinary world of amber, where ancient insects and plant material can remain suspended in fossilised tree resin for millions of years.

His enthusiasm for preparation and polishing adds another dimension to collecting. Rather than simply admiring a specimen as it is, Harry enjoys the careful work that helps reveal what lies beneath its surface.

POLISHING WINDOWS INTO THE PAST

One of the things I particularly admire about Harry is the care he puts into his amber collection.

Harry polishes many of his amber specimens himself, carefully working their surfaces to reveal the ancient treasures preserved within.

Amber is fossilised tree resin, and while some pieces are naturally transparent, others have weathered or cloudy surfaces that obscure their contents.

Careful polishing can improve clarity, allowing collectors and researchers to examine the delicate inclusions inside.

Insect in Amber. Harry Tabiner

It is a process that requires patience. Amber is relatively soft and can scratch, crack or suffer damage from excessive heat during polishing. Removing too much material may also damage an inclusion close to the surface.

The reward for this careful work can be extraordinary.

A seemingly unremarkable piece of resin may reveal tiny insects, plant fragments or other evidence of an ancient forest ecosystem.

And that is where the magic of amber really begins.

A GOLDEN WORLD FILLED WITH ANCIENT LIFE

Among the specimens Harry has shared is a beautiful, clear piece of Baltic amber containing an assortment of fossil insects and abundant plant material.

Held between his fingers, the golden resin glows with warm yellow and honey-coloured tones. Dark fragments of vegetation extend through the amber, creating a miniature landscape of ancient organic material.

At first glance, the specimen is beautiful simply as an object.

Look more closely, however, and an entirely different world begins to emerge.

One of Harry's close-up photographs reveals a delicate insect preserved within the amber. Its body, wings and fine wing veins remain visible, offering a remarkable glimpse of a creature that lived millions of years before humans appeared.

These tiny details are scientifically valuable. Wing venation, body structures and other anatomical features can help palaeontologists identify ancient insects and understand their evolutionary relationships.

The specimen is also a reminder that fossil discoveries are not always enormous bones or spectacular skeletons.

Sometimes the most remarkable stories are found in something small enough to fit between your fingers.

THE ANCIENT FORESTS OF THE BALTIC

Baltic amber is among the world's best-known fossil resins.

Much of it is associated with Eocene deposits, approximately 34–48 million years old, although the precise age and geological history of individual pieces can be complicated.

During the Eocene, northern Europe supported forests very different from those we know today. The climate was generally warmer, and the region was home to diverse communities of plants, insects and other animals.

Resin produced by ancient trees occasionally trapped small organisms or fragments of vegetation.

Over geological time, some of that resin was buried, chemically transformed and preserved as amber.

Today, these golden pieces offer remarkable insights into ancient forest ecosystems.

Scientists have identified thousands of kinds of organisms in Baltic amber, including beetles, flies, ants, spiders, mites and numerous other tiny creatures. Plant fragments, pollen and other inclusions provide additional clues about the forests themselves.

Together, these fossils help reconstruct ecosystems that disappeared tens of millions of years ago.

THE ART OF FOSSIL PREPARATION

Arnioceras semicostatum block

Harry's interest in fossil preparation reflects another fascinating aspect of palaeontology.

Finding a fossil is often only the beginning of the journey.

Many fossils remain partly or almost completely enclosed in surrounding rock, known as the matrix. Sometimes you get a great split when you hit them with your hammer and sometimes not.

The gorgeous Arnioceras semicostatum multi block shown here is a great example. It was found by Harry many years ago on the Holderness coast. It’s chock-o-block with colourful calcite filled ammonites. 

The block did not split well on his first attempts but on this occasion Harry was still delighted with the outcome because there were very few broken ammonites.  

Preparing them involves carefully removing that material while protecting the fossil.

Depending on the specimen, preparators may use fine hand tools, magnification, specialised pneumatic equipment or other techniques.

The work requires patience, precision and an understanding of how the fossil and surrounding material respond to different tools.

Some specimens can take many hours, days or even longer to prepare.

And while polishing amber is quite different from removing rock around a fossil, both activities share an important principle: careful preparation can reveal details that would otherwise remain hidden.

For those of us who love fossils, watching a specimen emerge is one of the most satisfying parts of the process.

It is a wonderful combination of science, craftsmanship and curiosity.

THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE FOSSILS

Dactylioceras ammonite

One of my favourite things about the fossil community is the people.

Over the years, I have met wonderful collectors, researchers, preparators and enthusiastic fossil hunters who generously share their discoveries, knowledge and photographs.

Some work professionally in palaeontology. Others pursue their interests in their spare time, building collections, learning preparation techniques and exploring the extraordinary history of life on Earth.

There is room for all kinds of curiosity in this community.

Harry is one of those enthusiasts whose interest in ancient life is reflected in the time and care he devotes to his specimens.

His amber and fossil photographs are a lovely example of how much there is to discover when we look closely.

A piece of golden resin becomes a window into an ancient forest. A tiny insect becomes evidence of an ecosystem that flourished millions of years ago. A lovely Dactylioceras ammonite is revealed from a nodule.

And the careful work of a collector helps bring those details into view.

FOLLOW HARRY'S FOSSIL ROOM

If you enjoy fossils, amber and the fascinating process of revealing ancient life, you can follow Harry's work through his social media pages.

Instagram: Harry's Fossil Room

Facebook: Harry Tabiner — Tabfish

Thank you, Harry, for sharing these beautiful amber and fossil photographs and for helping us appreciate the extraordinary details preserved within these golden windows into the past. You continue to inspire me daily!

FOSSIL HUNTRESS FIELD NOTE

Amber inclusions can preserve remarkable three-dimensional details, including insect wings, antennae, legs and even tiny hairs.

Unlike conventional fossils, which often preserve mineralised hard parts or impressions in rock, amber can retain the external structures of small organisms with exceptional clarity.

The age of amber depends on the deposit where it formed. Baltic amber is generally Eocene in age, while some other deposits are considerably older.

For anyone interested in fossil collecting, amber offers a fascinating opportunity to explore the smaller inhabitants of ancient ecosystems.

Photographs: Harry Tabiner / Harry's Fossil Room. Reproduced with permission. 

A stunning Arnioceras semicostatum multi block found by Harry Tabiner many years ago on the Holderness coast. It’s packed with colourful calcite filled ammonites. The block didn’t split very well but on this occasion Harry was still delighted with the outcome because of there being very few broken ammonites. And, just look at those colours! Breathtaking.  

Dactylioceras ammonite in a nodule. 10 cm across and displayed inside the nodule were it has been for the last 185 million years. Originally from the Lower Jurassic Upper Lias of the Yorkshire coast but found as a glacial erratic on the Holderness coast by Harry Tabiner many years ago and expertly prepped October 2026.

TRAPPED IN TIME: THE EXTRAORDINARY FOSSILS PRESERVED IN AMBER

Fossilized Insect in Amber

A tiny insect lands on the sticky surface of a tree, unaware that this ordinary moment might become part of the geological record.

Millions of years later, that insect may still be visible, suspended inside a golden piece of fossilised resin.

Its delicate wings, slender legs and even the finest hairs on its body can sometimes be preserved in astonishing detail.

Welcome to the remarkable world of amber fossils.

WHAT IS AMBER?

Amber begins as resin produced by trees.

Fresh resin is sticky and can trap insects, spiders, plant fragments and other small organisms that encounter it.

Under suitable conditions, buried resin undergoes chemical changes over geological time, eventually becoming amber.

Unlike many fossils preserved in sedimentary rock, amber inclusions can retain extraordinarily fine three-dimensional details.

These tiny time capsules allow palaeontologists to examine ancient organisms in ways that are rarely possible with conventional fossils.

AN ENTIRE WORLD IN A DROP OF RESIN

Amber has preserved an astonishing diversity of prehistoric life.

