BERLIN-ICHTHYSAUR STATE PARK, NEVADA

Time Slows at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park

High on the hillside up a long entry road sits the entrance to Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in central Nevada.

A worn American flag and sun bleached outbuildings greet you on your way to the outcrops. Away from the hustle and bustle that define the rest of Nevada this place feels remarkably serene. Your eyes squint against the sun as you search for ammonoids and other marine fossil fauna while your nose tends to the assault from the bracing smell of sage brush.

This site holds many stories. The interpretive centre displays wonderful marine reptiles, ichthyosaurs in situ, as you might expect from the name of the park — but it also showcases years of history lovingly tended. This stretch of dry golden low hills dappled with the yellow of creosote and desert grasses is an important locality for our understanding of the Carnian-Norian boundary (CNB) in North America.

The area is known worldwide as one of the most important ichthyosaur Fossil-Lagerstätte because of the sheer volume of remarkably well-preserved, fully articulated (all the sweet bones laid out all in a row...) specimens of Shonisaurus popularis.

Rich ammonoid faunas outcrop in the barren hills of the Upper Triassic (Early Norian, Kerri zone), Luning Formation, West Union Canyon, Nevada. They were studied by N. J. Silberling (1959) and provide support for the definition of the Schucherti and Macrolobatus zones of the latest Carnian — which are here overlain by well-preserved faunas of the earliest Norian Kerri Zone. 

The genus Gonionotites, very common in the Tethys and British Columbia, is for the moment, unknown in Nevada. The Upper Carnian faunas are dominated by Tropitidae, while Juvavitidae are conspicuously lacking. 

Middle Triassic Ammonoids

Despite its importance, no further investigations had been done at this site for a good 50 years. That changed in 2010 when Jim Haggart, Mike Orchard and Paul Smith — all local Vancouverites — collaborated on a project that took them down to Nevada to look at the conodonts and ammonoids. They did a bed-by-bed sampling of ammonoids and conodonts in West Union Canyon during October of that year.

October is an ideal time to do fieldwork in this area. There are a few good weeks between screaming hot and frigid cold. It is also tarantula breeding season so keep your eyes peeled. Those sweet little burrows you see are not from rodents but rather largish arachnids. 

The eastern side of the canyon provides the best record of the Macrolobatus Zone, which is represented by several beds yielding ammonoids of the Tropites group, together with Anatropites div. sp. 

Conodont faunas from both these and higher beds are dominated by ornate metapolygnthids that would formerly have been collectively referred to Metapolygnathus primitius, a species long known to straddle the CNB. Within this lower part of the section, they resemble forms that have been separated as Metapolygnathus mersinensis. Slightly higher, forms close to Epigondolella' orchardi and a single Orchardella n. sp. occur. This association can be correlated with the latest Carnian in British Columbia.

Higher in the section, the ammonoid fauna shows a sudden change and is dominated by Tropithisbites. Few tens of metres above, but slightly below the first occurrence of Norian ammonoids Guembelites jandianus and Stikinoceras, two new species of conodonts (Gen et sp. nov. A and B) appear that also occur close to the favoured Carnian/Norian boundary at Black Bear Ridge, British Columbia. Stratigraphically higher collections continue to be dominated by forms close to M. mersinensis and E. orchardi after BC's own Mike Orchard.

The best exposure of the Kerri Zone is on the western side of the West Union Canyon. Ammonoids, dominated by Guembelites and Stikinoceras div. sp., have been collected from several fossil-bearing levels. Conodont faunas replicate those of the east section. The collected ammonoids fit perfectly well with the faunas described by Silberling in 1959, but they differ somewhat from coeval faunas of the Tethys and Canada. 

The ammonoid fauna paints a compelling picture of Tethyan influence with a series of smoking guns. We see an abundance of Tropitidae in the Carnian, a lack of Pterosirenites in the Norian, copious Guembelites, the Tethyan species G. philostrati, the stratigraphic position of G. clavatus and the rare occurrence of Gonionotites. Their hallelujah moment was likely finding an undescribed species of the thin-shelled bivalve Halobia similar to Halobia beyrichi — the clincher that perhaps seals this deal on Tethyan influence. 

I'll take a boo to see what Christopher McRoberts published on the find. A jolly good idea to have him on this expedition as it would have been easy to overlook if the focus remained solely on the conodonts and ammonoids. McRoberts has published on the much-studied Pardonet Formation up in the Willison Lake Area of Northeastern, British Columbia. He knows a thing or two about Upper Triassic Bivalvia and the correlation to coeval faunas elsewhere in the North American Cordillera, and to the Boreal, Panthalassan and Tethyan faunal realms. 

