GULLS ON THE FORESHORE: TSIK'WI

A gull cries in protest at not getting his share of a meal

Gulls, or colloquially seagulls, are seabirds of the family Laridae in the suborder Lari. 

The Laridae are known from not-yet-published fossil evidence from the Early Oligocene — 30–33 million years ago. 

Three gull-like species were described by Alphonse Milne-Edwards from the early Miocene of Saint-Gérand-le-Puy, France. 

Another fossil gull from the Middle to Late Miocene of Cherry County, Nebraska, USA, has been placed in the prehistoric genus Gaviota. 

These fossil gulls, along with undescribed Early Oligocene fossils are all tentatively assigned to the modern genus Larus. Among those of them that have been confirmed as gulls, Milne-Edwards' "Larus" elegans and "L." totanoides from the Late Oligocene/Early Miocene of southeast France have since been separated in Laricola.

Gulls are most closely related to the terns in the family Sternidae and only distantly related to auks, skimmers and distantly to waders. 

A historical name for gulls is mews, which is cognate with the German möwe, Danish måge, Swedish mås, Dutch meeuw, Norwegian måke/måse and French mouette. We still see mews blended into the lexicon of some regional dialects.

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, gulls are known as t̕sik̕wi. Most folk refer to gulls from any number of species as seagulls. This name is a local custom and does not exist in the scientific literature for their official naming. Even so, it is highly probable that it was the name you learned for them growing up.

If you have been to a coastal area nearly everywhere on the planet, you have likely encountered gulls. They are the elegantly plumed but rather noisy bunch on any beach. You will recognize them both by their size and colouring. 

Gulls are typically medium to large birds, usually grey or white, often with black markings on the head or wings. They typically have harsh shrill cries and long, yellow, curved bills. Their webbed feet are perfect for navigating the uneven landscape of the foreshore when they take most of their meals. 

Most gulls are ground-nesting carnivores that take live food or scavenge opportunistically, particularly the Larus species. Live food often includes crab, clams (which they pick up, fly high and drop to crack open), fish and small birds. Gulls have unhinging jaws which allow them to consume large prey which they do with gusto. 

Their preference is to generally live along the bountiful coastal regions where they can find food with relative ease. Some prefer to live more inland and all rarely venture far out to sea, except for the kittiwakes. 

The larger species take up to four years to attain full adult plumage, but two years is typical for small gulls. Large white-headed gulls are typically long-lived birds, with a maximum age of 49 years recorded for the herring gull.

Gulls nest in large, densely packed, noisy colonies. They lay two or three speckled eggs in nests composed of vegetation. The young are precocial, born with dark mottled down and mobile upon hatching. Gulls are resourceful, inquisitive, and intelligent, the larger species in particular, demonstrating complex methods of communication and a highly developed social structure. Many gull colonies display mobbing behaviour, attacking and harassing predators and other intruders. 

Certain species have exhibited tool-use behaviour, such as the herring gull, using pieces of bread as bait with which to catch goldfish. Many species of gulls have learned to coexist successfully with humans and have thrived in human habitats. Others rely on kleptoparasitism to get their food. Gulls have been observed preying on live whales, landing on the whale as it surfaces to peck out pieces of flesh. They are keen, clever and always hungry.

EXPLORING WRANGELLIA: HAIDA GWAII

Misty shores, moss covered forests, a rich cultural history, dappled light, fossils and the smell of salt air—these are my memories of Haida Gwaii.

The archipelago of Haida Gwaii lays at the western edge of the continental shelf due west of the central coast of British Columbia.

They form part of Wrangellia, an exotic tectonostratigraphic terrane that includes Vancouver Island, parts western British Columbia and Alaska.

The Geological Survey of Canada sponsored many expeditions to these remote islands and has produced numerous reference papers on this magnificent terrain, exploring both the geology and palaeontology of the area.

Joseph Whiteaves, the GSC's chief palaeontologist in Ottawa, published a paper in 1876 describing the Jurassic and Cretaceous faunas of Skidegate Inlet, furthering his reputation globally as both a geologist, palaeontologist as well as a critical thinker in the area of science.

The praise was well-earned and foreshadowed his significant contributions to come. Sixteen years later, he wrote up and published his observations on a strange Mount Stephen fossil that resembled a kind of headless shrimp with poorly preserved appendages. 

Because of the unusual pointed shape of the supposed ventral appendages and the position of the spines near the posterior of the animal, Whiteaves named it Anomalocaris canadensis. The genus name "Anomalocaris" means "unlike other shrimp" and the species name "canadensis" refers to the country of origin.

Whiteaves work on the palaeontology of Haida Gwaii provided excellent reference tools, particularly his work on the Cretaceous exposures and fauna that can be found there.

One of our fossil field trips was to the ruggedly beautiful Cretaceous exposures of Lina Island. We had planned this expedition as part of our “trips of a lifetime.” 

Both John Fam, the Vice Chair of the Vancouver Paleontological Society and Dan Bowen, the Chair of both the British Columbia Paleontological Alliance and Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society, can be congratulated for their efforts in researching the area and ably coordinating a warm welcome by the First Nations community and organizing fossil field trips to some of the most amazing fossil localities in the Pacific Northwest.

With great sandstone beach exposures, the fossil-rich (Albian to Cenomanian) Haida formation provided ample specimens, some directly in the bedding planes and many in concretion. Many of the concretions contained multiple specimens of typical Haida Formation fauna, providing a window into this Cretaceous landscape.

It is always interesting to see who was making a living and co-existing in our ancient oceans at the time these fossils were laid down. We found multiple beautifully preserved specimens of the spiny ammonite, Douvelleiceras spiniferum along with Brewericeras hulenense, Cleoniceras perezianum and many cycads in concretion.

Douvelliceras spiniferum, Cretaceous Haida Formation

Missing from this trip log are tales of Rene Savenye, who passed away in the weeks just prior. While he wasn't there in body, he was with us in spirit. I thought of him often on the mist-shrouded days of collecting. 

Many of the folk on who joined me on those outcrops were friends of Rene's and would go on to receive the Rene Savenye Award for their contributions to palaeontology. There is a certain poetry in that. 

The genus Douvilleiceras range from Middle to Late Cretaceous and can be found in Asia, Africa, Europe and North and South America. 

We have beautiful examples in the early to mid-Albian from the archipelago of Haida Gwaii in British Columbia. Joseph F. Whiteaves was the first to recognize the genus from Haida Gwaii when he was looking over the early collections of James Richardson and George Dawson.

My collections from Haida Gwaii will all be lovingly prepped and donated to the Haida Gwaii Museum in Skidegate, British Columbia.

BRONZE BEAUTY: EIFELIAN PARALEJURUS

This bronzed beauty is the Middle Devonian, Eifelian (~395 mya) trilobite, Paralejurus rehamnanus (Alberti, 1970) from outcrops near Issoumour, Alnif, Morocco in North Africa. 

It was the colour of this amazing trilobite that captured the eye of David Appleton in whose collection it now resides. He is an avid collector and coming into his own as a macro photographer. I have shared three of his delightful photos for you here.

It initially thought that the gold we see here was added during prep, particularly considering the colouration of the matrix, but macro views of the surface show mineralization and the veins running right through the specimen into the matrix. There is certainly some repairs but that is common in the restoration of these specimens. Many of the trilobites I have seen from Morocco have bronze on black colouring but not usually this pronounced. Even so, there is a tremendous amount of fine anatomy to explore and enjoy in this wonderfully preserved specimen.  