Scientists have discovered ancient ants, beetles, flies, spiders, flowers, feathers and even fragments of vertebrate animals.

Some specimens capture interactions between organisms, including predators and prey or insects associated with plants.

These discoveries offer rare evidence of how ancient ecosystems functioned.

Rather than simply telling us which species existed, amber can sometimes show us how they lived together.

THE CRETACEOUS FORESTS OF MYANMAR

Some of the most scientifically significant amber fossils come from deposits in northern Myanmar, dating to approximately 99 million years ago.

These Cretaceous specimens have revealed an extraordinary diversity of insects and other organisms from a tropical forest ecosystem.

Researchers have described unusual insects, delicate flowers, feathered remains and many other remarkable inclusions.

However, Myanmar amber also raises serious ethical concerns relating to mining, conflict, provenance and the ownership of specimens.

For palaeontologists, understanding where a fossil came from and how it was obtained is an essential part of responsible scientific research.

CAN WE FIND DINOSAUR DNA IN AMBER?

It is a wonderful idea, made famous by Jurassic Park: extract ancient DNA from a blood-filled mosquito and bring dinosaurs back to life.

Unfortunately, real science is rather less accommodating.

DNA breaks down over time, and scientists have not recovered authentic dinosaur DNA from Mesozoic amber.

Amber can preserve astonishing physical details, but it does not provide a reliable way to resurrect extinct dinosaurs.

The real discoveries are fascinating enough without bringing a Tyrannosaurus rex into the modern world.

WINDOWS INTO VANISHED FORESTS

Important amber deposits have been discovered in the Baltic region, the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Canada and many other places.

Each deposit captures a different chapter of Earth's history.

Some preserve ancient tropical forests. Others reveal ecosystems from cooler climates or much earlier geological periods.

Together, they help scientists reconstruct vanished landscapes, identify extinct species and understand the evolution of insects, plants and their ecological relationships.

FOSSIL HUNTRESS FIELD NOTE

Not every golden-coloured piece of fossil resin is amber. Copal is younger resin that has not undergone the same degree of fossilisation. Scientists examine its chemistry, geological context and physical properties to help distinguish it from amber.

The next time you see a piece of amber containing a tiny insect, remember that you are looking at more than a beautiful fossil.

You are looking at a moment in an ancient life, preserved across millions of years.

FROGFISH: THE FISH THAT WALKS, FISHES AND SWALLOWS ITS DINNER WHOLE

Frogfish ready for its next meal

FROGFISH: THE FISH THAT WALKS, FISHES AND SWALLOWS ITS DINNER WHOLE

Imagine a fish that looks like a sponge, walks like a rather disgruntled frog, carries a fishing rod on its head and can swallow another fish almost as large as itself.

Welcome to the wonderfully peculiar world of frogfish.

These extraordinary little predators belong to the family Antennariidae, part of the anglerfish order Lophiiformes.

They are relatives of our fabulous red-lipped batfish, although frogfish have largely abandoned the lipstick in favour of camouflage.

And what camouflage it is.

Some resemble colourful sea sponges. Others look like algae-covered rocks, lumps of coral or bits of seaweed that have seen better days.

But beneath those wonderfully deceptive disguises lurks one of the ocean's most astonishing ambush predators.

A FISH THAT PREFERS WALKING

Most fish spend their lives swimming.

Frogfish, apparently, did not receive that particular memo.

Instead, many spend their time perched on rocks, coral or the seafloor, using their modified pectoral fins to shuffle about.

Their pelvic fins can also help them brace and move across the bottom.

The result is a rather charming, if somewhat ungainly, underwater walk.

Imagine a little fish in an oversized sponge costume stomping about the reef, occasionally stopping to glare at passing marine life.

Some frogfish can swim when necessary, and a few use jet-like propulsion by forcing water through their gill openings.

But why bother swimming when dinner might come to you?

THE MASTER OF DISGUISE

Painted Frogfish, Master of Disguise

Frogfish are among the most remarkable camouflage artists in the marine world.

Their bodies may be covered in bumps, fleshy projections, irregular markings and colours that help them blend into their surroundings.

The hairy frogfish, Antennarius striatus, can sport long, skin-like appendages that make it resemble a shaggy clump of seaweed.

The painted frogfish, Antennarius pictus, may resemble a brightly coloured sponge.

And the giant frogfish, Antennarius commerson, can grow to roughly 38 centimetres long, making it a rather substantial lump of apparently innocent reef decoration.

Some frogfish can change colour over time, although this is not the instantaneous colour-changing performance we associate with certain cephalopods.

Their disguise serves two purposes.

It helps them avoid being noticed by predators.

And it allows them to remain almost invisible to unsuspecting prey.

There is something wonderfully unfair about being eaten by what you thought was a sponge.

THE FISH WITH A FISHING ROD

Now for one of my favourite evolutionary inventions.

Frogfish have a modified dorsal-fin spine called an illicium, which acts rather like a miniature fishing rod.

At its tip is a lure called an esca.

Depending on the species, this lure may resemble a worm, a tiny fish or another tempting morsel.

The frogfish waves its lure near its mouth, hoping to attract the attention of a hungry little fish.

The unsuspecting visitor approaches.

Closer.

Closer still.

And then — GULP.

Dinner disappears.

No chasing. No elaborate pursuit. No need to book a table.

Just a fishing rod attached to your head and an extraordinary amount of patience.

THE FASTEST DINNER IN TOWN

Frogfish possess one of the most impressive feeding mechanisms in the animal kingdom.

When prey comes within range, a frogfish can rapidly expand its enormous mouth cavity, creating suction that pulls the unfortunate visitor inside.

The strike can happen in just a few milliseconds.

Their mouths can expand dramatically, allowing some frogfish to consume prey approaching their own body size.

They may even eat other frogfish. Family dinners must be rather tense. Imagine inviting your cousin over for lunch and discovering that you are lunch.

This astonishing feeding system is an example of suction feeding, a technique found in many fishes but taken to remarkable extremes by frogfish.

Their specialised jaws and expandable mouths allow them to capture prey with very little warning.

One moment, a small fish is investigating a promising-looking worm. The next, it has vanished into what appeared to be a harmless lump of coral. Nature can be wonderfully inventive. And occasionally rather rude.

WHO ARE THEIR RELATIVES?

Frogfish are members of the order Lophiiformes, the anglerfishes.

Their extended family includes some of the most peculiar creatures in the ocean.

There are the red-lipped batfishes, which walk across the seafloor looking permanently unimpressed.

There are monkfishes, with enormous flattened heads and mouths designed for swallowing unsuspecting prey.

And there are the famous deep-sea anglerfishes, some of which use glowing lures to attract prey in the darkness.

Not all anglerfishes live in the deep sea, and not all have glowing lures.

Frogfish generally inhabit tropical and subtropical marine environments, often around reefs, rocky bottoms and other habitats where camouflage is particularly useful.

They have taken the anglerfish family's remarkable fishing apparatus and turned it into a wonderfully effective tool for ambush hunting.

One branch of the family lives in darkness.

Another wanders about wearing lipstick.

And the frogfish sits disguised as a sponge, waiting for something edible to make a terrible decision.

FROGFISH IN THE FOSSIL RECORD

Now let's travel back through deep time.

The living frogfish family, Antennariidae, has a limited fossil record. We cannot trace every modern frogfish species neatly backwards through millions of years of preserved ancestors.

But the broader anglerfish lineage has a fascinating fossil history.

One particularly important fossil is Histionotophorus bassani, an extinct anglerfish known from the Eocene deposits of Monte Bolca in northern Italy.

The Eocene Epoch lasted from approximately 56 to 33.9 million years ago.

The famous Monte Bolca fossil beds preserve an extraordinary assemblage of marine fishes from roughly 50 million years ago, when the region was part of a warm marine environment.

