INDRICOTHERIUM: A GIANT WITH A STORY IN ITS TEETH

Lower Jaw Teeth of Indricotherium

Imagine a rhinoceros tall enough to browse among the trees, with no horn and an appetite that must have kept it chewing for much of the day. 

Meet Indricotherium, a name often used for the giant prehistoric rhino now generally placed in the genus Paraceratherium. 

It lived in Asia during the Oligocene, tens of millions of years ago, and was among the largest land mammals ever to walk the Earth. Communications Biology

Despite its enormous size, this was no dinosaur. It belonged to the broader rhino family tree: an extinct relative of today’s rhinoceroses, rather than their direct ancestor. And while its towering body tends to steal the show, its teeth offer some of the best clues to how it lived.

First, the menu. Paraceratherium had relatively low-crowned cheek teeth. Tooth crowns are the parts above the gum line, and their height matters because food wears them down. Animals that spend their lives grinding abrasive grasses often have taller crowns to spare. 

Indricotherium

The giant rhino’s teeth fit better with browsing on leaves and other vegetation than with grazing on gritty grass close to the ground. 

That tells us the likely kind of food it ate, though a tooth cannot hand us an exact list of plants. Communications Biology

Then there are the front teeth. Its enlarged incisors were remarkably tusk-like. 

Fossil teeth can tell us more than what happened after a mouthful of food was taken: their shape also helps us work out how an animal might have gathered it. 

Exactly how this giant used those incisors remains an interpretation, but they are a useful reminder that “prehistoric rhino” did not mean “modern rhino, only bigger.”

We can also study wear on fossil teeth. Tiny marks and broader patterns of wear give clues about chewing and the abrasiveness of food, especially when compared with teeth from other mammals. 

Each method has limits: dust, grit and the foods eaten shortly before death can complicate the picture. The strongest reconstruction comes from putting dental evidence alongside the skull, the rest of the skeleton and the environment where the fossils were found.

So what do Indricotherium’s teeth tell us? This immense animal was likely a browser, equipped with a mouth quite unlike that of the horned rhinos we picture today. Its fossils preserve more than a record of size. They give us a glimpse of an Oligocene giant reaching for its next meal—and proof that, in palaeontology, a good set of teeth can be wonderfully revealing.

If you could examine one fossil to learn about an extinct animal’s daily life, would you choose a tooth, a footprint or a skull?

THE MAGISTY OF IRISH ELK

Irish Elk, Megaloceros giganteus

Imagine cresting a windswept hillside in the fading amber of a Pleistocene sunset. 

The tall grass parts in slow ripples, stirred by a warm evening breeze—then by something far larger. 

An Irish Elk steps into view, a towering ghost from deep time, its silhouette edged with gold. It is a view some of our ancestors were lucky to behold!

This magnificent deer—Megaloceros giganteus—was not, in fact, strictly Irish, nor truly an elk. 

It was a giant among cervids, a member of a lineage that roamed from Ireland to Siberia across vast Ice Age steppes. But Ireland’s bogs preserved their remains so exquisitely that the name stuck, and so did the awe.

Irish Elk fossils appear in abundance in the peatlands of Ireland, the loess plains of Eastern Europe, and far into Central Asia. 

Their lineage traces back to the genus Megaloceros, a group of large deer that emerged around two million years ago. 

What made M. giganteus the superstar of its clan? Two words: monumental antlers.

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris

Spanning up to 3.7 metres (twelve feet) from tip to tip, the antlers were not simply oversized decoration—they were evolutionary billboards, broadcasting strength, health, and genetic prowess. 

They also had a hand in their fossil fame. 

When these massive antlers were unearthed centuries ago, early naturalists were convinced they belonged to mythical beasts or antediluvian monsters. 

The truth turned out to be even better: a deer so grand it nearly defied imagination.

Despite their size and majesty, Irish Elk were true deer, closely related to fallow deer and part of an ancient and diverse cervid family. Their bodies were robust, their legs strong and built for open ground, where visibility mattered and where their spectacular antlers could be displayed in their full glory.

But evolution is a dance with the environment, and as the Pleistocene climate fluctuated, the lush grasslands they depended on began to shrink. Their decline wasn’t sudden but drawn out, a slow waltz toward extinction.

The last of these giants fell only a short time ago. We do not know the exact date but the fossils share their stories as more and more are found. The youngest known fossils come from Siberia and date to about 7,700 years ago—well after most Ice Age megafauna had disappeared. 

Irish Elk, Natural History Museum London

By then, humans were spreading across Eurasia, climates were shifting, and dense forests were overtaking open plains. 

A giant deer with enormous antlers was increasingly out of place in a world thick with trees and rife with hunters.

Climate change, habitat loss, and possibly selective hunting all nudged the Irish Elk toward its final chapter. 

They are one of these species that have been talked about as contenders for using DNA to bring them back. 

Today the Irish Elk lives on in museum halls, in bog-darkened bones, and in our imaginations—a giant stepping through grass, pausing on a Pleistocene hillside as if it might turn its head toward us at any moment. There are several Irish Elk in collections and on display at museums around the world where you can view them at your leisure. 

A particularly impressive specimen is on view at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. The museum is a personal favourite of mine and worthy of a visit for its rich history and marvelous fossils, including the Irish Elk you see in the photo above. There are also wonderful examples in the British Museum in London, also worthy of a visit. 

The sheer grandeur of their size is sure to impress you! These beauties are a reminder that the world once held creatures both familiar and impossibly grand.

Illustration Credit: The lead image above was created by the supremely talented Daniel Eskridge, Paleo Illustrator from Atlanta, Georgia, USA. I share it here with permission as I have licensed the use of many of his images over the years, including this one. 

To enjoy his works (and purchase them!) to adorn your walls, visit his website at www.danieleskridge.com

KU'MIS: WARRIOR CRAB

Look how epic this little guy is! 

He is a crab — and if you asked him, the fiercest warrior that ever lived. 

While that may not be strictly true, crabs do have the heart of a warrior and will raise their claws, sometimes only millimetres into the air, to assert dominance over their world. 

Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the Phylum Arthropoda. 

In Kwak'wala, the language of the Kwakwaka'wakw of the Pacific Northwest, this brave fellow is ḵ̓u'mis — both a tasty snack and familiar to the supernatural deity Tuxw'id, a female warrior spirit. Given their natural armour and clear bravery, it is a fitting role.

They inhabit all the world's oceans, sandy beaches, many of our freshwater lakes and streams. Some few prefer to live in forests.

Crabs build their shells from highly mineralized chitin — and chitin gets around. It is the main structural component of the exoskeletons of many of our crustacean and insect friends. Shrimp, crab, and lobster all use it to build their exoskeletons.

Chitin is a polysaccharide — a large molecule made of many smaller monosaccharides or simple sugars, like glucose. 

It is handy stuff, forming crystalline nanofibrils or whiskers. Chitin is actually the second most abundant polysaccharide after cellulose. It is interesting as we usually think of these molecules in the context of their sugary context but they build many other very useful things in nature — not the least of these are the hard shells or exoskeletons of our crustacean friends.

Crabs in the Fossil Record

The earliest unambiguous crab fossils date from the Early Jurassic, with the oldest being Eocarcinus from the early Pliensbachian of Britain, which likely represents a stem-group lineage, as it lacks several key morphological features that define modern crabs. 

Most Jurassic crabs are only known from dorsal — or top half of the body — carapaces, making it difficult to determine their relationships. Crabs radiated in the Late Jurassic, corresponding with an increase in reef habitats, though they would decline at the end of the Jurassic as the result of the decline of reef ecosystems. Crabs increased in diversity through the Cretaceous and represented the dominant group of decapods by the end.