If you fancy a read, they published a paper: "Towards the definition of the Carnian/Norian Boundary: New data on Ammonoids and Conodonts from central Nevada," which you can find in the proceedings of the 21st Canadian Paleontology Conference; by Haggart, J W (ed.); Smith, P L (ed.); Canadian Paleontology Conference Proceedings no. 9, 2011 p. 9-10.

Fig. 1. Location map of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park

Marco Balini, James Jenks, Riccardo Martin, Christopher McRoberts, along with Mike Orchard and Norman Siberling, did a bed by bed sampling in 2013 and published on The Carnian/Norian boundary succession at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park (Upper Triassic, central Nevada, USA) and published in January 2014 in Paläontologische Zeitschrift 89:399–433. That work is available for download from ResearchGate. The original is in German, but there is a translation available.

After years of reading about the correlation between British Columbia and Nevada, I had the very great pleasure of walking through these same sections in October 2019 with members of the Vancouver Paleontological Society and Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society. It was with that same crew that I'd originally explored fossil sites in the Canadian Rockies in the early 2000s. Those early trips led to paper after paper and the exciting revelations that inspired our Nevada adventure.

If you plan your own adventure, you'll want to keep an eye out for some of the other modern fauna — mountain lions, snakes, lizards, scorpions, wolves, coyotes, foxes, ground squirrels, rabbits, falcons, hawks, eagles, bobcats, sheep, deer and pronghorns.

Figure One: Location map of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. A detailed road log with access information for this locality is provided in Lucas et al. (2007).

MASSIVE FOSSIL AMMONITE NEAR FERNIE, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Titanites occidentalis, Fernie Ammonite

The Fernie ammonite, Titanites occidentalis, from outcrops on Coal Mountain near Fernie, British Columbia, Canada. 

This beauty is the remains of a carnivorous cephalopod within the family Dorsoplanitidae that lived and died in a shallow sea some 150 million years ago.

If you would like to get off the beaten track and hike up to see this ancient beauty, you will want to head to the town of Fernie in British Columbia close to the Alberta border. 

This is the traditional territory of the the Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi ‘it First Nation who have lived here since time immemorial. There was some active logging along the hillside in 2021, so if you are looking at older directions on how to get to the site be mindful that many of the trailheads have been altered and a fair bit of bushwhacking will be necessary to get to the fossil site proper. That being said, the loggers from CanWel may have clear-cut large sections of the hillside but they did give the ammonite a wide berth and have left it intact.

Wildsight, a non-profit environmental group out of the Kimberly Cranbrook area has been trying to gain grant funding to open up the site as an educational hike with educational signage for folks visiting the Fernie area. It is likely the province of British Columbia would top up those funds if they are able to place the ammonite under the Heritage Conservation Act. CanWel would remain the owners of the land but the province could assume the liability for those visiting this iconic piece of British Columbia's palaeontological history. 

Driving to the trail base is along an easy access road just east of town along Fernie Coal Road. There are some nice exposures of Cretaceous plant material on the north side (left-hand side) of the road as you head from Fernie towards Coal Creek. I recently drove up to Fernie to look at Cretaceous plant material and locate the access point to the now infamous Late Jurassic (Tithonian) Titanites (S.S. Buckman, 1921) site. While the drive out of town is on an easy, well-maintained road, the slog up to the ammonite site is often a wet, steep push.

Fernie, British Columbia, Canada

The first Titanites occidentalis was about one-third the size and was incorrectly identified as Lytoceras, a fast-moving nektonic carnivore. The specimen you see here is significantly larger at 1.4 metres (about four and a half feet) and rare in North America. 

Titanites occidentalis, the Western Giant, is the second known specimen of this extinct fossil species. 

The first was discovered in 1947 in nearby Coal Creek by a British Columbia Geophysical Society mapping team. When they first discovered this marine fossil high up on the hillside, they could not believe their eyes — both because it is clearly marine at the top of a mountain and the sheer size of this ancient beauty.

In the summer of 1947, a field crew was mapping coal outcrops for the BC Geological Survey east of Fernie. One of the students reported finding “a fossil truck tire.” Fair enough. The similarity of size and optics are pretty close to your average Goodridge. 

A few years later, GSC Paleontologist Hans Frebold described and named the fossil Titanites occidentalis after the large Jurassic ammonites from Dorset, England. The name comes from Greek mythology. Tithonus, as you may recall, was the Prince of Troy. He fell in love with Eos, the Greek Goddess of the Dawn. Eos begged Zeus to make her mortal lover immortal. Zeus granted her wish but did not grant Tithonus eternal youth. He did indeed live forever — ageing hideously. Ah, Zeus, you old trickster. It is a clever play on time placement. Dawn is the beginning of the day and the Tithonian being the latest age of the Late Jurassic. Clever Hans!