Among the remarkable fossil fishes described from Monte Bolca are early representatives of the anglerfish lineage, helping palaeontologists understand how this unusual group evolved.

These fossils are not necessarily direct ancestors of living frogfish.

Instead, they provide evidence that the wider evolutionary group to which frogfish belong was already present in ancient Eocene seas.

There is an important difference between finding a fossil of a modern family and finding an older fossil belonging to its broader evolutionary lineage.

Both are valuable, but they tell us different parts of the story.

Frogfish themselves are difficult to document through fossils, partly because their delicate skeletal structures and the environments in which they live do not always favour preservation.

That leaves some wonderful questions.

When did their extraordinary camouflage evolve?

How early did their ancestors begin using specialised fins to walk along the seafloor?

And when did their fishing apparatus become the highly effective hunting tool we see today?

Fossils, comparative anatomy and genetic research all help scientists investigate these questions.

Perhaps one day an extraordinary fossil frogfish will emerge from an ancient seabed and help fill another gap in this remarkable evolutionary story.

I do hope it looks like a sponge.

FIVE FROGFISH FACTS TO IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS

1. Frogfish can fish for fish. Their modified dorsal-fin spine carries a lure that helps attract prey directly towards their mouths.

2. They can swallow astonishingly large meals. Their expandable jaws and rapid suction feeding allow some species to consume prey approaching their own size.

3. They are masters of disguise. Depending on the species, frogfish can resemble sponges, algae, coral or other parts of their marine surroundings.

4. They have unusual ways of moving. Many use their modified fins to walk or brace themselves, while some can also propel themselves through the water by expelling water from their gill openings.

5. They are related to deep-sea anglerfish. Although they generally live in shallower environments, frogfish share an evolutionary history with some of the strangest predators in the deep ocean.

THE JOY OF BEING EXTRAORDINARILY ODD

What I love most about frogfish is how beautifully they demonstrate the creativity of evolution.

Here is an animal that has evolved a remarkable combination of camouflage, specialised movement, an extraordinary feeding mechanism and a fishing lure built directly into its anatomy.

Its relatives appear in fossil deposits tens of millions of years old, connecting this modern marine oddity to an ancient and wonderfully diverse evolutionary lineage.

And although the fossil record has yet to reveal every chapter of the frogfish story, the living animals offer a marvellous glimpse of what millions of years of adaptation can produce.

Some fishes evolved for speed. Others for long-distance migration.

The frogfish evolved to look like a sponge, wave a fishing rod and swallow dinner whole.

And somehow, that seems like a perfectly respectable life choice. 

There are extraordinary stories waiting beneath the waves, beneath our feet and within the ancient rocks that preserve our planet's remarkable history.

Speaking of wonderfully unusual relatives, meet the red-lipped batfish, Ogcocephalus darwini, a Galápagos fish with scarlet lips, walking fins and a face that looks permanently unimpressed. 

Discover its extraordinary evolutionary story in our Fossil Huntress article, RED-LIPPED BATFISH: THE FISH THAT WALKED INTO A BEAUTY SALON.

RED-LIPPED BATFISH: THE FISH THAT WALKED INTO A BEAUTY SALON

Somewhere in the waters around the Galápagos Islands lives a fish that appears to have applied an enthusiastic coat of bright red lipstick, put on its grumpiest expression and decided that swimming is entirely overrated.

Meet the red-lipped batfish, Ogcocephalus darwini.

With its spectacular scarlet pout, flattened body and decidedly unconventional approach to getting around, this little marine oddity looks rather like a pancake that has made some questionable fashion choices.

And I absolutely adore it.

A FISH WITH LEGS? WELL, SORT OF.

Unlike most fish, which propel themselves gracefully through the water, the red-lipped batfish spends much of its time moving about the seafloor using modified pectoral and pelvic fins.

It doesn't have actual legs, of course, but those sturdy, limb-like fins allow it to shuffle, crawl and occasionally perform what can only be described as a rather awkward underwater stroll.

Imagine a tiny, disgruntled gentleman in a red-lipped disguise making his way across the ocean floor.

That is essentially our batfish.

Red-lipped batfish are generally found around the Galápagos Islands and nearby waters off the Pacific coast of South America. They are bottom-dwelling marine fish, often encountered on sandy or rocky seafloors.

They grow to roughly 20 centimetres in length, so despite their rather dramatic appearance, they are not particularly large.

What they lack in size, they more than make up for in personality. Or at least the appearance of personality. Scientists have yet to establish whether batfish are actually judging us.

THE LIPSTICK QUESTION

Why those extraordinary red lips?

The short answer is that we don't know for certain.

One suggestion is that their bright lips may play a role in recognising other members of their species or communicating during courtship. But this remains a hypothesis rather than an established scientific fact.

Perhaps they are advertising their availability to other batfish.

Perhaps they simply enjoy looking fabulous.

Either way, nature has produced a creature that looks permanently ready for a night out while simultaneously appearing deeply disappointed by everyone at the party.

A FISH THAT GOES FISHING

Now things get even stranger.

Our red-lipped friend belongs to the anglerfish order, Lophiiformes, a remarkable group of fishes famous for their unusual methods of catching prey.

Like other anglerfish, batfish possess a modified dorsal-fin spine called an illicium, which functions rather like a miniature fishing rod.

In batfishes, this apparatus is tucked into a cavity near the snout and bears a fleshy lure called an esca. Rather than relying on the glowing lure made famous by some deep-sea anglerfish, batfish use a non-luminous lure associated with chemical attraction.

This helps bring curious prey within striking distance.

Their menu includes small fishes and marine invertebrates, including crustaceans and worms.

Imagine spending your day wandering around the seafloor wearing bright lipstick, occasionally producing a fishing rod from your face.

Evolution really does have a marvellous sense of humour.

WHO ARE THEIR RELATIVES?

The red-lipped batfish belongs to the family Ogcocephalidae, commonly known as the batfishes.

Its relatives include other wonderfully peculiar bottom-dwelling species with flattened bodies, arm-like fins and extraordinary faces.

But the wider family reunion is even more entertaining.

As members of the anglerfish order Lophiiformes, batfishes are related to frogfishes, monkfishes and the famous deep-sea anglerfishes.

Frogfishes are particularly entertaining cousins. Many are masters of camouflage, resembling sponges, corals or algae, and some also use their fins to walk along the seafloor.

Monkfishes, meanwhile, possess enormous mouths and an impressive ability to swallow prey.

And then there are the deep-sea anglerfishes, some of which dangle glowing lures in the darkness to attract unsuspecting dinner guests.

It's quite the family gathering.

One cousin walks, another glows in the dark, and our Galápagos beauty turns up wearing lipstick.

WHERE DO BATFISH APPEAR IN THE FOSSIL RECORD?

This is where our journey takes us into deep time.

Although the red-lipped batfish is a living species, we do not currently have a well-established fossil record specifically documenting Ogcocephalus darwini.

And that distinction matters.

The fossil record of its broader anglerfish relatives, however, reaches back tens of millions of years.

Some of the earliest well-known fossil anglerfishes come from the Eocene Epoch, approximately 50 million years ago.

Among these ancient relatives is Histionotophorus bassani, an extinct anglerfish known from the famous Eocene fossil deposits of Monte Bolca in northern Italy.

These extraordinary deposits preserve an ancient marine ecosystem filled with beautifully detailed fossil fishes.

Another fossil anglerfish, Caruso brachysomus, is known from the Eocene of Monte Bolca and provides another fascinating glimpse into the early evolutionary history of this unusual group.

These fossils are not red-lipped batfish, nor are they necessarily their direct ancestors. Instead, they help document the early history of the broader anglerfish lineage.

The batfish family itself has a much patchier fossil record, making the precise history of its distinctive walking adaptations difficult to reconstruct.