Paralejurus is a genus of trilobite in the phylum Arthropoda from the Late Silurian to the Middle Devonian of Africa and Europe. These lovelies grew to be up to nine centimetres, though the fellow you see here is a wee bit over half that size at 5.3 cm. 

Paralejurus specimens are very pleasing to the eye with their long, oval outline and arched exoskeletons. 

Their cephalon or head is a domed half circle with a smooth surface.  The large facet eyes have very pleasing crescent-shaped lids. You can see this rather well in the first of the photos here. The detail is quite remarkable.

As you move down from his head towards the body, there is an almost inconspicuous occipital bone behind the glabella in the transition to his burnt bronze thorax.

The body or thorax has ten narrow segments with a clearly arched and broad axial lobe or rhachis. The pygidium is broad, smooth and strongly fused in contrast to the genus Scutellum in the family Styginidae, which has a pygidium with very attractive distinct furrows that I liken to the look of icing ridges on something sweet — though that may just be me and my sweet tooth talking. In Paralejurus, they look distinctly fused — or able to fuse — to add posterior protection against predators with both the look and function of Roman armour.

In Paralejurus, the axillary lobe is rounded off and arched upwards. It is here that twelve to fourteen fine furrows extend radially to complete the poetry of his body design. 

Trilobites were amongst the earliest fossils with hard skeletons and they come in many beautiful forms. While they are extinct today, they were the dominant life form at the beginning of the Cambrian. 

As a whole, they were amongst some of the most successful of all early animals — thriving and diversifying in our ancient oceans for almost 300 million years. The last of their brethren disappeared at the end of the Permian — 252 million years ago. Now, we enjoy their beauty and the scientific mysteries they reveal about our Earth's ancient history.

Photos and collection of the deeply awesome David Appleton. Specimen: 5.3 cm. 

SKØKKENMØDDINGER: CaCO3(s) + 2HCl(aq) → CaCl2(aq) + CO2(g) + H2O(l)

Johnny Scow's Kwakwaka'wakw Kwakiutl House, 1918

Many First Nations sites were inhabited continually for centuries. Some were winter sites and some used in summer. 

The day-to-day activities of each of these communities were much like we have today. Babies were born, meals were served and life followed a natural cycle. 

As coastal societies lived their lives they also left their mark. There are many communities thriving today but we have lost some to time, disuse, plague and disease. 

For those that have been abandoned or gone quiet, we see the remnants of a once thriving village through their totems, skeletons of buildings—and most always through discarded shells and scraps of bone from their food.

These refuse heaps contain a wealth of information about how that community lived, what they ate and what environmental conditions looked like over time. They also provide insight into the local gastronomic record on diet, species diversity, availability and variation.

This physical history provides a wonderful resource for archaeologists in search of botanical material, artifacts, broken cooking implements and my personal favourite, mollusc shells. Especially those formed from enormous mounds of bivalves and clams. We call these middens. Left for a period of time, these unwanted dinner scraps transform through a process of preservation.

Shell middens are found in coastal or lakeshore zones all over the world. Consisting mostly of mollusc shells, they are interpreted as being the waste products of meals eaten by nomadic groups or hunting parties. Some are small examples relating to meals had by a handful of individuals, others are many metres in length and width and represent centuries of shell deposition. In Brazil, they are known as sambaquis, left between the 6th millennium BCE and the beginning of European colonization.

European shell middens are primarily found along the Atlantic seaboard and in Denmark from the 5th millennium BCE (Ertebølle and Early Funnel Beaker cultures), containing the remains of the earliest Neolithisation process (pottery, cereals and domestic animals).

Younger shell middens are found in Latvia (associated with Comb Ware ceramics), Sweden (associated with Pitted Ware ceramics), the Netherlands (associated with Corded Ware ceramics) and Schleswig-Holstein (Late Neolithic and Iron Age). All these are examples where communities practised a mixed farming and hunting/gathering economy.

On Canada's west coast, there are shell middens that run for more than 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) along the coast and are several meters deep. The midden in Namu, British Columbia is over 9 metres (30 ft) deep and spans over 10,000 years of continuous occupation.

Shell middens created in coastal regions of Australia by Indigenous Australians exist in Australia today. Middens provide evidence of prior occupation and are generally protected from mining and other developments. One must exercise caution in deciding whether one is examining a midden or a beach mound. There are good examples on the Freycinet Peninsula in Tasmania where wave action currently is combining charcoal from forest fire debris with a mix of shells into masses that storms deposit above high-water mark.

Shell mounds near Weipa in far north Queensland are claimed to be middens but are actually shell cheniers, beach ridges re-worked by nest mound-building birds. The midden below is from Santa Cruz, Argentina. We can thank Mikel Zubimendi for the photo.

Some shell middens are regarded as sacred sites, such as the middens of the Anbarra of the Burarra from Arnhem Land, a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia —  a vast wilderness of rivers, rocky escarpments, gorges and waterfalls.

The Danish use the term køkkenmøddinger, coined by Japetus Steenstrup, a Danish zoologist and biologist, to describe shell heaps and continues to be used by some researchers.

So what about these ancient shells is so intriguing? Well, many things, not the least being their ability to preserve the past. Shells have a high calcium carbonate content.

Calcium carbonate is one of my favourite chemical compounds. It is commonly found in rocks —  as the minerals calcite and aragonite, most notably as limestone, which is a type of sedimentary rock consisting mainly of calcite —  and is the main component of pearls, snails, eggs and the shells of marine organisms. 

About 4% of the Earth's crust is made from calcium carbonate. It forms beautiful marbles and the 70 million-year-old White Cliffs of Dover — calcium carbonate as chalk made from the skeletons of ancient algae.

Time and pressure leach the calcium carbonate, CaCO3, from the surrounding marine shells and help embalm bone and antler artifacts that would otherwise decay. Much of what we know around the modification of natural objects into tools comes from this preservation. The calcium carbonate (CaCO3) in the discarded shells tends to make the middens alkaline, slowing the normal rate of decay caused by soil acidity and leaving a relatively high proportion of organic material —  food remnants, organic tools, clothing, human remains — to sift through and study.

Calcium carbonate shares the typical properties of other carbonates. In prepping fossil specimens embedded in limestone, it is useful to know that limestone, itself a carbonate sedimentary rock, reacts with stronger acids. If you paint the specimen with hydrochloric acid, you'll hear a little fizzling sound as the limestone melts and carbon dioxide is released: CaCO3(s) + 2HCl(aq) → CaCl2(aq) + CO2(g) + H2O(l). I tend to use a 3-5 molar solution, then rinse with plain water.

Calcium carbonate reacts with water saturated with carbon dioxide to form the soluble calcium bicarbonate. Bone already contains calcium carbonate, as well as calcium phosphate, Ca2, but it is also made of protein, cells and living tissue. 

Decaying bone acts as a sort of natural sponge that wicks in the calcium carbonate displaced from the shells. As protein decays inside the bone, it is replaced by the incoming calcium carbonate, making the bone harder and more durable.

I collected trade beads and treasures on the beachfront below the magnificent house you see in the first photo, but also found bits of bone and scraps of history of coastal living. I also collected many wonderful abalone buttons and wonderful shells.  

The shells, beautiful in their own right, make the surrounding soil more alkaline, helping to preserve the bone and turn dinner scraps into exquisite scientific specimens for future generations. 