HIKING TO THE FERNIE AMMONITE

From the town of Fernie, British Columbia, head east along Coal Creek Road towards Coal Creek. The site is 3.81 km from the base of Coal Creek Road to the trailhead as the crow flies. I have mapped it here for you in yellow and added the wee purple GPS marker for the ammonite site proper. There is a nice, dark grey to black roadcut exposure of Cretaceous plants on the north side of the dirt road that is your cue to pull over and park.  

You access what is left of the trailhead on the south side of the road. You will need to cross the creek to begin your ascent. There is no easy way across the creek and you'll want to tackle this one with a friend when the water level is low. 

The beginning of the trail is not clear but a bit of searching will reveal the trailhead with its telltale signs of previous hikers. This is a moderate 6.3-kilometre hike up & back bushwhacking through scrub and fallen trees. Heading up, you will make about a 246-metre elevation gain. You will likely not have a cellular signal up here but if you download the Google Map to your mobile, you will have GPS to guide you. The area has been recently logged so much of the original trail has been destroyed. There may now be easier vehicle access up the logging roads but I have not driven them since the logging and new road construction.

If you are coming in from out of town, the closest airport is Cranbrook. Then it is about an hour and change to Fernie and another 15-minutes or so to park near the site.

You will want to leave your hammers with your vehicle (no need to carry the weight and this lovely should never be struck with anything more than a raindrop) as this site is best enjoyed with a camera. 

This is a site you will want to wear hiking boots to access. Know that these will get wet as you cross the creek. 

If you would like to see the ammonite but are not keen on the hike, a cast has been made by fossil preparator Rod Bartlett is on display at the Courtenay Museum in Courtenay, Vancouver Island, Canada. 

Respect for the Land / Leave No Trace

As your feet move up the hillside, you can imagine this land 10,000 years ago, rising above great glaciers. Where footfalls trace the steps of those that came before you. This land has been home to the Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi ‘it First Nation and Ktunaxa or Kukin ʔamakis First Nations whose oral history have them living here since time immemorial. Like them, take only what you need and no more than the land offers — packing out anything that you packed in. 

Fernie Ammonite Palaeo Coordinates: 49°29'04"N 115°00'49"W

MEMEKAY JURASSIC AMMONITES OF VANCOUVER ISLAND

Coroniceras sp. from Sayward, British Columbia

This yummy Lower Jurassic ammonite with the creamy dark chocolate colouring is from an all but inaccessible outcrop of the Upper Sinemurian, Bonanza Group,  Harbledownense Zone, Memekay River area, near Sayward, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. 

This area is home to the We Wai Kai and Wei Wai Kum First Nations and lands of the K'omoks First Nation whose culture thrives and reflects the natural rugged beauty of the central island region.

I will be headed back to these outcrops next month on the way to northern Vancouver Island. 

It is rugged, remote and beautiful. Think trees and valleys for as far as the eye can see. Some of those hillsides on the horizon contain wonderful fossils, including this Coroniceras sp. with the truly marvellous keel.

By the time these ammonites were being buried in sediment, Wrangellia, the predominately volcanic terrane that now forms Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii, had made its way to the northern mid-latitudes.

Within the basal part of the sequence, sedimentary beds are found interbedded with lapilli and crystal tuffs. Here you'll see maroon tuffaceous sandstone, orange-grey sandstone, granule sandstone and conglomerate. Within them we find ammonites nestled in with gastropods and pelecypods. 

While the fossiliferous outcrop is quite small, the Bonanza group is much larger, estimated to be at least 1000 metres thick. The site is quite small and in an active logging area, so the window to collect is limited. 

We have been to the site many times. One one of the past trips, the drive up the mountain was thrilling as there had just been heavy rains and the road was washed out and narrowed until it was barely the width of our wheelbase and very, very steep. Closer to the top it narrowed to be just shy of the width of the vehicle — thrilling, to say the least. 

So scary that my passengers all got out as there was a high probability of going head-first over the edge. I was navigating by some handwritten field notes and a wee map on a paper napkin that should have read, "park at the bottom and hike up." 

Did we park at the bottom and hike up? No, we did not. 

The torrential rains of the Pacific Northwest had been working their magic on the hillside and slowly washing out the road until it slowly became more of a trail.

At the base of the hillside all looked well. Giddy for the fossils to come, we ventured off with a truck full of enthusiasm. Within 15 minutes of steep elevation gain, we had a wonderful view of the valley below. We were halfway up the mountain before I realized the error of my ways. The road twisted and turned then slowly narrowed to the width of my tires. Too narrow to turn around, so the only way was up. 