This is one of the challenges palaeontologists face when studying animals that live in marine environments where fossil preservation can be rare or incomplete.

An absence of fossils does not mean an animal's ancestors were absent. It means we have not yet found the evidence to tell their complete story.

And somewhere in the rocks, there may still be an extraordinary fossil batfish waiting to be discovered.

Preferably with its lipstick intact.

FIVE MORE REASONS TO LOVE THIS PECULIAR FISH

1. It is named for Darwin. Its scientific name, Ogcocephalus darwini, honours Charles Darwin, whose observations in the Galápagos helped shape our understanding of evolution. Darwin did not, however, personally name this fish.

2. Its walking fins are still fins. Those remarkable appendages are modified versions of the paired fins found in other fishes, not the same kind of limbs that allow mammals and reptiles to walk on land.

3. It has a built-in fishing apparatus. Its lure is part of a modified dorsal fin, a wonderful example of how evolution can repurpose existing anatomical structures.

4. It is not the only batfish with a memorable face. Other members of the batfish family have flattened, angular bodies and expressions that range from mildly surprised to thoroughly unimpressed.

5. It reminds us that evolution doesn't work towards a single ideal body shape. Natural selection favours traits that help organisms survive and reproduce in their environments. Sometimes that produces a swift, streamlined swimmer. Sometimes it produces a bottom-dwelling fish with a fishing rod on its head and bright red lips.

A FINAL KISS FROM DEEP TIME

The red-lipped batfish reminds us that the natural world is infinitely more inventive than we could ever imagine.

Here is a fish that has traded elegant swimming for an awkward stroll, developed its own fishing equipment and acquired a face that looks ready for the red carpet.

Its broader evolutionary family stretches back at least to the Eocene fossil record, connecting this extraordinary modern animal with ancient marine ecosystems and millions of years of evolutionary experimentation.

And while we have yet to uncover a convincing fossil record of the red-lipped batfish itself, its living relatives and ancient cousins offer tantalising clues to a much older story.

For me, that is one of the great joys of palaeontology.

Every living creature carries an evolutionary history, whether we can see that history in the rocks or not.

Some of those stories involve mighty dinosaurs, enormous marine reptiles and towering prehistoric forests.

And some involve a little fish wandering around the Pacific seafloor looking as though it has just been stood up on a first date.

Keep exploring, fossil friends.

The ancient world — and its wonderfully strange living descendants — never cease to surprise us.

CRINOIDS: ANCIENT SEA LILIES

Picture a meadow beneath an ancient sea. Slender stalks rise from the bottom, each carrying a delicate crown of branching arms. The current moves through them, bringing a steady supply of drifting food.

At first glance, you might mistake them for flowers.

These beautiful creatures are crinoids, often called sea lilies. Despite their botanical appearance, they are animals—marine relatives of sea stars, brittle stars, sea urchins and sea cucumbers.

Their fossils preserve something wonderful: the remains of an underwater garden whose “flowers” were feeding.

A FLOWER WITH FEEDING ARMS

A typical stalked crinoid has a surprisingly elegant body plan.

At its base, an attachment structure anchors the animal. Above it rises a flexible column supporting a small, plated cup called the calyx. Branching arms spread from the top, forming the feeding crown.

The stalk lifts those arms into passing currents. Different species grow to different heights, allowing neighbouring animals to gather food at different levels above the seabed.

In dense communities, their crowns create a layered underwater landscape, with smaller creatures living among and beneath them.

This is a garden sustained by moving water.

HOW DOES A SEA LILY EAT?

A crinoid’s feathery arms are food collectors.

Tiny tube feet along the arms capture suspended particles. These morsels pass into food grooves and travel towards the mouth, which faces upwards within the crown.

The current delivers dinner.

Branching arms and their smaller side branches increase the collecting area, creating an intricate living filter. What looks like a delicate ornament is a remarkably effective feeding system.

LITTLE STONE BEADS

You are much more likely to encounter a piece of crinoid stem than a complete animal.

The skeleton consists of many calcite plates. In the stalk, these plates are stacked together like a column of tiny discs. Each stem segment is called a columnal.

After death, the tissues holding the skeleton together decay. Arms scatter, stems separate and the animal comes apart into a multitude of pieces.

Look closely at fossil-bearing limestone and you may notice small circles, rings or stars. Some resemble miniature washers. Others remain joined in short stacks.

These are fragments of animals that once stood above the seafloor.

Their abundance can be extraordinary. In some deposits, crinoid debris forms a substantial part of the limestone itself.

A complete fossil, with its crown and stem still connected, records a much rarer event: burial before that delicate skeleton could fall apart.

VANCOUVER ISLAND’S ANCIENT UNDERWATER MEADOWS

One of the loveliest places to imagine this vanished world is high in the mountains of Vancouver Island.

At Marble Meadows in Strathcona Provincial Park, limestone of the Buttle Lake Group preserves evidence of ancient marine communities.

During the Permian Period, long before these rocks became part of a mountain landscape, carbonate sediments accumulated on a shallow submarine platform. Crinoids lived alongside brachiopods, bryozoans and corals.

Their broken skeletons contributed to the limestone we see today.

The contrast is delicious: alpine meadows above, the remains of marine meadows below.

What is now rock beneath mountain air once lay beneath seawater. Subsequent geological movement and uplift, followed by erosion, brought that ancient seabed into view.

The fossils belong to the park’s natural heritage. Photograph them, enjoy their details and leave them in place for the next curious visitor.

SEA LILIES ARE STILL WITH US

Crinoids survived far beyond the ancient seas preserved in limestone.

Living members include stalked sea lilies and feather stars, whose adults lack a long stalk. Some feather stars can crawl or swim using their arms.

Watching one move is a lovely way to undo the illusion that these creatures are plants.

Modern crinoids also help palaeontologists interpret their fossil relatives. Their feeding, movement and anatomy offer clues to lives recorded only in stone.

WITCHES’ FINGERS: THE FOSSILS THAT FELL FROM THE SKY

For some of us, our very first fossil found in the field was a belemnite. Smooth, elongated and rather pleasing to the eye and to hold, these little treasures have a way of turning a casual beach walk into a lifelong fascination.

For Dallin Young, that first find started his fossil obsession—and I know exactly how he feels!

Imagine picking one up without knowing what it was. A slender stone finger. A pointed dart. Something curious enough to slip into your pocket and carry home.

Long before palaeontology offered an explanation, finds like these inspired some wonderfully imaginative stories.

In parts of Europe, belemnites became known as witches’ fingers, devil’s fingers and thunderbolts. Some people believed they had fallen from the sky during thunderstorms. Others kept them as charms, hoping a stone thunderbolt might protect their home from lightning.

With Halloween approaching, these curious fossils deserve a moment in the candlelight.

Their real story takes us beneath an ancient sea.

MEET THE BELEMNITE

Belemnites were squid-like marine animals belonging to the cephalopods, the group that includes living squid, octopuses, cuttlefish and nautiluses.

Picture a streamlined swimmer moving through seawater, eyes watching for movement and arms reaching towards a meal.

Inside its body was a supporting shell with several distinct parts: a tongue-shaped extension called the pro-ostracum, a chambered cone called the phragmocone, and the solid, pointed guard, or rostrum, towards the rear.

That last piece is the familiar fossil many of us recognise.

Squid also have an internal supporting structure, but the dense guards of belemnites gave these ancient animals something particularly durable to leave behind.

WHY DO WE FIND SO MANY LITTLE “BULLETS”?

After a belemnite died, its softer, squishy parts were often scavenged or decayed before they could become fossils. The solid guard had a much better chance of surviving burial.

This helps explain why a complete belemnite is an exceptional discovery, while isolated guards are common in some Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks.

Each little dart represents part of an animal that lived in a vanished marine world, preserved in sediments that eventually became stone.