We find wonderful fossil crab specimens on Vancouver Island. The first I ever collected was at Shelter Point, then again on Hornby Island, down on the Olympic Peninsula and along Vancouver Island's west coast near Nootka Sound. 

They are, of course, found globally and are one of the most pleasing fossils to find and aggravating to prep of all the specimens you will ever have in your collection. Bless them.

ECHOES OF THE EOCENE: A WHALE BETWEEN WORLDS

Chrysocetus foudasil 

The impressive skull you see here belongs to Chrysocetus foudasil a member of the Basilosauridae, an ancient family of fully aquatic early whales known as archaeocetes. Though it still bore vestigial hind limbs, it no longer depended on land—a critical evolutionary step from its semi-aquatic ancestors such as Ambulocetus and Protocetus.

Basilosaurids like Chrysocetus, Dorudon, and Basilosaurus ruled the seas of the late Eocene, occupying ecological roles much like today’s dolphins and orcas. 

Basilosaurus grew into a serpent-like giant over 15 meters long, while Dorudon was smaller, sleeker, and likely faster. Chrysocetus was somewhere in between—mid-sized, streamlined, and adapted for powerful undulating swimming.

These early whales represent a pivotal stage in cetacean evolution. They bridge the gap between the land-dwelling artiodactyl ancestors (even-toed ungulates like deer and hippos) and the fully marine mysticetes (baleen whales) and odontocetes (toothed whales) that would later diversify in the Oligocene.

Looking at their remains, we are seeing a window into our world when whales were still learning to be whales—a fleeting evolutionary moment preserved in Moroccan stone, where golden bones tell the story of an ocean in transition.

FOSSILS AND FIRST NATIONS HISTORY: NOOTKA

Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam

The rugged west coast of Vancouver Island offers spectacular views of a wild British Columbia. Here the seas heave along the shores slowly eroding the magnificent deposits that often contain fossils. 

Just off the shores of Vancouver Island, east of Gold River and south of Tahsis is the picturesque and remote Nootka Island.

This is the land of the proud and thriving Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations who have lived here always. 

Always is a long time, but we know from oral history and archaeological evidence that the Mowachaht and Muchalaht peoples lived here, along with many others, for many thousands of years — a time span much like always. 

While we know this area as Nootka Sound and the land we explore for fossils as Nootka Island, these names stem from a wee misunderstanding. 

Just four years after the 1774 visit by Spanish explorer Juan Pérez — and only a year before the Spanish established a military and fur trading post on the site of Yuquot — the Nuu-chah-nulth met the Englishman, James Cook.  

Captain Cook sailed to the village of Yuquot just west of Vancouver Island to a very warm welcome. He and his crew stayed on for a month of storytelling, trading and ship repairs. Friendly, but not familiar with the local language, he misunderstood the name for both the people and land to be Nootka. In actual fact, Nootka means, go around, go around. 

Two hundred years later, in 1978, the Nuu-chah-nulth chose the collective term Nuu-chah-nulth — nuučaan̓uł, meaning all along the mountains and sea or along the outside (of Vancouver Island) — to describe themselves. 

It is a term now used to describe several First Nations people living along western Vancouver Island, British Columbia. 

It is similar in a way to the use of the United Kingdom to refer to the lands of England, Scotland and Wales — though using United Kingdom-ers would be odd. Bless the Nuu-chah-nulth for their grace in choosing this collective name.  

An older term for this group of peoples was Aht, which means people in their language and is a component in all the names of their subgroups, and of some locations — Yuquot, Mowachaht, Kyuquot, Opitsaht. While collectively, they are the Nuu-chah-nulth, be interested in their more regional name should you meet them. 

But why does it matter? If you have ever mistakenly referred to someone from New Zealand as an Aussie or someone from Scotland as English, you have likely been schooled by an immediate — sometimes forceful, sometimes gracious — correction of your ways. The best answer to why it matters is because it matters.

Each of the subgroups of the Nuu-chah-nulth viewed their lands and seasonal migration within them (though not outside of them) from a viewpoint of inside and outside. Kla'a or outside is the term for their coastal environment and hilstis for their inside or inland environment.

It is to their kla'a that I was most keen to explore. Here, the lovely Late Eocene and Early Miocene exposures offer up fossil crab, mostly the species Raninid, along with fossil gastropods, bivalves, pine cones and spectacularly — a singular seed pod. These wonderfully preserved specimens are found in concretion along the foreshore where time and tide erode them out each year.

Five years after Spanish explorer Juan Pérez's first visit, the Spanish built and maintained a military post at Yuquot where they tore down the local houses to build their own structures and set up what would become a significant fur trade port for the Northwest Coast — with the local Chief Maquinna's blessing and his warriors acting as middlemen to other First Nations. 

Following reports of Cook's exploration British traders began to use the harbour of Nootka (Friendly Cove) as a base for a promising trade with China in sea-otter pelts but became embroiled with the Spanish who claimed (albeit erroneously) sovereignty over the Pacific Ocean. 

Dan Bowen searching an outcrop. Photo: John Fam

The ensuing Nootka Incident of 1790 nearly led to war between Britain and Spain (over lands neither could actually claim) but talk of war settled and the dispute was settled diplomatically. 

George Vancouver on his subsequent exploration in 1792 circumnavigated the island and charted much of the coastline. His meeting with the Spanish captain Bodega y Quadra at Nootka was friendly but did not accomplish the expected formal ceding of land by the Spanish to the British. 

It resulted however in his vain naming the island "Vancouver and Quadra." The Spanish captain's name was later dropped and given to the island on the east side of Discovery Strait. Again, another vain and unearned title that persists to this day.

Early settlement of the island was carried out mainly under the sponsorship of the Hudson's Bay Company whose lease from the Crown amounted to 7 shillings per year — that's roughly equal to £100.00 or $174 CDN today. Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, was founded in 1843 as Fort Victoria on the southern end of Vancouver Island by the Hudson's Bay Company's Chief Factor, Sir James Douglas. 

With Douglas's help, the Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Rupert on the north end of Vancouver Island in 1849. Both became centres of fur trade and trade between First Nations and solidified the Hudson's Bay Company's trading monopoly in the Pacific Northwest.

The settlement of Fort Victoria on the southern tip of Vancouver Island — handily south of the 49th parallel — greatly aided British negotiators to retain all of the islands when a line was finally set to mark the northern boundary of the United States with the signing of the Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846. Vancouver Island became a separate British colony in 1858. British Columbia, exclusive of the island, was made a colony in 1858 and in 1866 the two colonies were joined into one — becoming a province of Canada in 1871 with Victoria as the capital.

Dan Bowen, Chair of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS) did a truly splendid talk on the Fossils of Nootka Sound. With his permission, I have uploaded the talk to the ARCHEA YouTube Channel for all to enjoy. Do take a boo, he is a great presenter. Dan also graciously provided the photos you see here. The last of the photos you see here is from the August 2021 Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam, Vice-Chair, Vancouver Paleontological Society (VanPS).

Know Before You Go — Nootka Trail

The Nootka Trail passes through the traditional lands of the Mowachaht/Muchalat First Nations who have lived here since always. They share this area with humpback and Gray whales, orcas, seals, sea lions, black bears, wolves, cougars, eagles, ravens, sea birds, river otters, insects and the many colourful intertidal creatures that you'll want to photograph.

This is a remote West Coast wilderness experience. Getting to Nootka Island requires some planning as you'll need to take a seaplane or water taxi to reach the trailhead. The trail takes 4-8 days to cover the 37 km year-round hike. The peak season is July to September. Permits are not required for the hike. 