FOSSILS OF HORNBY ISLAND

Diplomoceras sp.

This gorgeous cream and brown big beast of a heteromorph, Diplomoceras (Diplomoceras) sp., (Hyatt, 1900) was found within the 72 million-year-old sediments of the upper Nanaimo Group on the northern Gulf Island of Hornby in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. 

The site is known as Boulder Point to the locals and it has been a popular fossil destination for many years. It is the home of the K'ómoks First Nation, who called the island Ja-dai-aich.

Many of the fossils found at this locality are discovered in concretions rolled smooth by time and tide. The concretions you find on the beach are generally round or oval in shape and are made up of hard, compacted sedimentary rock. 

If you are lucky, when you split these nodules you are rewarded with a fossil hidden within. That is not always the case but the rewards are worth the effort. 

These past few years, many new and wonderful specimens have been unearthed — particularly by members of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society. 

And so it was in the first warm days of early summer last year. Three members of the Vancouver Palaeontological Society excavated this 100 cm long fossil specimen over two days in June of 2020. The specimen was not in concretion but rather embedded in the hard sintered shale matrix beneath their feet. It was angled slightly downward towards the shoreline and locked within the rolling shale beds of the island. 

Diplomoceratidae (Spath, 1926) are often referred to as the paperclip ammonites. They are in the family of ammonites included in the order Ammonitida in the Class Cephalopoda and are found within marine offshore to shallow subtidal Cretaceous — 99.7 to 66.043 million-year-old — sediments worldwide. 

I was reading with interest this morning about a new find published by Muramiya and Shigeta in December 2020 of a new heteromorph ammonoid Sormaites teshioensis gen. et sp. nov. (Diplomoceratidae) described from the upper Turonian (Upper Cretaceous) in the Nakagawa area, Hokkaido, northern Japan. 

This lovely has a shell surface ornamented with simple, straight, sharp-tipped ribs throughout ontogeny, but infrequent flared ribs and constrictions occur on later whorls. Excluding its earliest whorls, its coiling and ornamentation are very similar to Scalarites mihoensis and Sc. densicostatus from the Turonian to Coniacian in Hokkaido and Sakhalin, suggesting that So. teshioensis was probably derived from one of these taxa in the Northwest Pacific during middle to late Turonian.

Much like the long-lived geoducks living in Puget Sound today, studies of Diplomoceras suggest that members of this family could live to be over 200 years old — a good 40-years longer than a geoduck but not nearly as long-lived as the extant bivalve Arctica islandica that reach 405 to 410 years in age. 

Along with this jaw-dropper of a heteromorph, the same group found an Actinosepia, gladius — internal hard body part found in many cephalopods of a Vampyropod. Vampyropods are members of the proposed group Vampyropoda — equivalent to the superorder Octopodiformes — which includes vampire squid and octopus.

The upper Nanaimo Group is a mix of marine sandstone, conglomerate and shale. These are partially exposed in the Campanian to the lower Maastrichtian outcrops at Collishaw Point on the northwest side of Hornby Island.

Along with fossil crabs, shark teeth, bivalves and occasional rare and exquisite saurodontid fish, an ambush predator with very sharp serrated teeth and elongate, torpedo-like body — we also find three heteromorph ammonite families are represented within the massive, dark-grey mudstones interlaminated and interbedded with siltstone and fine-grained sandstone of the upper Campanian (Upper Cretaceous) strata of the Northumberland Formation exposed here: Baculitidae, Diplomoceratidae and Nostoceratidae. 

A variety of species are distinguished within these families, of which only three taxa – Baculites occidentalis (Meek, 1862), Diplomoceras (Diplomoceras) cylindraceum (Defrance, 1816) and Nostoceras (Nostoceras) hornbyense (Whiteaves, 1895), have been studied and reported previously. 

Over the last decade, large new collections by many members of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society and palaeontologists working at the Geologic Survey of Canada, along with a renewed look at previous collections have provided new taxonomic and morphometric data for the Hornby Island ammonite fauna. This renewed lens has helped shape our understanding and revamp descriptions of heteromorph taxa. Eleven taxa are recognized, including the new species Exiteloceras (Exiteloceras) densicostatum sp. nov., Nostoceras (Didymoceras?) adrotans sp. nov. and Solenoceras exornatus sp. nov. 

A great variety of shape and form exist within each group. Morphometric analyses by Sandy McLachlan and Jim Haggart of over 700 specimens unveiled the considerable phenotypic plasticity of these ammonites. They exhibit an extraordinarily broad spectrum of variability in their ornamentation and shell dimensions. 

The presence of a vibrant—and deeply awesome—palaeontological community on Vancouver Island made the extent of their work possible. 

Graham Beard, Doug Carrick, Betty Franklin, Raymond Graham, Joe Haegert, Bob Hunt, Stevi Kittleson, Kurt Morrison and Jean Sibbald are thanked for their correspondence and generosity in contributing many of the exquisite specimens featured in that study. 

These generous individuals, along with many other members of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS), Vancouver Paleontological Society (VanPS), and British Columbia Paleontological Alliance (BCPA), have contributed a great deal to our knowledge of the West Coast of Canada and her geologic and palaeontological correlations to the rest of the world; notably, Dan Bowen, Rick Ross, John Fam and Pat and Mike Trask, Naomi & Terry Thomas. Their diligence in the collection, preparation and documentation of macrofossils is a reflection of the passion they have for palaeontology and their will to help shape the narrative of Earth history.

Through their efforts, a large population sample of Nostoceras (Nostoceras) hornbyense was made available and provided an excellent case study of a member of the Nostoceratidae. It was through the well-documented collection and examination of a remarkable number of nearly complete, well-preserved specimens that a re-evaluation of diagnostic traits within the genus Nostoceras was made possible. 

The north-east Pacific Nostoceras (Nostoceras) hornbyense Zone and the global Nostoceras (Nostoceras) hyatti Assemblage Zone are regarded as correlative, reinforcing a late Campanian age for the Northumberland Formation. This builds on the earlier work of individuals like Alan McGugan and others. McGugan looked at the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian and Maastrichtian) Foraminifera from the Upper Lambert and Northumberland Formations, Gulf Islands, British Columbia, Canada.

The Maastrichtian Bolivina incrassata fauna (upper part of Upper Lambert Formation) of Hornby Island (northern Comox Basin) is now recognized in the southern Nanaimo Basin on Gabriola and Galiano Islands. The Maastrichtian planktonic index species Globotruncana contusa occurs in the Upper Northumberland Formation of Mayne Island and Globotruncana calcarata (uppermost Campanian) occurs| in the Upper Northumberland Formation of Mayne Island and also in the Upper Lambert Formation at Manning Point on the north shore of Hornby Island (Comox Basin).

Very abundant benthonic and planktonic foraminiferal assemblages from the Upper Campanian Lower Northumberland Formation of Mayne Island enable paleoecological interpretations to be made using the Fisher diversity index, triangular plots of Texturlariina/Rotaliina/Miliolina, calcareous/agglutinated ratios, planktonic/benthonic ratios, generic models, and associated microfossils and megafossils. 

Combined with local geology and stratigraphy a relatively shallow neritic depositional environment is proposed for the Northumberland Formation in agreement with Scott but not Sliter who proposed an Outer shelf/slope environment with depths of 300 m or more.