It is rather lovely to think that something so small can carry an entire sea into your hand.

A WORLD OF FIRST FINDS

One of my favourite things about sharing fossils is hearing where you have found yours.

When I previously wrote about belemnites, readers brought together a wonderful little map of discoveries.

Arno Martini shared finds from northern California, while Anne Glenn finds them in Wyoming. Georg Laki has collected them from Early Jurassic rocks at Gasperich in southern Luxembourg, and Scott Carpenter and his daughter collect them along the Jurassic Coast.

Juanjo Ugalde Robledo finds them in La Rioja, Spain, and Gabriel Santos collects them in Peniche, Portugal. Rossi Franco spotted one embedded in building material at the Bank of Italy in Genoa—a lovely reminder that fossil discoveries sometimes happen in the middle of a city.

Here in British Columbia, Lloyd Rempel and I have found them too, including at Harrison Lake.

Different places, different ancient seas, and that same small thrill of recognition: there you are!

HOW TO RECOGNISE ONE

Look for an elongated fossil that tapers towards a point. Many resemble a bullet or dart, though their shapes vary between different kinds of belemnite.

A broken specimen may reveal calcite arranged in a radiating pattern. At the broader end, some specimens preserve a conical cavity that once held the chambered phragmocone.

Colour alone will not identify one. Their shades vary with preservation and the surrounding rock.

And despite their tooth-like appearance, these fossils are pieces of an internal shell.

FROM THUNDERBOLTS TO ANCIENT SEAS

There is something deeply human about finding an unfamiliar object and reaching for a story that might explain it. A pointed fossil becomes a witch’s finger. A stone uncovered after rain becomes a thunderbolt. Something strange and beautiful becomes a charm to keep close.

Today, we can recognise the animal behind the folklore while still enjoying the wonder that inspired those earlier explanations.

The next time you spot a little stone dart among the pebbles, pause for a closer look. You may be looking at the remains of a swimmer from the age of dinosaurs—or the beginning of your very own fossil obsession.

Was a belemnite your first fossil find? I would love to hear where you found it.

NORELLRAPTOR: A FEATHERED DINOSAUR AND THE MANY PATHS TO FLIGHT

Norellraptor barsboldi

We are accustomed to imagining the Mesozoic through its giants: enormous herbivores shaking the ground and predators with teeth the size of bananas. 

Yet some of the most revealing discoveries arrive on a much smaller scale.

While I imagine it would go horribly wrong, I still cannot get over the charm of this cutie and the wonderfully disarming notion of a dinosaur small enough to hold in your arms.

Meet Norellraptor barsboldi, a newly described feathered dinosaur from northeastern China.

Its remarkably complete skeleton measures just 57 centimetres long—roughly the length of a small Common Raven, though with very different proportions—and parts of its plumage remain preserved alongside the bones.

Here is an animal whose delicate remains give us a peek at one of evolution’s most extraordinary achievements: flight.

Published in Nature Communications on 29 September 2026, the new research adds another branch to a story that grows more interesting with every feathered fossil.

The question is how different dinosaur lineages assembled the anatomical features associated with taking to the air.

Norellraptor belonged to the microraptorines, small predatory dinosaurs closely related to birds. 

Its fossil comes from the Lower Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation in Liaoning, China—a province celebrated for its jade carvings, which also holds extraordinary treasures in its fossil beds.

Members of this group are famous for an unusual arrangement: some carried long feathers on both their arms and legs, creating the possibility of several aerodynamic surfaces.

Try imagining that silhouette. A small dinosaur with feathered limbs and a long tail looks very different from the familiar outline of a sparrow. It invites an artist’s curiosity, but also a scientist’s questions.

How were those limbs positioned? What could the feathers do? How much can a flattened fossil tell us about an animal moving through three-dimensional space?

Those questions make the distinction between evidence and reconstruction especially valuable. Preserved feathers give us something tangible to study. Reconstructing how the whole animal moved requires further interpretation.

The research team examined both the skeleton and the microscopic structure of a forelimb bone. They tell us that this individual was at least three years old when it died. But how did they know? An excellent question. Fossils can preserve more than an outline; the tissues inside its bones can also hold clues to its growth.

The larger finding emerged when the team compared evolutionary changes in microraptorines with those in the bird lineage. 

Around 30 per cent of the anatomical features identified as evolutionary innovations in microraptorines also appeared independently along the bird branch. Crucially, the shared features emerged in different sequences.

Imagine finding two complicated machines with several similar components. Their resemblance alone cannot tell you whether they were assembled through the same process. You would also want to know when each component appeared and how it worked with the parts already present.

The study supports the interpretation that different evolutionary pressures helped shape flight-related adaptations in these closely related groups. Similarities between them need not all represent a single inherited package of aerial abilities.

It is an enticing result, though further fossils and evidence of bone growth will be needed to test how widely this pattern applies. Norellraptor contributes to the discussion rather than closing it.

That is part of what I love about palaeontology. Each discovery gives us another opportunity to replace a tidy picture with a richer one. Evolution has no obligation to follow the clean sequence we might choose for a museum wall. Its history is branching, and fossils allow us to examine those branches one extraordinary specimen at a time.

Personally, while I am excited by the fossil bones they found, it is the feathers that steal my heart. It will be very exciting to see what we learn from them.

A feathered fossil in stone and a bird outside the window belong to the same unfolding conversation. One helps us ask how aerial adaptations arose. The other lets us watch what one surviving branch can do.

There is a lovely way to carry this story into the present. Watch a crow settle onto a branch, a gull adjust its wings above the shoreline, or a small songbird disappear into the trees. Living birds are dinosaurs, carrying that deep evolutionary history into our everyday world.

Each makes the larger story wonderfully immediate.

MEGACAUDA: THE FURRY HUNTER OF JURASSIC WATERS

Megacauda sungei

I was speaking with my friend Lori yesterday about mammals in a world dominated by dinosaurs. It is easy to picture the giants and overlook the smaller, furry creatures living alongside them. 

Yet those little animals had lives every bit as interesting as the dinosaurs that so often command our attention.

A newly described fossil gives us a wonderful reason to look more closely.

Meet Megacauda sungei, a mammal relative that lived approximately 165 million years ago in what is now China. Described in research published in Nature on 7 October 2026, this remarkably preserved animal had a broad, flattened tail and limbs suited to swimming. Its fossil also preserves clues to something less obvious, but deeply familiar: the way mammals swallow their food.

Imagine pausing beside Jurassic water. Let your eyes move away from the great animals on the horizon and settle on the bank. A small, furry shape approaches the shallows. It is here, close to the ground and water, that our story begins.

Megacauda measured roughly half a metre from nose to tail tip. Its name combines a reference to its large tail with an honour for palaeontologist Sun Ge. It belonged to the docodonts, an extinct group of early mammal relatives. Comparisons with living swimming mammals help us picture its lifestyle, though they should not be mistaken for a close family relationship.

The pleasure of a fossil like this lies in how many separate clues it offers.

Its broad tail and powerful hind limbs support the interpretation that it moved through water. Tiny vertebrate bones preserved in its stomach provide a more intimate glimpse of its life: evidence of a meal. Salamanders occur abundantly in the same fossil beds, making them plausible prey, although the stomach contents should not automatically be treated as a complete menu.

Its tooth cusps curve backwards, a useful arrangement for holding slippery prey. Together, these features suggest an animal equipped to hunt in water. We cannot watch it pursue a meal, but we can examine the equipment it carried. That distinction is part of what makes palaeontology so fascinating: a reconstruction grows from evidence, one anatomical detail at a time.

Then there is its throat.

Most of us give little thought to swallowing until something goes down the wrong way. Yet moving food safely from the mouth towards the stomach requires a carefully coordinated system.