Access via: Air Nootka floatplane, water taxi, or MV Uchuck III

• Dan Bowen, VIPS on the Fossils of Nootka: https://youtu.be/rsewBFztxSY
• https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-james-douglas
• file:///C:/Users/tosca/Downloads/186162-Article%20Text-199217-1-10-20151106.pdf
• Nootka Trip Planning: https://mbguiding.ca/nootka-trail-nootka-island/#overview.

CLALLAM BAY FOSSIL HEIST

Vertipecten fucanus (Dall, 1900)

Some water-worn samples of the bivalve Verdipectin fucanus, Clallam Formation, Clallam Bay, Washington State. Miocene.

It all began one gloriously sunny summer weekend when the planets aligned, the calendar gods smiled, and my mother and I were simultaneously free. 

Naturally, this meant one thing: we were going fossil hunting. I still get out collecting regularly but back in the day it was every weekend of the year with the bigger trips planned a few years in advance. 

Many of those were "reckie trips" scouting out new localities. The Olympic Peninsula was duly scouted and now it was back to the regular haunts. 

We rattled down through Port Angeles and set up camp at the Lyre River—mosquitoes, campfire smoke, and all the rustic feels. 

I took Mom on a grand tour of my favourite haunts: Majestic Beach (where we found some amazing fossil whale verts), a private-land site with ghost shrimp claws and urchins (with permission), and finally down to Clallam Bay and its dreamy beach exposures.

The Clallam Formation stretches along the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula, tracing the rugged edge of the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Slip Point at the eastern end of Clallam Bay to the headland of Pillar Point. Here, sandstone beds push the coastline outward in a subtle bulge, their weathered flanks dropping abruptly to a broad, wave-washed bedrock platform.

Pillar Point, Clallam Bay

Imagine standing on that foreshore: waves crash rhythmically against the stone, sending up bursts of cool spray. The surf’s deep, steady thunder pulses underfoot, while the sharper cries of gulls wheel above, carried on the wind. 

The air is rich with the briny scent of kelp and cold saltwater, a sharp, clean smell that settles in the back of the throat. Each retreating wave leaves a gleaming sheen on the rock, swirling with foam before sliding back to the sea.

Its cliffs and tidal benches have long drawn geologists—and especially paleontologists—who were captivated by the formation’s abundance of beautifully preserved fossils. 

William Healey Dall, a pioneering American geologist and paleontologist whose career spanned more than six decades. Dall loved to explore this rugged bit of coastline, studying and describing many of the mollusks now known from the Clallam Formation, adding his work to the early scientific tapestry woven from these windswept rocks.

He became one of the most prolific describers of North Pacific mollusks, naming hundreds of new species—from marine snails and clams to chitons—many of which still bear the names he assigned or honour him through genera such as Dallina and Dallididae. His work laid much of the early scientific foundation for the paleontology of the Pacific Coast.

Retracing his footsteps and to catch the tides just right, we collected in the early afternoon, blissfully unaware that we were setting up the perfect comedy plot twist. 

After a full day of hauling home the ocean’s Miocene leftovers, we decided to stash some of our fossil booty under a log—just until morning. A little paleo treasure cache. Perfectly safe. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

The next morning, we strolled back down the beach, coffees in hand, ready to retrieve our hoard like triumphant pirates.

Enter: A very enthusiastic gaggle of high school students.

There they were, marching toward us, each clutching a fossil like they’d just won the geological lottery. “Look what we found!” they cried, beaming, displaying our carefully cached treasures.

Yes. Our stash. Our carefully curated, lovingly positioned, absolutely-not-meant-for-public-consumption stash.

But honestly? They were so thrilled, we couldn’t help but be charmed. Besides, most of what I collect ends up in museums or teaching collections anyway. These young fossil hunters had simply… expedited the process. Efficient, really.

We gathered the Verdipectin together for one glamorous group photo, wished the kids well, and sent them off with pockets full of deep time. 

And our grand prize for the weekend? Some very fetching water-worn whale vertebrae—one of which was briefly enscripted into service as the crown of the King of the Lemon People, while my mother created elaborate beach sculptures to our shared amusement.. All in all, a perfect weekend.

Image: Vertipecten fucanus (Dall, 1900) is the most characteristic mollusk in assemblages from the Clallam Formation.

CHARIOCRINUS: LA BELLE OF THE BALL

Chariocrinus andrae, Collection: David Appleton

Crinoids are one of my favourite echinoderms. 

It is magical when all the elements come together to preserve a particularly lovely specimen in such glorious detail. 

This impressive block, chock full of lovely, well-preserved specimens of the crinoid, Chariocrinus andrae, hails from Bathonian outcrops in Beaune, Saône-et-Loire in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of central-eastern France. 

They are intertwined to cover most of the surface area of the citrus coloured matrix. 

Crinoids are unusually beautiful and graceful members of the phylum Echinodermata. They resemble an underwater flower swaying in an ocean current. But make no mistake they are marine animals. Picture a flower with a mouth on the top surface that is surrounded by feeding arms. Awkwardly, add an anus right beside that mouth. That's him!

Crinoids with root-like anchors are called Sea Lilies. They have graceful stalks that grip the ocean floor. Those in deeper water have longish stalks up to 3.3 ft or a meter in length.

Then there are other varieties that are free-swimming with only vestigial stalks. They make up the majority of this group and are commonly known as feather stars or comatulids. 

Unlike the sea lilies, the feather stars can move about on tiny hook-like structures called cirri. 

It is these same cirri that allow crinoids to latch to surfaces on the seafloor. Like other echinoderms, crinoids have pentaradial symmetry. The aboral surface of the body is studded with plates of calcium carbonate, forming an endoskeleton similar to that in starfish and sea urchins.

These make the calyx somewhat cup-shaped, and there are few, if any, ossicles in the oral (upper) surface, an area we call the tegmen. 

It is divided into five ambulacral areas, including a deep groove from which the tube feet project, and five interambulacral areas between them. 

Crinoids are alive and well today. They are also some of the oldest fossils on the planet. We have lovely fossil specimens dating back to the Ordovician — if one ignores the enigmatic Echmatocrinus of the Burgess Shale. 

And they can be quite plentiful. Crinoid fossils, and in particular disarticulated crinoid columnals, can be so abundant that they at times serve as the primary supporting clasts in sedimentary rocks

This beautiful 7" x 6" piece was photographed in natural sunlight to help show off the amazing detail. Photo and collection of the deeply awesome David Appleton.

RARE MARBLED POLECAT — VORMELA PEREGUSNA

Looking rather like a tiny carnivore dressed for a masquerade ball, the marbled polecat, Vormela peregusna, is a rare member of the weasel family, Mustelidae. 

Its extraordinary coat is patterned in cream, yellow, brown and black, complete with a dark facial mask and white-edged ears. 

Beneath all that finery is a fierce little predator equipped with long digging claws—and scent glands capable of producing a truly appalling smell when danger comes calling.

I had heard an expression once of someone fighting like a polecat and thought nothing of it at the time. It is only recently that I got to see the fossil remains of one of these cuties up close and put that expression and this adorable one together. 

The fossil history of Vormela reaches back to the Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene of Eurasia. Fossils of the extinct Vormela petenyii, a probable ancestral relative of today’s marbled polecat, have been found in Bulgaria. The modern species appeared by around the Pliocene–Pleistocene boundary, roughly 2.6 million years ago.

Marbled polecats are mustelids, making them relatives of weasels, ferrets, badgers and otters. Their closer kin include striped polecats and zorillas—small carnivores that share similarly impressive chemical defences.

Today, these elusive mammals inhabit steppes, dry grasslands and semi-deserts from southeastern Europe through the Middle East and Central Asia to western China. They hunt rodents, birds, reptiles and insects, often sheltering in burrows excavated by their prey. 