References & further reading: Sandy M. S. McLachlan & James W. Haggart (2018) Reassessment of the late Campanian (Late Cretaceous) heteromorph ammonite fauna from Hornby Island, British Columbia, with implications for the taxonomy of the Diplomoceratidae and Nostoceratidae, Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, 16:15, 1247-1299, DOI: 10.1080/14772019.2017.1381651

Crickmay, C. H., and Pocock, S. A. J. 1963. Cretaceous of Vancouver, British Columbia. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, 47, pp. 1928-1942.

England, T.D.J. and R. N. Hiscott (1991): Upper Nanaimo Group and younger strata, outer Gulf Islands, southwestern British Columbia: in Current Research, Part E; Geological Survey of Canada, Paper 91-1E, p. 117-125.

McGugan, Alan. (2011). Upper Cretaceous (Campanian and Maestrichtian) Foraminifera from the Upper Lambert and Northumberland Formations, Gulf Islands, British Columbia, Canada. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. 16. 2263-2274. 10.1139/e79-211. 

Scott, James. (2021). Upper Cretaceous foraminifera of the Haslam, Qualicum, and Trent River formations, Vancouver Island, British Columbia /. 

Sliter, W. & Baker, RA. (1972). Cretaceous bathymetric distribution of benthic foraminifers. Journal of Foraminiferal Research - J FORAMIN RES. 2. 167-183. 10.2113/gsjfr.2.4.167. 

Spath L. F. 1926. A Monograph of the Ammonoidea of the Gault; Part VI. Palaeontographical Society London

Sullivan, Rory (4 November 2020). "Large squid-like creature that looked like a giant paperclip lived for 200 years — 68 million years ago". The Independent. Archived from the original on 4 November 2020.

Urquhart, N. & Williams, C.. (1966). Patterns in Balance of Nature. Biometrics. 22. 206. 10.2307/2528236. 

Yusuke Muramiya and Yasunari Shigeta "Sormaites, a New Heteromorph Ammonoid Genus from the Turonian (Upper Cretaceous) of Hokkaido, Japan," Paleontological Research 25(1), 11-18, (30 December 2020). https://doi.org/10.2517/2020PR016.

Photos: Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society, Courtenay, British Columbia, Naomi and Terry Thomas.

AINOCERAS: VANCOUVER ISLAND HETEROMORPH

A wee baby deep chocolate Ainoceras sp. heteromorph ammonite from Vancouver Island. This adorable corkscrew-shaped ammonite is an extinct marine mollusc related to squid and octopus.  

Within their shells, they had a number of chambers, called septa, filled with gas or fluid that were interconnected by a wee air tube. 

By pushing air in or out, they were able to control their buoyancy in the water column. These little cuties were predators who hunted in Cretaceous seas.

They lived in the last chamber of their shells, continuously building new shell material as they grew. As each new chamber was added, the squid-like body of the ammonite would move down to occupy the final outside chamber. 

Not all ammonites have this whacky corkscrew design. Most are coiled and some are even shaped like massive paperclips. This one is so remarkable, so joyously perfect my internal thesaurus can’t keep up.

FOSSILS OF CANADA'S EASTERN SHORES

Hylonomus lyelli, Ancestor of all dinosaurs

The fossil cliffs at Joggins are one of Canada's gems, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, you can visit to see our ancient world frozen in time. 

Preserved in situ is a snapshot of an entire food chain of a terrestrial Pennsylvanian Coal Age wetland.

The outcrop holds fossil plant life — including impressive standing lycopsid trees that formed the framework of these wetlands — decomposing detritivores in the invertebrates and tetrapods, the predatory carnivores of the day.

The Coal Age trees were fossilized where they stood 300-million-years ago with the remains of the earliest reptiles entombed within. The preservation is quite marvellous with the footprints of creatures who once lived in these wetlands are frozen where they once walked and the dens of amphibians are preserved with remnants of their last meal. 

Nowhere is a record of plant, invertebrate and vertebrate life within now fossilized forests rendered more evocatively. The fossil record at Joggins contains 195+ species of plants, invertebrates and vertebrates. The fossil plant life became the vast coal deposits for which this period of Earth's history is named. 

Recorded in the rock are vertebrate and invertebrate fauna both aquatic and terrestrial. This broad mix of specimens gives us a view into life back in the Pennsylvanian and sets us up to understand their ecological context.

Pennsylvanian Coal Age Ecosystem, 300-Million-Years-Old

The fossil record includes species first defined at Joggins, some of which are found nowhere else on Earth. 

It was here that Sir Charles Lyell, with Sir William Dawson, founder of modern geology, discovered tetrapods — amphibians and reptiles — entombed in the upright fossil trees. 

Later work by Dawson would reveal the first true reptile, Hylonomus lyelli, ancestor of all dinosaurs that would rule the Earth 100 million years later. 

This tiny reptile serves as the reference point where animals finally broke free of the water to live on land. This evolutionary milestone recorded at Joggins remains pivotal to understanding the origins of all vertebrate life on land, including our own species. 

Sir Charles Lyell, author of Principles of Geology, first noted the exceptional natural heritage value of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs, calling them “...the finest example in the world of a natural exposure in a continuous section ten miles long, occurs in the sea cliffs bordering a branch of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.” Indeed, the world-famous Bay of Fundy with its impressive tides, the highest in the world, and stormy nature exposed much of this outcrop. 

Geological accounts of the celebrated coastal section at Joggins first appear in the published literature in 1828–1829, by Americans C.T. Jackson and F. Alger, and by R. Brown and R. Smith, managers for the General Mining Association in the Sydney and Pictou coal fields. Brown and Smith’s account is the first to document the standing fossil trees.

Joggins Fossil Cliffs Map (Click to Enlarge)

Plan Your Joggins Fossil Cliffs Staycation

Joggins Fossil Cliffs is a Canadian gem — and they welcome visitors. They offer hands-on learning and discovery microscope activities in their Fossil Lab.

You can explore interpretive displays in the Joggins Fossil Centre before heading out to the beach and cliffs with an interpreter.

Their guided tours of the fossil site include an educational component that tells you about the geology, ecology, palaeontology and conservation of this very special site. 

Joggins / Chegoggin / Mi'kmaq L'nu

We know this area as Joggins today. In Mi'kmaw, the language spoken in Mi'kma'ki, the territory of the Mi'kmaq L'nu, the area bears another name, Chegoggin, place of fishing weirs.

Booking Your Class Field Trip

If you are a teacher and would like to book a class field trip, contact the Director of Operations via the contact information listed below. They will walk you through Covid safety and discuss how to make your visit educational, memorable and fun.

Know Before You Go

The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world. Beach walks are scheduled according to the tides and run regardless of the weather. Good low tides but raining, the beach walk goes on. Lovely and sunny but with a high tide, the beach walk must wait. So, you will want to dress for it as they will not be cancelled in the event of rain. Should severe weather be a factor, bookings may need to be rescheduled at the discretion of the Joggins staff.

Any questions about booking your school field trip? Feel free to email:  operations@jogginsfossilcliffs.net or call: 1 (902) 251-2727 EXT 222.