In Megacauda, researchers identified delicate throat bones and structures beneath the skull that help reconstruct that system. The anatomy suggests that important features supporting mammal-like swallowing—and potentially drinking and suckling—were already present in these early relatives. These are conclusions drawn from anatomical evidence; the fossil does not preserve the animal nursing or swallowing.

There is something lovely about finding such a familiar connection in an unfamiliar animal. A tail catches our eye. Teeth tell us about feeding. Tiny bones near the throat open a window onto an evolutionary story we carry within our own bodies.

The discovery also adds to a richer picture of Jurassic life. Docodonts included animals adapted to different settings, including trees, underground habitats and water. Their world offered opportunities for more than one way of living, even while dinosaurs dominated many terrestrial ecosystems.

That brings me back to my conversation with Lori. When we picture the past, scale can steer our attention. The biggest skeletons fill museum halls and our imaginations. It takes a deliberate change of focus to notice the smaller lives around them.

Cuties like Megacauda invite us to make that change. Look towards the water’s edge. Consider the ripples, the bank and the possibility of a furry hunter moving through the shallows, and delight in what we discover. This little fellow, in comparison to his peers, is a critter we might easily have missed. 

Where I live on Vancouver Island, we can watch sea otter dive through kelp or a river otters slip beneath the surface. Both offer a lovely way to imagine Megacauda in motion. 

Sea otters and river otters are related to one another—both belong to the weasel family, Mustelidae—but Megacauda belonged to the extinct docodont lineage and is not a known ancestor of either. 

Their similarities reflect convergent evolution: separate branches of the mammalian family tree developing adaptations to life in water. Familiar ripples, very different histories.

NUMMULITES FORAMINIFERA OF THE PYRAMIDS

Built to endure the tests of time, the pyramids of Giza were built of limestone, granite, basalt, gypsum (mortar), and baked mud bricks quarried at Giza and sites further up the river Nile at Aswan.

Together they form some of the oldest (and last remaining) wonders of the ancient world. 

The great pyramids of Giza, with their smooth exteriors carved from fine grain white limestone quarried at Tura on the Giza-plateau, are built from stone that speaks of Egypt's much older geologic history.

The limestone from Tura was the finest and whitest of all the Egyptian quarries and chosen for the facing stones for the richest tombs. It is interesting in that it is made up almost entirely of Nummulites, a lovely single-celled organism. 

Nummulites (Lamarck, 1801) are the calcareous chambered shells (tests) of extinct forms of marine, amoeba-like organisms  — protozoans or protists — called foraminifera that accumulated in huge quantities during the early Cenozoic. They look very much like little white, round crackers or cross-sections of plants with their concentric rings.

Imagine millions of them with their wee calcium carbonate skeletons living, dying and sinking to the seafloor. Over time, these little lovelies gathered in layers, pressure and time doing the rest. They became cemented together and helped form some of the most beautiful limestones we have today. It is remarkable to think that Khufu or Cheops, the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the oldest and largest of the pyramids at Giza built back in the 4th dynasty golden age and the only remaining wonder of the ancient world, is made up of teeny, tiny single-celled fossils — mindblowing!

They are commonly found as fossils in Eocene to Miocene marine rocks, particularly around southwest Asia and the Mediterranean — including the Eocene limestones of Egypt that lived in the Tethys sea.

Fossil Nummulites / Urbasa, Navarre

Foraminifera are still alive in our oceans, though none quite as large as Nummulites. Nummulites vary in diameter from very small, just 1.3 cm (0.5 inches) to 5 cm (2 inches) but grew much larger, up to six inches wide back in the Middle Eocene.

The small size of most cells has to do with how they move the nutrients they need across their cell membrane — a process called diffusion. 

Nummulites grew much larger, six inches is mighty big for a single-celled organism, because of their overall design. They evolved to increase their surface area and create a greater opportunity for diffusion. Clever.

In our modern Nummulites, we see a symbiotic relationship with algae that allowed them to grow much larger. Each of these little fellows has a community of them living with him. Lorraine Casazza, a University of California at Berkeley paleontologist did some great work on the nummulites from Egypt.

For the central chamber, with the sarcophagus of the pharaoh, lovely reddish-pink granite from Aswan was used. The granite helped to take the weight of this massive construction. The ancient Egyptians also used nummulite shells as coins. It is not surprising then that the name "Nummulites" is a diminutive form of the Latin nummulus meaning "little coin," a direct reference to their shape and usage.

A Nummulite Protozoan Foraminiferan

Back in 2013, archaeologists made an unlikely find in a cave seven hundred kilometres from Giza. 

Their find, a 4,600-year-old papyrus scroll, details an ancient shipload of rock, likely destined for  Khufu's pyramid, the pyramid that would later be known as the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The papyrus is addressed to Ankh-haf, Khufu’s half-brother, and describes the undertaking of an expedition by a 200-man crew to the limestone quarries near Tura, on the eastern shore of the Nile. After loading the blocks onto their ship, the expedition indented to float down the river Nile for a successful delivery. They were then joined by another 100,000 slaves who had the unenviable task of unloading the 2-3 ton blocks of limestone built from nummulites, then pulling them across ramps to be dragged to the construction site.

It is amazing to have documentation from the 4th dynasty and poetic that this shipping order should be for materials, immortalized first as nummulites in the Eocene, excavated, carved and immortalized at Giza.

Herodotus' Histories, Book VIII

The Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt during the construction of Khufu's pyramid by more than 100,000 slaves. Herodotus wasn't a fan of Khufu, describing him as a cruel tyrant.

In his literary work Historiae, Book II, chapter 124–126, Herodotus writes: "As long as Rhámpsinîtos was king, as they told me, there was nothing but orderly rule in Egypt, and the land prospered greatly. 

But after him Khéops became king over them and brought them to every kind of suffering: 

He closed all the temples; after this he kept the priests from sacrificing there and then he forced all the Egyptians to work for him.

So some were ordered to draw stones from the stone quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile, and others he forced to receive the stones after they had been carried over the river in boats, and to draw them to those called the Libyan mountains. 

And they worked by 100,000 men at a time, for each three months continually. Of this oppression there passed ten years while the causeway was made by which they drew the stones, which causeway they built, and it is a work not much less, as it appears to me, than the pyramid.

For the length of it is 5 furlongs and the breadth 10 fathoms and the height, where it is highest, 8 fathoms, and it is made of polished stone and with figures carved upon it. For this, they said, 10 years were spent, and for the underground chambers on the hill upon which the pyramids stand, which he caused to be made as sepulchral chambers for himself in an island, having conducted thither a channel from the Nile."

It is estimated that 5.5 million tonnes of nummulites limestone, 8,000 tonnes of granite (imported from Aswan), and 500,000 tonnes of mortar were used in the construction of the Great Pyramid. Built by an evil genius, yes, but stunning none-the-less. Unintentionally, it may have been one of the largest — and arguably cruellest — paleontological excavations ever attempted.

Photo of Fossil nummulites in Urbasa, Navarre by Theklan - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1125411

Photo: Nummulites from above and horizontally bisected by R A Lydekker - Life and Rocks, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3048471

Photo: Fragment from Herodotus' Histories, Book VIII on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2099, Early 2nd Century AD. Papyrology Rooms, Sackler Library, Oxford

References: Nummulite', Tiscali Dictionary of Animals, retrieved 17 August 2004
Hottinger, Lukas (2006-09-08). "Illustrated Glossary of terms used in foraminiferal research". Paleopolis. Retrieved 2018-11-11.

Reference: Lorraine Casazza, UCMP: https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/science/fieldnotes/casazza_0711.php

Fancy a visit to Cheops? Visit: 29°58′45″N 31°08′03″E

ANCIENT ARAGONITE: FOSSIL PEARLS

One of my favourite pairs of earrings are a simple set of pearls. I have worn them pretty much every day since 2016, when I received them as a gift. 

