ANCIENT ARAGONITE: FOSSIL PEARLS

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

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

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

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

A queen who truly knew how to accessorize. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLALLAM BAY FOSSIL FAUNA

Panopea abrupt (Conrad, 1894)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BEAUTIFUL PATHOLOGY: QUENSTEDTOCERAS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PETALS FROZEN IN TIME: THE PRINCETON CHERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many of these plants have close relatives today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting There from Vancouver

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

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.

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