References & further reading:

Joggins Fossil Cliffs: https://jogginsfossilcliffs.net/cliffs/history/

Image: Hylonomus lyelli, Una ricostruzione di ilonomo by Matteo De Stefano/MUSEThis file was uploaded by MUSE - Science Museum of Trento in cooperation with Wikimedia Italia., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48143186

Image: Arthropleura: Par Tim Bertelink — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48915156

Joggins Map: Joggins Fossil Cliffs: https://jogginsfossilcliffs.net/cliffs/history/

LOTUS FLOWER FRUIT

Lotus Flower Fruit, Nelumbo

This beauty is the fruit of the lotus, Nelumbo. This specimen was found by Green River Stone (GRS) in early Eocene outcrops of the Fossil Lake Member of the Green River Formation. 

The awesome possums from GRS are based out of North Logan, Utah, USA and have unearthed some world-class specimens. They've found Nelumbo leaves over the years but this is their first fossil specimen of the fruit.

And what a specimen it is! The spectacularly preserved fruit measures 6-1/2" round. Here you can see both the part and counterpart in fine detail. Doug Miller of Green River Stone sent copies to me this past summer and a copy to the deeply awesome Kirk Johnson, resident palaeontologist over at the Smithsonian Institute, to confirm the identification.

There is another spectacular specimen from Fossil Butte National Monument. They shared photos of a Nelumbo just yesterday. Nelumbo is a genus of aquatic plants in the order Proteales found living in freshwater ponds. You'll recognize them as the emblem of India, Vietnam and many wellness centres.

Nelumbo Fruit, Green River Formation

There is residual disagreement over which family the genus should be placed in. Traditional classification systems recognized Nelumbo as part of the Nymphaeaceae, but traditional taxonomists were likely misled by convergent evolution associated with an evolutionary shift from a terrestrial to an aquatic lifestyle. 

In the older classification systems, it was recognized under the biological order Nymphaeales or Nelumbonales. Nelumbo is currently recognized as the only living genus in Nelumbonaceae, one of several distinctive families in the eudicot order of the Proteales. Its closest living relatives, the (Proteaceae and Platanaceae), are shrubs or trees.

Interestingly, these lovelies can thermoregulate, producing heat. Nelumbo uses the alternative oxidase pathway (AOX) to exchange electrons. Instead of using the typical cytochrome complex pathway most plants use to power mitochondria, they instead use their cyanide-resistant alternative. 

This is perhaps to generate a wee bit more scent in their blooms and attract more pollinators. The use of this thermogenic feature would have also allowed thermo-sensitive pollinators to seek out the plants at night and possibly use the cover of darkness to linger and mate.

So they functioned a bit little like a romantic evening meeting spot for lovers and a wee bit like the scent diffuser in your home. This lovely has an old lineage with fossil species in Eurasia and North America going back to the Cretaceous and represented in the Paleogene and Neogene. Photo Two: Doug Miller of Green River Stone Company

UNEARTHING THE PAST: TRILOBITES OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

When we think of British Columbia, our minds often turn to its towering mountains, dense rainforests, and rugged coastline. 

But hidden within its rocky layers lies a much older and stranger world—one that predates dinosaurs by hundreds of millions of years. That world was once ruled by creatures known as trilobites.

What Are Trilobites?

Trilobites were marine arthropods that roamed the oceans for over 270 million years, from the Early Cambrian to the end of the Permian period. 

These hard-shelled creatures looked a bit like a cross between a horseshoe crab and a pill bug, with segmented bodies, jointed legs, and a wide range of sizes and shapes. Over 20,000 species have been identified, making them one of the most diverse and successful early animal groups in Earth's history.

Their fossils are found all over the world—but some of the most remarkable specimens come from the ancient seabeds now uplifted and exposed in British Columbia.

Trilobites in BC: A Window Into the Cambrian Explosion

British Columbia holds a special place in the study of early life, particularly due to the world-renowned Burgess Shale fossil site in Yoho National Park. While the Burgess Shale is famous for preserving soft-bodied organisms, it also offers stunning examples of trilobites—often found with delicate spines and appendages intact, thanks to the unique preservation conditions.

The Burgess Shale trilobites date back to around 508 million years ago, during the Cambrian period—a time often referred to as the Cambrian Explosion due to the rapid diversification of complex life. Trilobites were among the most prominent creatures of this era, and their fossils help paleontologists understand how early ecosystems functioned.

Lower Cambrian Trilobites of the Eager Formation

Just east of Cranbrook, the Eager Formation preserves fossil assemblages from the Lower Cambrian—making it one of the oldest fossiliferous units in British Columbia. In a 2003 study, paleontologist Jean-Bernard Caron, along with co-authors, examined trilobite faunas from this formation, revealing a rich and diverse array of early trilobite life.

Among the trilobites described from the Eager Formation are:

Fritzaspis – A small, early trilobite representative of the Olenellid group.

Mesonacis eagerensis – A species named after the formation itself, notable for its distinctive glabella (central lobe of the head).

Elliptocephala – Characterized by its elongated cephalon and early evolutionary features.

Repinaella – Considered one of the more primitive trilobites, shedding light on early arthropod evolution.

Caron’s work emphasized the biostratigraphic and paleobiogeographic significance of these trilobites, helping to correlate the Eager Formation with other Lower Cambrian sites across Laurentia (ancient North America).

Upper Cambrian Trilobites of the McKay Group

While the Eager Formation provides insight into the dawn of trilobite history, the McKay Group, also near Cranbrook, offers a detailed look at Upper Cambrian trilobite evolution. This group of rock formations—consisting primarily of shales and limestones—preserves an abundant and diverse trilobite fauna.

It has been the collaborative efforts of Chris New, Chris Jenkins, Guy Santucci, Don Askew and Stacey Gibb that has helped open up the region — including finding and identifying many new species or firsts including Pseudagnostus securiger, a widespread early Jiangshanian species not been previously recorded from southeastern British Columbia. 

Paleontologist Brian Chatterton has published extensively on trilobites from the McKay Group, identifying a wide range of species that highlight evolutionary trends and faunal turnover toward the end of the Cambrian period.

Some of the trilobite genera and species Chatterton documented include:

Pterocephalia norfordi – A species named in honor of paleontologist B.S. Norford, noted for its distinctive broad cephalon.

Elvinia roemeri – An elegant Upper Cambrian species found throughout western North America.

Calyptaulax – With its spiny thorax and well-defined segmentation, it is a striking example of late Cambrian trilobite morphology.

Prosaukia – Often used in Upper Cambrian biostratigraphy for correlation across regions.

Orygmaspis contracta – A widespread trilobite in the Upper Cambrian that helps paleontologists understand geographic distribution.

Honouring the People Behind the Fossils

British Columbia’s trilobite story isn’t just about ancient animals—it’s also about the people who help uncover them.

Several trilobite species from the McKay and Eager formations have been named in honour of those who contributed to their discovery and study:

Pterocephalia santuccii – Named after Guy Santucci, a life-long friend and hugely respected geologist with the Geological Survey of Canada whose fieldwork and geological mapping helped bring attention to fossil-rich sites in southeastern BC. He 

Orygmaspis newi – Honours Chris New, a dedicated citizen scientist and fossil enthusiast whose field observations and fossil contributions have aided formal scientific research in the region.

Calyptaulax jenkinsi – Recognizes Chris Jenkins, a citizen scientist whose careful collection and documentation of trilobite specimens played a key role in expanding the known diversity of the McKay Group fauna.

These species highlight the collaborative nature of paleontology, where discoveries often come from a blend of academic research, geological expertise, and passionate individuals in the community.

Notable BC Trilobites Across Time

Across the Cambrian layers of BC, notable trilobites include:

Olenoides serratus – From the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale, often preserved with soft tissues.