Sadly, the marbled polecat is listed as Vulnerable, threatened by habitat loss, agricultural development, rodent-control poisons and declining prey populations. 

Colourful, secretive and powerfully fragrant, this is one little predator you would be extraordinarily lucky to see—and perhaps slightly less lucky to startle.

FOSSIL SEA LILLIES: CRINOIDS

Uintacrinus socialis from Utah, USA

Crinoids are one of my favourite echinoderms. It is magical when all the elements come together to preserve a particularly lovely specimen in such glorious detail. 

If you look closely at the detail here you can see a stunning example of Upper Cretaceous, Santonian age, Uintacrinus socialis — named by O.C. Marsh for the Uinta Mountains of Utah nearly 150 years ago.  

These lovelies are best known from the Smoky Hills Niobrara Formation of central Kansas.

Crinoids are unusually beautiful and graceful members of the phylum Echinodermata. They resemble an underwater flower swaying in an ocean current. 

But make no mistake they are marine animals. Picture a flower with a mouth on the top surface that is surrounded by feeding arms. Awkwardly, add an anus right beside that mouth. 

Crinoids with root-like anchors are called sea lilies. They have graceful stalks that grip the ocean floor. Those in deeper water have longish stalks up to 3.3 ft or a meter in length. Then there are other varieties that are free-swimming with only vestigial stalks. They make up the majority of this group and are commonly known as feather stars or comatulids. 

Unlike the sea lilies, the feather stars can move about on tiny hook-like structures called cirri. It is these same cirri that allow crinoids to latch to surfaces on the seafloor. Like other echinoderms, crinoids have pentaradial symmetry. The aboral surface of the body is studded with plates of calcium carbonate, forming an endoskeleton similar to that in starfish and sea urchins.

These make the calyx somewhat cup-shaped, and there are few, if any, ossicles in the oral (upper) surface, an area we call the tegmen. It is divided into five ambulacral areas, including a deep groove from which the tube feet project, and five interambulacral areas between them. 

Crinoids are alive and well today. They are also some of the oldest fossils on the planet. We have lovely fossil specimens dating back to the Ordovician — if one ignores the enigmatic Echmatocrinus of the Burgess Shale. And they can be quite plentiful. Crinoid fossils, and in particular disarticulated crinoid columnals, can be so abundant that they at times serve as the primary supporting clasts in sedimentary rocks.

FOSSIL STARFISH: AN ANCIENT STAR IN A CHANGING SEA

Fossil Sea Star

Starfish—or, more accurately, sea stars—look almost too geometrically tidy to be real. 

Their familiar five-pointed form resembles a symbol drawn by hand, yet sea stars are living animals with hundreds of hydraulically operated tube feet, light-sensitive eyespots at the tips of their arms and the remarkable ability to regenerate damaged tissue. 

Some can even push their stomach outside their body to digest prey. Nature, as usual, saw no reason to stop after inventing something elegant.

Sea stars belong to the class Asteroidea within the phylum Echinodermata. They are related to brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, sea cucumbers and crinoids. Their closest living relatives are generally considered to be the brittle stars of the class Ophiuroidea; together, sea stars and brittle stars form the Asterozoa. 

Sea stars move using a water vascular system that powers their tube feet, while brittle stars generally travel by flexing their slender, sharply defined arms.

The evolutionary story of these animals reaches back nearly half a billion years. Star-shaped echinoderms called asterozoans appear in Lower Ordovician rocks more than 480 million years old. Some early forms belonged to extinct groups such as the somasteroids, which possessed a mixture of features associated with later sea stars and brittle stars. 

Fossils from the Early Ordovician Fezouata Biota of Morocco have helped us examine this important stage in asterozoan evolution. Molecular and fossil evidence indicates that the sea-star and brittle-star lineages had separated by approximately 477 million years ago.

Ancient sea stars did not necessarily look exactly like the species crawling through modern tide pools. 

Many Palaeozoic forms possessed narrow arms, small central discs and arrangements of skeletal plates unlike those of their living descendants. 

Sea stars survived several major extinction events, although the end-Permian mass extinction approximately 252 million years ago profoundly reorganized marine ecosystems. Most of the sea stars alive today belong to evolutionary groups that diversified during the Mesozoic.

Despite their long history, complete fossil sea stars are rare. Their bodies are supported by thousands of small calcite plates called ossicles, connected by soft tissues and ligaments. Soon after death, those tissues decay and the skeleton usually collapses into a jumble of pieces. 

Finding an articulated fossil sea star therefore means that the animal was buried quickly—perhaps by a storm deposit, underwater sediment flow or sudden pulse of fine mud—before currents and scavengers could dismantle it. A complete sea star is less a routine fossil than a small geological miracle.

On and around Vancouver Island, fossil sea stars occur within the Upper Cretaceous Nanaimo Group. Specimens have been collected from the Northumberland Formation at Manning and Collishaw Point on Hornby Island (known locally as Boulder Point), where fine marine mudstones and carbonate concretions preserve a diverse deep-water community. 

These roughly Late Campanian deposits have produced sea stars alongside ammonites, bivalves, gastropods, sea urchins, fish, and shark teeth.

These fossils tell us that starfish were already established members of the northeastern Pacific ecosystem while mosasaurs still hunted offshore. Their rarity also makes fragments important: isolated marginal plates, arm ossicles and other skeletal pieces may not produce the dramatic outline of a complete star, but they can still reveal which groups lived in an ancient sea. They are a wonderful fossil to find and oh, so pleasing to behold!

Elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, asteroid fossils and isolated ossicles occur in marine sedimentary formations in Washington and Oregon. Cenozoic units. Washington’s Lincoln Creek Formation preserve evidence of sea stars within the rich marine communities that occupied the northeastern Pacific during the Eocene and Oligocene. 

Together with the marine formations of southwestern Vancouver Island, these rocks record changing coastlines, ocean temperatures and seafloor habitats over tens of millions of years.

Worldwide, fossil sea stars have been recovered from Ordovician rocks in Morocco, Europe, North America and Australia; Silurian deposits in Britain; the Devonian Hunsrück Slate of Germany; Jurassic marine beds in Europe; Cretaceous deposits in Lebanon and North America; and younger Cenozoic rocks on several continents. Exceptional deposits sometimes preserve whole animals, while more ordinary marine rocks yield scattered ossicles. Because these tiny elements are easily overlooked, the history of sea stars is undoubtedly richer than the visible fossil record suggests.

Today, approximately 1,900 species inhabit every ocean, from tropical reefs and temperate tide pools to polar waters and the deep sea. They include heavily armoured forms, delicate mud-dwellers, cushion stars and many-armed giants. 

Along the British Columbia coast we find the ochre sea star, Pisaster ochraceus; the mottled star, Evasterias troschelii; the leather star, Dermasterias imbricata; and the extraordinary sunflower sea star, Pycnopodia helianthoides, which may possess more than 20 arms.

Sea stars are not merely colourful tide-pool decorations. Many are influential predators that regulate mussels, clams, barnacles, snails and sea urchins. 

The ochre sea star helped inspire the ecological concept of a “keystone species”: an animal whose influence on its community is far greater than its abundance might suggest. Sunflower sea stars perform a similarly important role by consuming sea urchins that would otherwise overgraze kelp forests.

That ecological balance was shaken in 2013, when sea star wasting disease swept along the Pacific coast from Mexico to Alaska. 

On Vancouver Island, diseased stars were observed around Bamfield and Ucluelet on Vancouver Island's far western shores and later around Nanaimo and Nanoose. More than 20 species were affected. Infected animals developed lesions, twisted their arms unnaturally, lost limbs and eventually disintegrated into pale masses of decomposing tissue.