What is it about pearls that makes them so appealing? I am certainly not alone in this. 

A simple search will show you a vast array of pearls being used for their ornamental value in cultures from all over the world. I suppose the best answer to why they are appealing is just that they are. 

If you make your way to Paris, France and happen to visit the Louvre's Persian Gallery, do take a boo at one of the oldest pearl necklaces in existence — the Susa necklace. It hails from a 2,400-year-old tomb of long lost Syrian Queen. It is a showy piece with three rows of 72 pearls per strand strung upon a bronze wire. 

A queen who truly knew how to accessorize. 

I imagine her putting the final touches of her outfit together, donning the pearls and making an entrance to wow the elite of ancient Damascus. The workmanship is superb, intermixing pure gold to offset the lustre of the pearls. 

It is precious and ancient, crafted one to two hundred years before Christ. Perhaps a gift from an Egyptian Pharaoh or from one of the Sumerians, Eblaites, Akkadians, Assyrians, Hittites, Hurrians, Mitanni, Amorites or Babylonian dignitaries who sued for peace but brought war instead. 

Questions, good questions, but questions without answers. So, what can we say of pearls? We do know what they are and it is not glamorous. Pearls form in shelled molluscs when a wee bit of sand or some other irritant gets trapped inside the shell, injuring the flesh. As a defensive and self-healing tactic, the mollusc wraps it in layer upon layer of mother-of-pearl — that glorious shiny nacre that forms pearls. 

They come in all shapes and sizes from minute to a massive 32 kilograms or 70 pounds. While a wide variety of our mollusc friends respond to injury or irritation by coating the offending intruder with nacre, there are only a few who make the truly gem-y pearls. 

These are the marine pearl oysters, Pteriidae and a few freshwater mussels. 

Aside from Pteriidae and freshwater mussels, we sometimes find less gem-y pearls inside conchs, scallops, clams, abalone, giant clams and large marine gastropods.

Pearls are made up mostly of the carbonate mineral aragonite, a polymorphous mineral — the same chemical formula but different crystal structure — to calcite and vaterite, sometimes called mu-calcium carbonate. These polymorphous carbonates are a bit like Mexican food where it is the same ingredients mixed in different ways. Visually, they are easy to tell apart — vaterite has a hexagonal crystal system, calcite is trigonal and aragonite is orthorhombic.

As pearls fossilize, the aragonite usually gets replaced by calcite, though sometimes by vaterite or another mineral. When we are very lucky, that aragonite is preserved with its nacreous lustre — that shimmery mother-of-pearl we know and love.  

Molluscs have likely been making pearls since they first evolved 530 million years ago. The oldest known fossil pearls found to date, however, are 230-210 million years old. 

This was the time when our world's landmass was concentrated into the C-shaped supercontinent of Pangaea and the first dinosaurs were calling it home. 

In the ancient ocean of Panthalassa, ecosystems were recovering from the high carbon dioxide levels that fueled the Permian extinction. Death begets life. With 95% of marine life wiped out, new species evolved to fill each niche.  

While this is where we found the oldest pearl on record, I suspect we will one day find one much older and hopefully with its lovely great-great grandmother-of-pearl intact. 

CLALLAM BAY FOSSIL FAUNA

Panopea abrupt (Conrad, 1894)

This lovely large fossil bivalve is Panopea abrupta (Conrad, 1849) an extinct species of marine mollusc in the family Hiatellidae, subclass Heterodonta.

This fossil specimen was collected from lower Miocene deposits in the Clallam Formation on the foreshore bordering the Strait of Juan de Fuca near Clallam Bay, Olympic Peninsula, northwestern Washington. 

The oldest recorded specimen of one of their modern relatives lived not too far from here in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. That lovely was an impressive 168 years old.

A geoduck sucks water containing plankton down through its long siphon, filters this for food and ejects its refuse out through a separate hole in the siphon. Adult geoducks have few natural predators, which may also contribute to their longevity.

In Alaska, sea otters and dogfish have proved capable of dislodging geoducks; starfish also attack and feed on the exposed geoduck siphon.

Clallam Bay is a sleepy little town on the northwestern edge of the Olympic Peninsula. It was founded back in the 1880s as a steamboat stop and later served as a Mill town. If you are planning to visit the fossil exposures, head to the edge of town where it meets the sea.

Once at the water's edge, head east along the shore until you can go no further. You'll find marine fossils in the sandstone on the shore and cliffs. Mind the tide as access to the fossil site is only possible at low or mid-tide. You'll have to swim for it if you time it poorly. Clallam Bay: 48°15′17″N 124°15′30″W.

Near this site, there are many additional fossil localities to explore. 

In Sequim Bay, you can find Pleistocene vertebrates as well as Miocene cetacean bones near Slip Point. Near the Twin Post Office, you can find Oligocene nautiloids and bivalves (2.5km west in the bluff); You can find crabs including, Branchioplax in the Eocene limestone concretions from Neah Bay.

References: Addicott, Warren. Molluscan paleontology of the lower Miocene Clallam Formation, northwestern Washington, Geological Survey Paper 976.

BEAUTIFUL PATHOLOGY: QUENSTEDTOCERAS

What you are seeing here is a protuberance extruding from the venter of Quenstedtoceras cf. leachi (Sowerby). It is a pathology in the shell from hosting immature bivalves that shared the seas with these Middle Jurassic, Upper Callovian, Lamberti zone fauna from the Volga River basin. 

The collecting site is the now inactive Dubki commercial clay quarry and brickyard near Saratov, Russia. 

The site has produced thousands of ammonite specimens. A good 1,100 of those ended up at the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City, South Dakota. 

Roughly 1,000 of those are Quenstedtoceras (Lamberticeras) lamberti and the other 100 are a mix of other species found in the same zone. These included Eboraciceras, Peltoceras, Kosmoceras, Grossouvria, Proriceras, Cadoceras and Rursiceras. 

What is especially interesting is the volume of specimens — 167 Quenstedtoceras (Lamberticeras) lamberti and 89 other species in the Black Hills collection — with healed predation injuries. It seems Quenstedtoceras (Lamberticeras) lamberti are the most common specimens found here and so not surprisingly the most common species found injured. 

Of the 1,000, 655 of the Quenstedtoceras (Lamberticeras) lamberti displayed some sort of deformation or growth on the shell or had grown in a tilted manner. 

Again, some of the Q. lamberti had small depressions in the centre likely due to a healed bite and hosting infestations of the immature bivalve Placunopsis and some Ostrea. 

The bivalves thrived on their accommodating hosts and the ammonites carried on, growing their shells right up and over their bivalve guests. 

This relationship led to some weird and deformities of their shells. They grow in, around, up and over nearly every surface of the shell and seem to have lived out their lives there. It must have gotten a bit unworkable for the ammonites, their shells becoming warped and unevenly weighted. 

Over time, both the flourishing bivalves and the ammonite shells growing up and over them produced some of the most interesting pathology specimens I have ever seen.    

In the photo here from Emil Black, you can see some of the distorted shapes of Quenstedtoceras sp. 

Look closely and you see a trochospiral or flattened appearance on one side while they are rounded on the other. 

All of these beauties hail from the Dubki Quarry near Saratov, Russia. The ammonites were collected in marl or clay used in brick making. The clay particles suggest a calm, deep marine environment. 

One of the lovely features of the preservation here is the amount of pyrite filling and replacement. It looks like these ammonites were buried in an oxygen-deficient environment. 

The ammonites were likely living higher in the water column, well above the oxygen-poor bottom. An isotopic study would be interesting to prove this hypothesis. 

There's certainly enough of these ammonites that have been recovered to make that possible. It's estimated that over a thousand specimens have been recovered from the site but that number is likely much higher. But these are not complete specimens. We mostly find the phragmocones and partial body chambers. Given the numbers, this may be a site documenting a mass spawning death over several years or generations.