Wanneria walcottana – An Early Cambrian form found in various parts of BC.

Mesonacis eagerensis – A Lower Cambrian species from the Eager Formation.

Pterocephalia santuccii, Orygmaspis newi, and Calyptaulax jenkinsi – Upper Cambrian trilobites named in honor of key contributors to BC paleontology.

Together, these fossils span tens of millions of years, tracing the evolutionary arc of trilobites from their origins to their diversification.

The Science (and Art) of Fossil Hunting

While fossil collection is restricted in national parks like Yoho, some other Cambrian formations near Cranbrook, including parts of the McKay and Eager Formations, are accessible for scientific study and regulated collection. These regions continue to offer paleontologists new insights into trilobite diversity, ecology, and biogeography.

Trilobite fossils are not just scientifically valuable—they’re also incredibly beautiful. Their symmetry, segmentation, and sometimes intricate ornamentation have made them prized by collectors and natural history museums alike. 

If you would like to see some of the amazing specimens collected in British Columbia, I recommend a visit to the Cranbrook History Centre. Located on the Traditional territory of the Ktunaxa First Nation, it offers a look at local recent history and a deep dive into the past with many exceptional Cambrian trilobites on display along with their arthropod brethren, Tuzoia and associated species. Their collections also boast a rather nice display of Devonian fish. 

Why They Matter Today

Trilobites may be extinct, but they still teach us a lot. Their evolutionary history helps scientists track how life responded to ancient climate changes, mass extinctions, and the rise of predators. In a way, trilobites are time travelers—messengers from a vanished ocean world that still speaks to the challenges and wonders of life on Earth today.

So next time you're the ancient outcrops of our beautiful province, remember: beneath your boots may lie the fossilized remains of a once-thriving marine world—where trilobites crawled, burrowed, and thrived in seas long since vanished.

15TH BCPA SYMPOSIUM, COURTENAY: AUG 22-25, 2025

You are cordially invited to the 15th BCPA Symposium, August 22-25, 2025 at the Florence Filberg Centre in Courtenay in the Comox Valley, Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

We have the honour of having Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History where he oversees the world's largest natural history collection as our Keynote Speaker. His talk is sure to delight! 

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: KIRK JOHNSON

Kirk became the Sant Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in 2012, hot on the heels of his stint as a paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. During his time there he led expeditions in eighteen US states and eleven countries — including Ellesmere Island in the Arctic to the far reaches of the Amur-Heilongjiang region of China on the Chinese-Russian border and back again to find some of the first fossil plants in the badlands near Drumheller.

Kirk is often asked why he studies plants and not something more spectacular. It is important that you know that plants are THE MOST SPECTACULAR fossils and his fossil plants would throw any theropod remains to the mat. He's found many exciting fossil finds (including some spectacular very un-plant-ish) Canadian fossils. 

BCPA SYMPOSIUM SOCIAL MEET & GREET

• Friday, August 22nd at the Courtenay and District Museum and Paleontological Centre, 207 - 4th Street, Courtenay, British Columbia including a Museum Tour with Pat Trask

BCPA SYMPOSIUM PALEO-BANQUET

• Saturday, August 23rd, 6 PM - 9:30 PM at the Florence Filberg Centre featuring Ray Troll as the Dinner Speaker

BCPA SYMPOSIUM PRESENTATIONS

• Saturday, August 23rd, 9 AM - 4:30 PM
• Sunday, August 24th, 9 AM to 12:30 PM
• All presentations and poster sessions are at the Florence Filberg Centre at 411 Anderton Avenue in downtown Courtenay, Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The Florence Filberg Centre is 1/2 block from the Courtenay Museum, close to shops and restaurants

BCPA SYMPOSIUM FOSSIL FIELD TRIPS

• Friday, August 22nd: Shelter Point
• Sunday, August 24th: Trent River
• Monday, August 25th: Hornby Island, Collishaw Point

FOSSIL PREPARATION WORKSHOP

• Sunday, August 25, 2025, 1:30 PM - 4:00 PM: Fossil Preparation Workshop with James Wood, Jay Hawley and Dan Bowen

BCPA SYMPOSIUM REGISTRATION

Registration is open. To register, head to www.fossiltalksandfieldtrips.com. There is a registration link there for ease of access. Early Bird pricing ends May 30, 2025 so register early to save! 

ANCIENT ORNAMENTS OF THE SEA: FOSSIL PEARL

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 giant 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. 

DANGEROUS BEDFELLOWS: ANGLERFISH

The festive lassie you see here is an Anglerfish. They always look to be celebrating a birthday of some kind, albeit solo. This party is happening deep in our oceans and for those that join in, I hope they like it rough.

The wee candle you see on her forehead is a photophore, a tiny bit of luminous dorsal spine. Many of our sea dwellers have these candle-like bits illuminating the depths. You may have noticed them glowing around the eyes of many of our cephalopod friends. 

These light organs can be a simple grouping of photogenic cells or more complex with light reflectors, lenses, colour filters able to adjust the intensity or angular distribution of the light they produce. Some species have adapted their photophores to avoid being eaten, in others, it's an invitation to lunch.

In anglerfish' world, this swaying light is dead sexy. It's an adaptation used to attract prey and mates alike.

Deep in the murky depths of the Atlantic and Antarctic oceans, hopeful female anglerfish light up their sexy lures. When a male latches onto this tasty bit of flesh, he fuses himself totally. He might be one of several potential mates. She's not picky, just hungry. Lure. Feed. Mate. Repeat.

A friend asked if anglerfish mate for life. Well, yes.... yes, indeed they do.

Mating is a tough business down in the depths. Her body absorbs all the yummy nutrients of his body over time until all that's left are his testes. While unusual, it is only one of many weird and whacky ways our fishy friends communicate, entice, hunt and creatively survive and thrive. The deepest, darkest part of the ocean isn't empty — its hungry.

The evolution of fish began about 530 million years ago with the first fish lineages belonging to the Agnatha, a superclass of jawless fish. We still see them in our waters as cyclostomes but have lost the conodonts and ostracoderms to the annals of time. Like all vertebrates, fish have bilateral symmetry; when divided down the middle or central axis, each half is the same. Organisms with bilateral symmetry are generally more agile, making finding a mate, hunting or avoiding being hunted a whole lot easier.

When we envision fish, we generally picture large eyes, gills, a well-developed mouth. The earliest animals that we classify as fish appeared as soft-bodied chordates who lacked a true spine. While they were spineless, they did have notochords, a cartilaginous skeletal rod that gave them more dexterity than the cold-blooded invertebrates who shared those ancient seas and evolved without a backbone. 

Fish would continue to evolve throughout the Paleozoic, diversifying into a wide range of forms. Several forms of Paleozoic fish developed external armour that protected them from predators. The first fish with jaws appeared in the Silurian period, after which many species, including sharks, became formidable marine predators rather than just the prey of arthropods.

Fish in general respire using gills, are most often covered with bony scales and propel themselves using fins. There are two main types of fins, median fins and paired fins. The median fins include the caudal fin or tail fin, the dorsal fin, and the anal fin. Now there may be more than one dorsal, and one anal fin in some fishes.

The paired fins include the pectoral fins and the pelvic fins. And these paired fins are connected to, and supported by, pectoral and pelvic girdles, at the shoulder and hip; in the same way, our arms and legs are connected to and supported by, pectoral and pelvic girdles. This arrangement is something we inherited from the ancestors we share with fish. They are homologous structures.