After more than a decade of investigation, researchers identified the culprit as a strain of the bacterium Vibrio pectenicida, designated FHCF-3, as a causative agent of wasting disease in sunflower sea stars. Scientists detected it in the animals’ coelomic fluid—the internal fluid that functions in some respects like blood—and then cultured the bacterium and reproduced the disease experimentally. The results were published in Nature Ecology & Evolution in 2025.

The sunflower sea star suffered catastrophic losses, with billions believed to have died and populations falling by more than 90 percent in many parts of its range. 

Our records and many a beach walk show a striking increase in areas where the species was absent after the outbreak, including waters around Vancouver Island, the Strait of Georgia, Barkley Sound and parts of the central and northern coast. It was a tragic loss. The species is now assessed as Endangered in Canada and Critically Endangered globally.

Warming seas may make conditions more favourable for some Vibrio bacteria and can place additional stress on their hosts, although temperature is not the only factor governing outbreaks. Sea stars also face marine heatwaves, ocean acidification, declining oxygen, pollution, habitat disturbance and changes to their food webs. The loss of major predators such as Pycnopodia helianthoides can allow sea urchin populations to expand, contributing to the destruction of kelp forests and transforming entire coastal ecosystems.

Sea stars have endured almost 500 million years of continental movement, changing oceans and mass extinction. Their fossils prove that the star-shaped body plan is one of evolution’s great survivors. Yet their antiquity does not make them invulnerable. 

The same animals whose delicate skeletons so rarely remain intact in stone are now reminding us, in living waters along Vancouver Island and the wider Pacific coast, just how quickly an ancient ecological relationship can come apart.

INDIAN WATER DRAGON: PHYSIGNATHUS COCINCINUS

Despite occasionally being called the “Indian water dragon,” Physignathus cocincinus is more accurately known as the Indochinese, Chinese, Asian or green water dragon. 

It is not native to India, but to the warm forests of southern China and mainland Southeast Asia. 

This spectacular green lizard belongs to Agamidae—the family that also includes bearded dragons, flying dragons, thorny devils and a wonderfully diverse assortment of reptiles that look as though evolution was briefly given access to a costume department.

The fossil record of Physignathus cocincinus itself is frustratingly sparse. No well-supported fossil sequence documents the modern species through time, partly because tropical forests are generally poor places for preserving small land animals. 

Warm temperatures, acidic soils, scavengers and rapid decay tend to dismantle a lizard before burial can preserve it. Most fossil agamids are therefore represented by isolated jaws, teeth and pieces of skull rather than handsome, articulated skeletons.

The wider agamid lineage has a much deeper history. Possible early acrodont lizards—the broader group containing agamids and chameleons—have been reported from Jurassic rocks, although fragmentary remains make some of these identifications uncertain. 

More securely identified stem acrodonts occur in Cretaceous deposits of Asia. Among them are extinct lizards such as Mimeosaurus and members of Priscagamidae from Mongolia and neighbouring regions. 

These were not necessarily direct ancestors of today’s water dragon, but they belonged to earlier branches of the evolutionary tree from which modern agamids eventually emerged. 

A beautifully preserved agamid from approximately 99-million-year-old Burmese amber also demonstrates that dragon-like lizards were already diversifying in the tropical forests of Cretaceous Asia.

Later agamids—including fossils historically compared or assigned to Physignathus—appear in Cenozoic deposits. Fossil water-dragon material has been reported from Miocene sites in Australia. These remains belong to the Australasian side of the family rather than providing proof that the living Southeast Asian species once occupied Australia. 

This distinction matters because the Australian water dragon, now called Intellagama lesueurii, was formerly placed in Physignathus. Older publications may therefore make the fossil history of the genus look tidier than modern evolutionary studies suggest it really was.

Genetic evidence places Physignathus cocincinus near the base of Amphibolurinae, the great radiation of agamid “dragons” found in Australia, New Guinea and parts of Southeast Asia. Its living evolutionary cousins consequently include Australian water dragons, bearded dragons of the genus Pogona, frilled lizards such as Chlamydosaurus kingii and many other Australasian agamids. 

Molecular analyses suggest that the lineage leading to the Southeast Asian water dragon separated from the Australasian radiation during the Cenozoic, perhaps roughly 14–41 million years ago. These dates remain estimates rather than a neat fossil-supported family calendar.

Today, Physignathus cocincinus lives in southern China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I have never had the pleasure of seeing them in the wild but it is one of the many sights on my bucket list.

They favour humid forests beside permanent freshwater—rivers, streams and swamps—where it spends much of its time perched on branches above the water. If danger approaches, the dragon simply drops into the river and swims away, which is considerably more dramatic than quietly hiding beneath a leaf. 

Adults may approach one metre in total length, although nearly 70 percent of that length is tail. The laterally compressed tail acts as a powerful paddle, while long limbs and sharp claws make the animal an accomplished climber. 

Water dragons can also run briefly on their hind legs and remain submerged for as long as 25 minutes.

Their diet is broad and opportunistic, including insects, other invertebrates, fish, small vertebrates, eggs and plant material. Males are generally larger and more brightly coloured than females, with more prominent heads, jowls and crests. 

Both sexes communicate through head-bobbing, arm-waving and throat-puffing—a perfectly respectable vocabulary when one is a bright green forest dragon. That particular display also makes my bucket list as I saw a video of these antics on a nature program and it was incredibly charming.

Physignathus cocincinus may not have left us a generous fossil autobiography, but its bones, genes and living relatives preserve pieces of a much older story. 

That story stretches from early Asian acrodonts through the expanding forests and waterways of the Cenozoic to the modern rivers of Southeast Asia—where a living dragon still waits on an overhanging branch, ready to vanish into the water at the first hint of trouble.

A LEAP THROUGH DEEP TIME: FROGS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD

Frogs have been hopping, swimming and making an astonishing amount of noise for their size for a very long time. 

Their earliest frog-like relatives include Triadobatrachus massinoti, a small amphibian from Madagascar that lived about 250 million years ago during the Early Triassic. 

By the Early Jurassic, roughly 190 million years ago, frogs such as Prosalirus bitis possessed elongated hind limbs, reinforced hips and shortened bodies better suited to leaping.

Their fossil record is rather patchy. Frog skeletons are small, lightly built and inclined to fall apart after death—excellent for jumping, less impressive for becoming immortalized in stone. Many fossil frogs are therefore represented by isolated hip bones, vertebrae and limb fragments.

British Columbia has produced Quaternary frog and toad remains from Bear Flat in northeastern BC. Researchers identified bones belonging to Rana, the group containing the true frogs; Bufo, a traditional grouping of toads; and other members of the order Anura. 

These fragments help us reconstruct the amphibian communities that inhabited western Canada before and after the great advances of glacial ice.

Vancouver Island has also produced fossils bearing the frog name—but belonging to an entirely different branch of the animal kingdom. 

Fossil frog crabs are marine crustaceans named for their broad, frog-like appearance and digging adaptations, not for any amphibian ancestry. 

In 2020,  Torrey Nyborg, Loma Linda University and team described a new genus Amphoranina from Eocene and Oligocene deposits of Washington State and Vancouver Island. The well-preserved specimens represent two new species, Amphoranina blandi and Amphoranina multispinata. The genus appears to have been endemic to the northeastern Pacific during the middle to late Paleogene. 

Torrey does some wonderful research on fossil crabs from the Pacific Northwest and further afield. 

He was also on the team with Jan Fischer and Margorie Johns who published on the recent late Eocene chimaroid egg capsule from lower Carmanah Group strata on the far western shores of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. 

This is the fourth Paleogene chimaeroid egg capsule discovered from the Pacific Northwest. All four fossils were fossilized in tectonic foreland basins in bathyal water depths, which perfectly correlates with the known bathyal habitats and nesting sites of extant rhinochimaerids.