If you fancy a read on all things cephie, consider picking up a copy of Cephalopods Present and Past: New Insights and Fresh Perspectives edited by Neil Landman and Richard Davis. Figure 16.2 is from page 348 of that publication and shows the hosting predation quite well. 

Photos: Courtesy of the deeply awesome Emil Black. These are in his personal collection that I hope to see in person one day. 

It was his sharing of the top photo and the strange anomaly that had me explore more about the fossils from Dubki and the weird and wonderful hosting relationship between ammonites and bivalves. Thank you, my friend!

PETALS FROZEN IN TIME: THE PRINCETON CHERT

It began with a bloom, Florissantia quilchenensis, its petals splayed across a creamy, beige-brown matrix like a fossilized whisper from a warmer world. 

This precious bloom was hard-earned. Covered in dust and sweat, I grinned and held this elusive beauty to the light to take in its exceptional preservation and dusty beauty!

It was day three of my travels. I was hiking the hills around the town of Princeton in the Similkameen region of southern British Columbia, Canada. 

The former mining and railway hub lies at the confluence of the Tulameen into the Similkameen River, just east of the Cascade Mountains. It is dry, arid country covered by native grasslands and low scrub. 

Princeton, BC is located in the traditional territories of the Nlaka’pamux and Syilx (Okanagan) peoples. 

The region has historical significance for the Syilx, particularly the Upper and Lower Similkameen Indian Bands, and has been an important area for gathering red ochre for thousands of years. I had first explored the region looking for red ochre deposits to photograph, always with an eye to the local fossils.

On this particular trip, I was searching for fossils and the iconic flower, Florissantia, in the slopes known locally as Hospital Hill.

A lucky split brought a eureka moment. Is it? Could it be? Yes! Peeling back the layers, I had uncovered a near perfect flower and the treasure I had long been seeking. Searching for Florissantia had brought me to the Princeton area on many occasions but my first was found on this trip. 

Under a hand lens, its details unfurl: each vein etched in silica, each contour revealed with startling fidelity. 

I had uncovered a perfect flower, a time capsule telling us about the landscape as it once was, lush, tropical, and steaming with life.

This singular fossil, preserved in almost impossibly fine detail, is one of the jewels of the Princeton Chert, a fossil treasure hidden in the hills of British Columbia. 

Here, an entire ancient ecosystem—plants, fungi, fish, and the delicate traces of vanished warmth—was captured in stone with such precision that cell walls, stomata, and even parasitic fungi remain visible 48 million years later.

The Princeton Chert lies tucked along the east bank of the Similkameen River, 8.5 km south of the town of Princeton, B.C. At first glance, the exposures of the Allenby Formation appear unassuming: thinly layered bands of shale, coal, and pale chert. 

But within these layers, we've discovered something extraordinary—an anatomically preserved flora, fossilized in three dimensions. Unlike typical compression fossils, these organisms were permeated by silica-rich waters so quickly and so thoroughly that even their internal structures survived.

Since the 1950s, collectors and researchers have pulled back the curtain on this Eocene world, but it was in the 1970s and onward that the Chert achieved global attention. Scientists recognized that the Princeton Chert wasn’t just another fossil site. 

It was a Lagerstätte of unparalleled richness—one of the few places on Earth where entire plant communities are preserved down to the microscopic level.

Thin-sectioned under a microscope, these fossils show xylem vessels, aerenchyma, reproductive organs, pollen, seeds, roots, and fungal pathogens—all exquisitely intact. Few fossil floras in the world rival this clarity.

The Princeton Chert formed in a landscape shaped by fire and water. Its 49 known chert layers, ranging from thin wafers to thick beds over half a metre, alternate with volcanic ash, coal, and shale. Each layer represents a momentary pause in time—a lake or pond basin repeatedly drowned in silica-rich waters after nearby volcanic eruptions.

Radiometric dating now places the site at 48.7 million years old, deep within the Early Eocene Ypresian Stage, a time when Earth’s climate simmered near its all-time warmest. Greenhouse gases were high, ice was nearly absent, and tropical warmth lapped into polar regions.

The Princeton Chert flora thrived in shallow lakes and quiet backwaters. Many species were fully aquatic or semi-aquatic, and the fossils show unmistakable features of plants adapted to waterlogged conditions:

• Reduced vascular tissue (because buoyant plants need little support)
• Aerenchyma—honeycombed air chambers for floatation
• Protoxylem lacunae, ringed by thick-walled cells

Many of these plants have close relatives today:

• Allenbya – a water lily
• Keratosperma – an arum with curling, sculptural leaves
• Alismataceae – water plantains
• Ethela – rush-like monocots and sedges

Seeds, fruits, and roots appear in beautiful profusion. Meanwhile, terrestrial plants—those carried in by floods or dropped by birds—are rare but present.

The chert also preserves snippets of the animals that lived alongside these aquatic gardens. In the overlying shale beds, paleontologists have recovered Amia (bowfins), Amyzon, Libotonius, and even a soft-shelled turtle—a small but telling cast of freshwater neighbours.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Princeton Chert is its preservation of fungi. Here, we have identified:

• Tar spot fungi parasitizing Uhlia palm leaves
• Cryptodidymosphaerites princetonensis, a mycoparasite attacking the tar spot fungus
• Ectomycorrhizae—the first ever documented fossil mycorrhizal symbiosis with Pinus

In Metasequoia milleri, the Eocene ancestor of modern dawn redwood, mycorrhizal relationships appear nearly identical to those in modern forests. It is as though 50 million years have passed with hardly a change.

The Princeton Chert has attracted generations of paleobotanists, sedimentologists, and fossil enthusiasts, each drawn to its exquisite three-dimensional preservation and its window into Eocene ecosystems. 

Charles William “Chuck” Basinger, a Canadian paleobotanist renowned for his work on anatomically preserved plants and early conifer evolution. His meticulous studies helped illuminate the internal structures of Princeton Chert flora at cellular resolution. 

Ruth A. Stockey, a leading paleobotanist specialising in fossil conifers, seed plants, and reproductive biology, has published (along with her many grad students) extensively on the chert’s gymnosperms and angiosperms, reconstructing entire plants from roots to reproductive organs. 

Together with many collaborators over the decades, these scientists have pieced together a vivid portrait of ancient wetland forests—lush, diverse, and humming with microscopic and macroscopic life. 

The site is also beloved within the fossil-collecting community. The Vancouver Paleontological Society (VanPS) has organized field trips here for decades. 

Many members remember their first visit: crouched on a hot summer slope, poking about the roadcuts, collecting fossil insects and plants. One of the first large scale field trips to the region by the VanPS was part of the first BCPA Symposium held in 1998 at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. 

Smaller field trips became a regular occurrence, usually one every year or two, and that trend continues. The result of all that exploration is a greater understanding of the many fossil species to be found here.

Dan Bowden of the VanPS has done some wonderful work cataloguing the many fossils found here, with a particularly good eye in identifying the fossil insects. 

These excursions have helped train new generations of citizen scientists, fostering a deep respect for the site’s scientific importance.

If you plan to head to Princeton, be sure to include the Princeton & District Museum on your travels. The museum holds a good selection of the local fossils. It is located at 167 Vermillion Avenue, Princeton, BC, V0X 1W0. You can confirm their house on their website at princetonmuseum.org

Know Before You Go: Exploring the Fossil Lakes of British Columbia

Getting There from Vancouver

• Drive east on Highway 1 through Hope, then continue along Highway 3 (the Crowsnest Highway). The town of Hope offers a good place to stop for a meal and gas up your vehicle.
• Pass through Manning Park and descend into the Similkameen Valley toward Princeton.
• The Princeton Chert itself is on private and protected land; access requires permission and often participation in sanctioned society trips.
• Surface collecting yields a wonderful assortment of fossils.