When we speak of early vertebrates, we are often talking about fish. Fish is a term we use a lot in our everyday lives but taxonomically it is not all that useful. When we say, fish we generally mean an ectothermic, aquatic vertebrate with gills and fins.

Fortunately, many of our fishy friends have ended up in the fossil record. We may see some of the soft bits from time to time, as in the lovely fossil fish found in concretion in Brazil, but we often see fish skeletons. Vertebrates with hard skeletons had a much better chance of being preserved. 

Eohiodon Fish, McAbee Fossil Beds

In British Columbia, we have lovely two-dimensional Eocene fossil fish well-represented from the Allenby of Princeton and the McAbee Fossil Beds. 

We have the Tiktaalik roseae, a large freshwater fish, from 375 million-year-old Devonian deposits on Ellesmere Island in Canada's Arctic. Tiktaalik is a wonderfully bizarre creature with a flat, almost reptilian head but also fins, scales and gills. We have other wonders from this time. 

Canada also boasts spectacular antiarch placoderms, Bothriolepsis, found in the Upper Devonian shales of Miguasha in Quebec.

There are fragments of bone-like tissues from as early as the Late Cambrian with the oldest fossils that are truly recognizable as fishes come from the Middle Ordovician from North America, South America and Australia. At the time, South America and Australia were part of a supercontinent called Gondwana. North America was part of another supercontinent called Laurentia and the two were separated by deep oceans.

These two supercontinents and others that were also present were partially covered by shallow equatorial seas and the continents themselves were barren and rocky. Land plants didn't evolve until later in the Silurian Period. In these shallow equatorial seas, a large diverse and widespread group of armoured, jawless fishes evolved: the Pteraspidomorphi. The first of our three groups of ostracoderms. The Pteraspidomorphi are divided into three major groups: the Astraspida, Arandaspida and the Heterostraci.

The oldest and most primitive pteraspidomorphs were the Astraspida and the Arandaspida. You'll notice that all three of these taxon names contain 'aspid', which means shield. This is because these early fishes — and many of the Pteraspidomorphi — possessed large plates of dermal bone at the anterior end of their bodies. This dermal armour was very common in early vertebrates, but it was lost in their descendants. 

Arandaspida is represented by two well-known genera: Sacabampaspis, from South America and Arandaspis from Australia. Arandaspis have large, simple, dorsal and ventral head shields. Their bodies were fusiform, which means they were shaped sort of like a spindle, fat in the middle and tapering at both ends. Picture a sausage that is a bit wider near the centre with a crisp outer shell.

If you're a keen bean to see an anglerfish that recently washed up on the shores of Newport Beach this past May, hit this link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/11/deep-sea-anglerfish-california-beach-finding-nemo. Kudos for my colleague, Giovanni, bringing this gloriously horrific lovely to my attention. 

FOSSIL FISHAPODS OF CANADA'S FAR NORTH

Qikiqtania wakei, a fishapod & relative to tetrapods

You will likely recall the amazing tetrapodomorpha fossil found on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic in 2004, Tiktaalik roseae. 

These were advanced forms transitional between fish and the early labyrinthodonts playfully referred to as fishapods — half-fish, half-tetrapod in appearance and limb morphology. 

Up to that point, the relationship of limbed vertebrates (tetrapods) to lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygians) was well known, but the origin of significant tetrapod features remained obscure for the lack of fossils that document the sequence of evolutionary changes — until Tiktaalik. 

While Tiktaalik is technically a fish, this fellow is as far from fish-like as you can be and still be a card-carrying member of the group. 

Interestingly, while Neil Shubin and crew were combing the icy tundra for Tiktaalik, another group was trying their luck just a few kilometres away. 

A week before the eureka moment of Tiktaalik's discovery, Tom Stewart and Justin Lemberg unearthed material that we now know to be a relative of Tiktaalik's. 

Meet Qikiqtania wakei, a fishapod and close relative to our dear tetrapods — and cousin to Tiktaalik — who shares features in the flattened triangular skull, shoulders and elbows in the fin. 

Qikiqtania (pronounced kick-kick-TAN-ee-ya)

But, and here’s the amazing part, its upper arm bone (humerus) is specialised for open water swimming, not walking. 

The story gets wilder when we look at Qikiqtania’s position on the evolutionary tree— all the features for this type of swimming are newly evolved, not primitive. 

This means that Qikiqtania secondarily reentered open water habitats from ancestors that had already had some aspect of walking behaviour. 

And, this whole story was playing out 365 million years ago — the transition from water to land was going both ways in the Devonian.

Why is this exciting? You and I descend from those early tetrapods. We share the legacy of their water-to-land transition and the wee bony bits in their wrists and paddles that evolved to become our hands. I know, mindblowing!

Thomas Stewart and Justin Lemberg put in thousands of hours bringing Qikiqtania to life. 

The analysis consisted of a long path of wild events— from a haphazard moment when it was first spotted, a random collection of a block that ended up containing an articulated fin, to a serendipitous discovery three days before Covid lockdowns in March 2020.

Both teams acknowledge the profound debt owed to the individuals, organizations and indigenous communities where they had the privilege to work — Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay— Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, the largest and northernmost territory of Canada. 

Part of that debt is honoured in the name chosen for this new miraculous species. 

Aerial View of Ellesmere Island

The generic name, Qikiqtania (pronounced kick-kick-TAN-ee-ya), is derived from the Inuktitut words Qikiqtaaluk and Qikiqtani which are the traditional place name of the region where the fossil was discovered. 

The specific name, wakei, is in memory of the evolutionary biologist David Wake — colleague, mentor and friend. 

He was a professor of integrative biology and Director and curator of herpetology at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley who passed away in April 2021. 

Wake is known for his work on the biology and evolution of salamanders and vertebrate evolutionary biology. 

If you look at the photo on the left you can imagine visiting these fossil localities in Canada's far north.

Qikiqtania was found on Inuit land and belongs to the community. Thomas Stewart and his colleagues were able to conduct this research because of the generosity and support of individuals in the hamlets of Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord, the Iviq Hunters and Trappers of Grise Fiord, and the Department of Heritage and Culture, Nunavut.

To them, on behalf of the larger scientific community — Nakurmiik. Thank you! 

Here is the link to Tom Stewart's article in The Conversation & paper in Nature:

Stewart, Thomas A.; Lemberg, Justin B.; Daly, Ailis; Daeschler, Edward B.; Shubin, Neil H. (2022-07-20). "A new elpistostegalian from the Late Devonian of the Canadian Arctic". Nature. doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04990-w. ISSN 0028-0836.
Stewart, Thomas. "Meet Qikiqtania, a fossil fish with the good sense to stay in the water while others ventured onto land" The Conversation. Retrieved 2022-07-20.

Image One: An artist’s vision of Qikiqtania enjoying its fully aquatic, free-swimming lifestyle. Alex Boersma, CC BY-ND

Image Two: A new elpistostegalian from the Late Devonian of the Canadian Arctic, T. A. Stewart, J. B. Lemberg, A. Daly, E. B. Daeschler, & N. H. Shubin.

A huge shout out to the deeply awesome Neil Shubin who shared that the paper had been published and offered his insights on what played out behind the scenes!

UNEARTHING FOSSIL BIRD BONES ON SOUTHERN VANCOUVER ISLAND

Stemec suntokum, a Fossil Plopterid from Sooke, BC

We all love the idea of discovering a new species—especially a fossil species lost to time. 