If you're reading this, Torrey, great to see your breadth of work. As a friendly nudge, there is a lobster from Tyaughton I am still looking to see you publish on.

Today, frogs and toads belong to the order Anura—meaning “without a tail.” More than 8,000 living species are currently recognized, ranging from fingernail-sized rainforest frogs to hefty bullfrogs and wonderfully peculiar burrowing forms.

So, British Columbia’s fossil record offers both genuine frogs and frog crabs: one built to leap, the other built to scuttle—and neither especially interested in clearing up the confusion.

Lead Image: Asset ID: 2780548337

SEA LIONS: THE OCEAN’S LOUDEST LANDLORDS

Sea Lion Skull

Sea lions are sleek, intelligent marine predators capable of diving through cold ocean water with astonishing speed and grace. 

They are also large, noisy mammals that gather on beaches, docks and navigation buoys to bark at one another as though someone has violated a complicated parking agreement.

They belong to the family Otariidae, the group known as the eared seals. This family includes both sea lions and fur seals, which means that a fur seal is a sea lion’s closest living relative. 

Their next-nearest pinniped cousins are walruses and the “true,” or earless, seals. All belong to the carnivoran group Pinnipedia, a name meaning “fin-footed.” 

They are not closely related to actual lions, despite the whiskers, impressive males and tendency to occupy prime waterfront property while roaring at the neighbours.

You can usually distinguish a sea lion from a true seal by looking for three things: visible external ear flaps, long front flippers and an ability to rotate the hind flippers beneath the body. 

That rotating hip-and-flipper arrangement allows a sea lion to rise up and walk remarkably well on land. 

True seals cannot bring their hind flippers beneath them and must wriggle or bounce along on their bellies. Both approaches are effective, but only one looks as though the animal has temporarily misplaced its legs.

SEA LIONS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD

The deeper history of sea lions begins with the evolution of pinnipeds, whose oldest definitive fossils date from roughly 30.6 to 23 million years ago, during the Oligocene. These early fin-footed carnivores were not modern sea lions, seals or walruses but members of an evolutionary experiment that was gradually transforming land-dwelling hunters into marine specialists.

One famous transitional pinniped is Puijila darwini, an otter-like animal that lived in the Canadian Arctic about 24 million years ago. Puijila had a long tail, muscular limbs and webbed feet rather than full flippers. 

It swam through freshwater lakes using its legs, offering us a glimpse of what an early stage in the move from land to sea may have looked like. Picture a large aquatic mustelid testing the water and unknowingly beginning an evolutionary journey that would eventually produce a thousand-kilogram animal shouting from a rock.

The oldest known members of the sea lion and fur seal family are species of Eotaria, discovered in marine rocks of southern California. Eotaria crypta, known from part of a lower jaw with preserved teeth, lived approximately 17.1 to 15 million years ago during the middle Miocene. 

These early otariids were much smaller than today’s great bull sea lions and retained some primitive features in their teeth. Their fossils help bridge the anatomical gap between earlier pinnipeds and the more specialized eared seals that followed.

By the late Miocene, otariids such as Pithanotaria and Thalassoleon were swimming in the North Pacific. Fossils of these animals have been recovered from California, Mexico and Japan. Pithanotaria was relatively small, while species of Thalassoleon were larger and more robust. 

Together, they document an early radiation of eared seals along the productive coastlines of the North Pacific.

The fossil record suggests that this region was the evolutionary cradle of the family. Sea lions and fur seals remained northern animals for much of their early history before some lineages crossed the equator. Fossil and evolutionary evidence indicates that otariids expanded into the Southern Hemisphere roughly six to seven million years ago, perhaps helped by periods of cooler water and increased marine productivity along the eastern Pacific. 

Once across, they diversified around South America and eventually reached the coasts and islands of Australia, New Zealand and the Southern Ocean.

Recognizable members of the living sea lion genera appear much later, mainly during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. An early fossil identified as the modern Steller sea lion, Eumetopias jubatus, comes from Early Pleistocene deposits in Japan. 

The fossil record of modern sea lions is frustratingly incomplete, however. Marine mammals often die offshore, where their skeletons may be scattered, scavenged, dissolved or buried somewhere inconvenient beneath several million years of ocean sediment. Palaeontology does not always deliver a complete skeleton with a name tag attached.

WHO ARE THEIR CLOSEST RELATIVES?

Sea lions’ nearest living relatives are the fur seals, with which they share the family Otariidae. The familiar division between “sea lion” and “fur seal” is useful but does not form two perfectly separate evolutionary branches. Genetic research shows that some animals called fur seals are more closely related to particular sea lions than they are to other fur seals. Evolution, as usual, has looked at our tidy filing system and scattered the folders across the floor.

Fur seals generally have dense underfur, more pointed faces and somewhat smaller bodies. Sea lions tend to be larger, with shorter, coarser coats and broad snouts. Both have visible ears and can rotate their hind limbs forward.

Beyond the otariid family, sea lions are related to walruses and true seals. Their more distant living relatives on land lie among the musteloid carnivorans, the broader assemblage that includes weasels, otters, badgers, skunks, raccoons and red pandas. So, if you have ever thought that a sea lion resembles an otter that joined a gym, developed a booming voice and acquired beachfront real estate, you are not entirely without evolutionary support.

WHERE SEA LIONS LIVE TODAY

• Living sea lions occur almost entirely around the Pacific Ocean and in the Southern Hemisphere. The six living species are:
• Steller sea lion — Eumetopias jubatus: Found around the North Pacific, from Japan and Russia through Alaska and south along the western coast of North America.
• California sea lion — Zalophus californianus: Inhabits the Pacific coast of North America, particularly California and Mexico, with animals sometimes travelling much farther north.
• Galápagos sea lion — Zalophus wollebaeki: Lives primarily around the Galápagos Islands.
• South American sea lion — Otaria byronia: Occurs along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America, from Peru and Brazil southward around Tierra del Fuego.
• Australian sea lion — Neophoca cinerea: Restricted to the southern and western coasts of Australia.
• New Zealand sea lion — Phocarctos hookeri: Found around New Zealand and its subantarctic islands.

A seventh modern species, the Japanese sea lion, Zalophus japonicus, once lived around Japan and neighbouring waters but disappeared during the twentieth century after intense hunting and other human pressures.

Curiously, there are no native sea lions in the North Atlantic. If you encounter a large pinniped lounging on the Canadian Atlantic coast, you are probably looking at a true seal rather than a sea lion. 

On the Pacific coast of British Columbia that I call home, however, Steller and California sea lions are familiar residents and visitors. Steller sea lions are the giants of the family: adult males can exceed 1,000 kilograms, making them roughly the mass of a small car, although considerably more opinionated.

BUILT FOR WATER—AND QUITE CAPABLE ON LAND

Sea lions swim mainly by sweeping their long front flippers through the water like wings. Their flexible bodies and powerful shoulders allow them to pursue fish, squid and other marine prey with impressive agility. They can dive for several minutes, slow their heart rate and direct oxygen toward vital organs while underwater.

Their whiskers, properly called vibrissae, are extraordinarily sensitive. They can detect tiny movements and pressure changes left behind by swimming prey, allowing a sea lion to follow a fish’s underwater trail even when visibility is poor. To us, a fish has vanished. To a sea lion, it has left the aquatic equivalent of a glowing arrow marked LUNCH WENT THIS WAY.

Sea lions are also highly intelligent. They can learn complex behaviours, recognize patterns and retain information for long periods. Studies have shown that they can understand relationships between symbols and apply learned rules to new situations. 

Their trainability explains their long history in aquariums and marine research programs, although it is worth remembering that “trainable” does not mean “domesticated.” A wild sea lion is still a powerful predator with large teeth and firm opinions about personal space.