As romantic as it sounds, it happens more often than you think. 

I can think of more than a dozen new fossil species from my home province of British Columbia on Canada’s far western shores that have been named after people I know who have collected those specimens or contributed to their collection over the past 20 years. 

British Columbia, Canada, is a paleontological treasure trove, and one of its most rewarding spots is tucked away near the southwestern tip of Vancouver Island: the Sooke Formation along the rugged shores of Muir Beach.

A Beach Walk into Deep Time

Follow Highway 14 out of the town of Sooke, just west of Victoria, and you’ll soon find yourself staring at the cool, clear waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Step onto the gravel parking area near Muir Creek, and from there, walk right (west) along the beach. The low yellow-brown cliffs up ahead mark the outcrop of the upper Oligocene Sooke Formation, part of the larger Carmanah Group.

For collectors, families, and curious wanderers alike, this spot is a dream. On a sunny summer day, the sandstone cliffs glow under the warm light, and if you’re lucky enough to visit in the quieter seasons, there’s a certain magic in the mist and drizzle—just you, the crashing surf, and the silent secrets of a world long gone.

Geological Canvas of the Oligocene

The Sooke Formation is around 25 to 30 million years old (upper Oligocene), when ocean temperatures had cooled to levels not unlike those of today. That ancient shoreline supported many of the marine organisms we’d recognize in modern Pacific waters—gastropods, bivalves, echinoids, coral, chitons, and limpets. Occasionally, larger remains turn up: bones from marine mammals, cetaceans, and, in extremely rare instances, birds.

Beyond Birds: Other Fossil Treasures

The deposits in this region yield abundant fossil molluscs. Look carefully for whitish shell material in the grey sandstone boulders along the beach. You may come across Mytilus (mussels), barnacles, surf clams (Spisula, Macoma), or globular moon snails. Remember, though, to stay clear of the cliffs—collecting directly from them is unsafe and discouraged.

These same rock units have produced fossilized remains of ancient marine mammals. Among them are parts of desmostylids—chunky, herbivorous marine mammals from the Oligocene—and the remains of Chonecetus sookensis, a primitive baleen whale ancestor. There are even rumors of jaw sections from Kolponomos, a bear-like coastal carnivore from the early Miocene, found in older or nearby formations.

Surprisingly, avian fossils at this site do exist, though they’re few and far between. Which brings us to one of the most exciting paleontological stories on the island: the discovery of a flightless diving bird.

The Suntok Family’s Fortuitous Find

In 2013, while strolling the shoreline near Sooke, Steve Suntok and his family picked up what they suspected were fossilized bones. Their instincts told them these were special, so they brought the specimens to the Royal British Columbia Museum (RBCM) in Victoria.

Enter Gary Kaiser: a biologist by profession who, after retirement, turned his focus to avian paleontology. As a research associate with the RBCM, Kaiser examined the Suntoks’ finds and realized these were no ordinary bones. They were the coracoid of a 25-million-year-old flightless diving bird—a rare example of the extinct Plotopteridae. In honor of the region’s First Nations and the intrepid citizen scientists who found it, he named the new genus and species Stemec suntokum.

Meet the Plotopterids

Plotopterids once lived around the North Pacific from the late Eocene to the early Miocene. They employed wing-propelled diving much like modern penguins, “flying” through the water using robust, flipper-like wings. Fossils of these extinct birds are known from outcrops in the United States and Japan, where some specimens reached up to two meters in length.

The Sooke fossil, on the other hand, likely belonged to a much smaller individual—somewhere in the neighborhood of 50–65 cm long and 1.7–2.2 kg, about the size and weight of a small Magellanic Penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) chick. The key to identifying Stemec suntokum was its coracoid, a delicate shoulder bone that provides insight into how these birds powered their underwater movements.

From Penguin Waddle to Plotopterid Dive

If you’ve ever seen a penguin hopping near the ocean’s edge or porpoising through the water, you can imagine the locomotion of these ancient Plotopterids. The coracoid bone pivots as a bird flaps its wings, providing a hinge for the up-and-down stroke. Because avian bones are so delicate—often scavenged or destroyed by ocean currents before they can fossilize—finding such a beautifully preserved coracoid is a stroke of incredible luck.

Kaiser’s detailed observations on the coracoid of Stemec suntokum—notably its unusually narrow, conical shaft—sparked debate among avian paleontologists. You can read his paper, co-authoried with Junya Watanabe and Marji Johns, was published in Palaeontologia Electronica in November 2015. You can find the paper online at:

 https://palaeo-electronica.org/content/2015/1359-plotopterid-in-canada

The Suntok Legacy

It turns out the Suntok family’s bird discovery wasn’t their last remarkable find. Last year, they unearthed part of a fish dental plate that caught the attention of Russian researcher Evgeny Popov. He named it Canadodus suntoki (meaning “Tooth from Canada”), another nod to the family’s dedication as citizen scientists. 

While the name may not be as lyrical as Stemec suntokum, it underscores the continuing tradition of everyday fossil lovers making big contributions to science.

Planning Your Own Expedition

Location: From Sooke, drive along Highway 14 for about 14 km. Just after crossing Muir Creek, look for the gravel pull-out on the left. Park and walk down to the beach; turn right (west) and stroll about 400 meters toward the sandstone cliffs.

Tip: Check the tide tables and wear sturdy footwear or rubber boots. Fossils often appear as white flecks in the greyish rocks on the beach. A small hammer and chisel can help extract specimens from coquinas (shell-rich rock), but always use eye protection and respect the local environment.

Coordinates: 48.4°N, 123.9°W (modern), which corresponds to around 48.0°N, 115.0°W in Oligocene paleo-coordinates.

Why Head to Sooke? Pure Gorgeousness!

Whether you’re scanning the shoreline for ancient bird bones or simply soaking in the Pacific Northwest vistas, Muir Beach offers a blend of natural beauty and deep-time adventure. For many, the idea of unearthing a brand-new fossil species seems almost mythical. 

Yet the Suntok family’s story proves it can—and does—happen. With an appreciative eye, a sense of curiosity, and a willingness to learn, any of us could stumble upon the next chapter of Earth’s distant past.

So pack your boots, bring a hammer and some enthusiasm, and you just might find yourself holding a piece of ancient avian history—like Stemec suntokum—in your hands.

References & Further Reading

Clark, B.L. and Arnold, R. (1923). Fauna of the Sooke Formation, Vancouver Island, B.C. University of California Publications in Geological Sciences 14(6).

Hasegawa et al. (1979); Olson and Hasegawa (1979, 1996); Olson (1980); Kimura et al. (1998); Mayr (2005); Sakurai et al. (2008); Dyke et al. (2011).

Russell, L.S. (1968). A new cetacean from the Oligocene Sooke Formation of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 5, 929–933.

Barnes, L.G. & Goedert, J.L. (1996). Marine vertebrate palaeontology on the Olympic Peninsula. Washington Geology, 24(3), 17–25.

Kaiser, G., Watanabe, J. & Johns, M. (2015). A new member of the family Plotopteridae (Aves) from the late Oligocene of British Columbia, Canada. Palaeontologia Electronica.

Howard, H. (1969). A new avian fossil from the Oligocene of California. Described Plotopterum joaquinensis.

Wetmore, A. (1928). Avian fossils from the Miocene and Pliocene of California.