They are intensely social, gathering at breeding colonies called rookeries and resting sites called haul-outs. Adult males may establish territories and compete loudly for access to females. 

The resulting colony is a dense mixture of barks, growls, grunts, pups calling for their mothers and enormous males arguing over several metres of beach. Imagine a family reunion, a crowded campground and a municipal council meeting occurring simultaneously, but everyone is wearing the same brown coat.

Sea lions are elegant swimmers, successful marine hunters and living representatives of an evolutionary lineage stretching back into the Miocene. Their fossils preserve the story of carnivorous mammals moving into the sea, transforming limbs into flippers and spreading from the North Pacific into southern oceans.

They are, in short, magnificent products of evolution: fast in the water, surprisingly mobile on land, equipped with sensitive whiskers—and absolutely convinced that the entire coastline needs to hear what they have to say.

Lead Image: Asset ID 2353933491

ICE AGE MANATEES

Manatees do not live year-round in Texas, but these gentle sea cows are known to occasionally visit, swimming in for a summer vacation and returning to warmer waters for the winter. 

Interestingly, we have recently found fossil evidence for manatees along the Texas coast dating back to the most recent ice age. 

The discovery raises questions about whether manatees have been visiting for thousands of years, or if an ancient population of ice age manatees once called Texas home.

The findings were published in Palaeontologia Electronica by lead author Christopher Bell, a professor at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences with co-authors Sam Houston State University Natural History Collections curator William Godwin and SHSU alumna Kelsey Jenkins — now a graduate student at Yale University — and SHSU Professor Patrick Lewis.

The eight fossils described in the paper include manatee jawbones and rib fragments from the Pleistocene, the geological epoch of the last ice age. Most of the bones were collected from McFaddin Beach near Port Arthur and Caplen Beach near Galveston during the past 50 years by amateur fossil collectors who donated their finds to the SHSU collections.

The Jackson Museum of Earth History at UT holds two of the specimens. A lower jawbone fossil, which was donated to the SHSU collections by amateur collector Joe Liggio, jumpstarted the research.

Manatee jawbones have a distinct S-shaped curve that immediately caught Godwin's eye. But Godwin said he was met with scepticism when he sought other manatee fossils for comparison. He recalls reaching out to a local fossil enthusiast who told him point-blank, "there are no Pleistocene manatees in Texas."

But an examination of the fossils by Bell and Lewis proved otherwise. The bones belonged to the same species of manatee that visits the Texas coast today, Trichechus manatus. An upper jawbone donated by U.S. Rep. Brian Babin was found to belong to an extinct form of the manatee, Trichechus manatus bakerorum.

The age of the manatee fossils is based on their association with better-known ice age fossils and paleo-Indian artefacts that have been found on the same beaches.

It is assumed that the cooler ice age climate would have made Texas waters even less hospitable to manatees than they are today. But the fact that manatees were in Texas — whether as visitors or residents — raises questions about the ancient environment and ancient manatees. The Texas coast stretched much farther into the Gulf of Mexico and hosted wider river outlets during the ice age than it does today. Either the coastal climate was warmer than is generally thought, or ice age manatees were more resilient to cooler temperatures than manatees of today.

Subsurface imaging of the now flooded modern continental shelf reveals both a greater number of coastal embayments and the presence of significantly wider channels during ice age times.

If there was a population of ice age manatees in Texas, it is entirely plausible that they would have ridden out winters in these warmer river outlets similar to how they do today in Florida and Mexico.

Reference: Christopher Bell, William Godwin, Kelsey Jenkins, Patrick Lewis. First fossil manatees in Texas: Trichechus manatus bakerorum in the Pleistocene fauna from beach deposits along the Texas Coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Palaeontologia Electronica, 2020; DOI: 10.26879/1006

ELASMOSAURID PLESIOSAUR FROM MOROCCO

Libonectes atlasense / Andy Chua Collection

A beautifully preserved mandible of Libonectes atlasense, an elasmosaurid plesiosaur from early Turonian, Upper Cretaceous,  deposits of the Akrabou Formation near Asfla Village, Goulmima, Errachidia Province in eastern central Morocco.

The collecting area is in the region of Drâa-Tafilalet. You may know Errachidia as Ksar Souk. It was renamed My Rachid, in honour of the Moroccan royal family. Libonectes is a genus of sauropterygian reptile belonging to the plesiosaurs. Specimens have been found in the Britton Formation of Texas and the Akrabou Formation of Morocco.

Sauropterygian reptiles were a diverse taxon of extinct aquatic reptiles that arose from terrestrial ancestors just after the Permian extinction event. They flourished during the Triassic then all but the plesiosaurs became extinct at the end of the Triassic — with the plesiosaurs dying out at the end of the Cretaceous.

The holotype of Libonectes atlasense is an almost complete skeleton from Upper Cretaceous (mid-Turonian) rocks of the Goulmima area in eastern Morocco. Sven Sachs from the Naturkunde-Museum Bielefeld and Benjamin P. Kear from Uppsala University co-authored a paper redescribing the elasmosaurid plesiosaurian Libonectes atlasense from the Upper Cretaceous of Morocco. They did an initial assessment of the specimen in 2005, proposing a generic referral based on stratigraphical contemporaneity with Libonectes morgani from the CenomanianeTuronian of Texas, U.S.A.

Relative differences in the profile of the premaxillary-maxillary tooth row, position of the external bony nasal opening, number of teeth and rostrad inclination of the mandibular symphysis, proportions of the axial neural arch, and number of cervical and pectoral vertebrae were used to distinguish between these species.

Libonectes Scale Drawing / Hyrotrioskjan

As part of an on-going comparative appraisal of elasmosaurid plesiosaurian osteo-anatomy, they re-examined the type and formally referred material of both L. atlasense and L. morgani in order to establish species validity, as well as compile a comparative atlas for use in future works.

Their work revealed that these reportedly distinct species-level fossils are in fact virtually indistinguishable in gross morphology.

Indeed, the only substantial difference occurs in relative prominence of the midline keel along the mandibular symphysis, which might be explained by intraspecific variation. Their observations permit an amendment to the published generic diagnosis of Libonectes with the confirmation of important states such as the likely presence of a pectoral bar, distocaudad expansion of the humerus, and an epipodial foramen.

And we see some entirely new features. Novel features include a prominent ‘prong-like’ ventral midline process on the coracoids and the development of a median pelvic bar that encloses a central fenestration. Their work shows that the composite remains of L. morgani thus constitute one of the most complete elasmosaurid skeletal hypodigms documented worldwide, and evidence a trans-Atlantic distribution for this apparently dispersive species during the early Late Cretaceous. The impressive mandible you see here is in the collection of Andy Chua.

Sachs, Sven and Kear, Benjamin. (2017). Redescription of the elasmosaurid plesiosaurian Libonectes atlasense from the Upper Cretaceous of Morocco. Cretaceous Research. 74. 205-222. 10.1016/j.cretres.2017.02.017.

Photo: Libonectes atlasense specimen, Andy Chua

Drawing By Hyrotrioskjan - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57716018

FOSSIL HUNTRESS PODCAST: DEAD SEXY SCIENCE

Geeky goodness from the Fossil Huntress. If you love paleontology, you will love this stream. Dinosaurs, trilobites, ammonites—you'll find them all here!

Close your eyes & fly with me as we head out together to explore Earth's rich history written in her rock. Travel to extraordinary places, sacred sites & unearth mysteries millions of years old on the Fossil Huntress Podcast.

This stream is for those who share an enduring passion for our world's hidden treasures, its wild places & want to uncover her beauty stone by stone.

This is the story of the making of our Earth and the many wonderful creatures who have called it home.

Join in the exploration of the fascinating science of paleontology — that lens that examines ancient animals, plants & ecosystems from wee single-celled organisms to big & mighty dinosaurs. Save the stream to your favorites to listen while you drive, head out fossil collecting or snuggle in for the night!

​To listen now, visit: https://open.spotify.com/show/1hH1wpDFFIlYC9ZW5uTYVL

OIL IN WATER BEAUTY: FOSSILS OF FOLKSTONE

Sheer beauty — a beautiful Euhoplites ammonite from Folkstone, UK. I've been really enjoying looking at all oil-in-water colouring and chunkiness of these ammonites.

Euhoplites is an extinct ammonoid cephalopod from the Lower Cretaceous, characterized by strongly ribbed, more or less evolute, compressed to inflated shells with flat or concave ribs, typically with a deep narrow groove running down the middle.

In some, ribs seem to zigzag between umbilical tubercles and parallel ventrolateral clavi. In others, the ribs are flexious and curve forward from the umbilical shoulder and lap onto either side of the venter.

Its shell is covered in the lovely lumps and bumps we associate with the genus. The function of these adornments are unknown. I wonder if they gave them greater strength to go deeper into the ocean to hunt for food. 

They look to have been a source of hydrodynamic drag, likely preventing Euhoplites from swimming at speed. Studying them may give some insight into the lifestyle of this ancient marine predator. Euhoplites had shells ranging in size up to a 5-6cm. 

We find them in Lower Cretaceous, middle to upper Albian age strata. Euhoplites has been found in Middle and Upper Albian beds in France where it is associated respectively with Hoplites and Anahoplites, and Pleurohoplites, Puzosia, and Desmoceras; in the Middle Albian of Brazil with Anahoplites and Turrilites; and in the Cenomanian of Texas.

This species is the most common ammonite from the Folkstone Fossil Beds in southeastern England where a variety of species are found, including this 37mm beauty from the collections of José Juárez Ruiz.

HEROES, VILLAINS AND FOSSILS: HORNBY ISLAND HISTORY

Villains, tyrants and heroes alike are immortalized in the scientific literature as researchers don each new species a unique scientific name — and rename geographic sites with a settlers' mindset. 

If you pick through the literature, it is a whose who of monied European explorers literally making a name for themselves, sometimes at great cost to their rivals. 

This truth plays out on British Columbia's West Coast and gulf islands and on Hornby Island, in particular. 

The beautiful island of Hornby is in the traditional territory of the Pentlatch or K’ómoks First Nation, who call it Ja-dai-aich, which means the outer island — a reference to Hornby being on the outside of Denman Island off the east coast of Vancouver Island. 

The island is a mix of beach and meadow, forest and stream. While I often walk the lower beachfront, this island boasts a lovely and very walkable mixed forest that covers its higher ground. 

If you explore here, off the beaten path, you will see a mix of large conifers — Western Hemlock, Grand Fir and Lodgepole Pine on the island. Of these, the Western Red Cedar, Thuja plicata, is the most prized by First Nations. It is the Tree of Life that provides bountiful raw materials for creating everything from art to homes to totems and canoes. 

If you explore these forests further, you will also see wonderful examples of the smaller Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia, a wee evergreen that holds a special place in the hearts of First Nations whose carvers use this wood for bows and paddles for canoes.

Many spectacular specimens of arbutus, Arbutus menziesii, grow along the water's edge. These lovely evergreens have a rich orange-red bark that peels away in thin sheets, leaving a greenish, silvery smooth appearance and a satiny sheen. Arbutus, the broadleaf evergreen species is the tree I most strongly associate with Hornby. Hornby has its fair share of broadleaf deciduous trees. Bigleaf maple, red alder, black cottonwood, Pacific flowering dogwood, cascara and several species of willow thrive here.

There are populations of Garry oak, Quercus garryana, with their deeply lobed leaves, on the southern end of the island and at Helliwell Provincial Park on a rocky headland at the northeast end of Hornby. 

Local First Nations fire-managed these stands of Garry oak, burning away shrubs and other woody plants so that the thick-barked oaks and nutritious starch-rich plants like great camas, Camassia leichtlinii, could thrive without any nutrient competitors. 

Only about 260 acres (1.1 km2) of undisturbed stands of older forests have been identified on Hornby. They amount to roughly 3.5% of the island's surface area. There are roughly 1,330 acres (540 ha) of older second-growth stands on the island, roughly 19% of the island.

Most of the trees you see on the island are Douglas fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii, an evergreen conifer species in the pine family. My Uncle Doug recognized this tree species because of how much the bark looks like bacon — a food he loved. The common name is a nod to the Scottish botanist, David Douglas, who collected and first reported on this large evergreen.

Captain George Vancouver's Commission to Lieutenant

Sadly for Douglas, it is Archibald Menzies, a Scottish physician, botanist, naturalist — and David's arch-rival, whose name is commemorated for science. 

He is also credited with the scientific naming of our lovely arbutus trees. 

Menzies was part of the Vancouver Expedition (1791–1795) a four-and-a-half-year voyage of exploration commanded by Captain George Vancouver of the British Royal Navy.

Their voyage was built on the work of James Cook. Cook was arguably the first ship's captain to ensure his crew remained scurvy free by implementing a practice of nutritious meals — those containing ascorbic acid also known as Vitamin C — and meticulous standards for onboard hygiene. 

Though he did much to lower the mortality rate amongst his crew, he made some terrible decisions that led to his early demise. Cook was the poster child for British colonialism and Valentine's gone horribly wrong. He was attacked and summarily killed on February 14, 1779, during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific. Having foolishly considered the "natives" as specimens and not human beings, he met his end while attempting to kidnap the Island of Hawaii's monarch, Kalaniʻōpuʻu. 

During the four and a half year Vancouver Expedition voyage, the crew and officers bickered amongst themselves, circumnavigated the globe, touching down on five continents. Little did they know, for many of them it would be the last voyage they would ever take. 

The expedition returned to a Britain more interested in its ongoing war than in Pacific explorations. Vancouver was attacked by the politically well-connected Menzies for various slights, then challenged to a duel by Thomas Pitt, the 2nd Baron of Camelford. 

The fellow for whom the fair city of Vancouver is named never did complete his massive cartographical work. With health failing and nerves eroded, he lost the dual and his life. It was Peter Puget, whose name adorns Puget Sound, who completed Vancouver's — and arguably Cook's work on the mapping of our world.

And while it is now called Vancouver the city has many names as it falls within the traditional territory of three Coast Salish peoples — the Squamish (Sḵwxwú7mesh), Tsleil-waututh and Xwméthkwyiem ("Musqueam"—from masqui "an edible grass that grows in the sea"), and on the southern shores of Vancouver along the Fraser River, the Xwméthkwyiem.

If you would like to explore more of the history of eponymous naming from Linnaeus to Darwin, to Bowie himself, take a boo at a new book from Stephen B. Heard, "Charles Darwin's Barnacle and David Bowie's Spider. It is fresh off the press and chock full of historical and pop-culture icons.

References: The City of Vancouver Archives has three George Vancouver documents of note:

• The Commission, dated July 10, 1783, appointing him fourth Lieutenant of the HMS Fame (this is the official document confirming a field commission given to him May 7, 1782)
• A letter to James Sykes (a Navy Agent in London) written from the ship Discovery (not the same Discovery used by Cook) while in Nootka Sound near the end of Vancouver’s exploration of the West Coast, October 2, 1794. Vancouver states that they have determined that the Northwest Passage does not exist, which was one of the main goals of his voyage
• A letter to James Sykes written from Vancouver’s home in Petersham, England, after his voyage, October 26, 1797