Graham Beard from Qualicum Beach was the fellow who showed me the site and drew the wee map for me. I cannot recall everyone on the trip, but Perry Poon was there — he shot a video of the drive up that he described as thrilling. I have never seen it but would like to one day — and so was Patricia Coutts with her lovely Doberman. 

She and I had just done a trip up to Goldbridge where the cliff we were on had turned into a landslide into a ravine so she was feeling understandably cautious about the power of Mother Nature. 

Picture the angle, the hood of my jeep riding high and hiding what remained of the road beneath and a lovely stick shift that made you roll backwards a wee bit with every move to put it into gear. So, without being able to see the very narrow path beneath, I had to just keep going. 

Both Perry and Patricia helped with filling in the potholes so my tires would have something to grip. 

I bent the frame on the jeep heading up and had some explaining to do when I returned it to the car rental place. 

As I recall, I wasn't in my ordinary vehicle but a rental because my car had been stolen the weekend before when I was away with John Fam and Dan Bowen collecting at Jurassic Point, an epic fossil site accessible only by boat on our wild west coast.

Fortuitous timing really, as they stole my car but I had unloaded my precious fossil collecting gear out of the trunk just days before.  

In the end, we found what we were looking for. Memekay yields a mix of ammonites, gastropods and bivalves. 

Many of them are poorly preserved. It was a hell of a ride but well worth the effort as we found some great fossils and with them more information on the palaeontology and geology of Vancouver Island. Just look at the keel on this beauty.

I would share the site information but it is now covered over with debris and inaccessible. One day, this whole region will be developed and the site will be opened up again. Until then, we'll have to enjoy what has been unearthed.

THE DUDLEY BUG: ROLLED TRILOBITES

A lovely rolled trilobite, Calymene blumenbachii,  from outcrops in the UK. This wee beauty is in the collections of the deeply awesome Theresa Paul Spink Dunn — or perhaps in her daughter Layla's collections as she is quite the budding palaeontologist. 

This Silurian beauty is from the Homerian, Wenlock Series, Wrens Nest, Dudley, UK.

I was passing through Qualicum this past week and had an impromptu visit with Graham and Tina Beard. 

They are lifelong friends and avid fossil collectors. Over the past few years, they have traveled to the UK and in passing, Graham mentioned that he had a chance to go to the outcrops where the Dudley Bug can be found. 

His timing was especially fortuitous as the Wenlock Edge quarry is closed now to further collecting but may be open to future research projects. We shall have to wait and see.

Calymene blumenbachii, sometimes erroneously spelled blumenbachi, is a species of trilobite found in the limestone quarries of the Wren's Nest in Dudley, England.

Nicknamed the Dudley Bug or Dudley Locust by an 18th-century quarryman, it became a symbol of the town and featured on the Dudley County Borough Council coat-of-arms. Calymene blumenbachii is commonly found in Silurian rocks (422.5-427.5 million years ago) and is thought to have lived in the shallow waters of the Silurian, in low energy reefs.

This particular species of Calymene — a fairly common genus in the Ordovician-Silurian — is unique to the Wenlock series in England and comes from the Wenlock Limestone Formation in Much Wenlock and the Wren's Nest in Dudley. 

These sites seem to yield trilobites more readily than any other areas on the Wenlock Edge, and the rock here is dark grey as opposed to yellowish or whitish as it appears on other parts of the Edge, just a few miles away, in Church Stretton and elsewhere suggesting local changes in the environment in which the rock was deposited. 

As an aside, while I was in the UK last, I attended a conference in London's Natural History Museum and given a private tour of some of their collections. It was with immense pride that I saw Graham Beard's kind donation to the museum snug up near Darwin. It seems the museum catalogues donations alphabetically so the two collections were quite close to one another. Two great men with a shared love of paleontology across the ages!

FRACTAL BUILDING: AMMONITES

Argonauticeras besairei, Collection of José Juárez Ruiz.

An exceptional example of fractal building of an ammonite septum, in this clytoceratid Argonauticeras besairei from the awesome José Juárez Ruiz.

Ammonites were predatory, squid-like creatures that lived inside coil-shaped shells.

Like other cephalopods, ammonites had sharp, beak-like jaws inside a ring of squid-like tentacles that extended from their shells. They used these tentacles to snare prey, — plankton, vegetation, fish and crustaceans — similar to the way a squid or octopus hunt today.

Catching a fish with your hands is no easy feat, as I'm sure you know. But the Ammonites were skilled and successful hunters. They caught their prey while swimming and floating in the water column. Within their shells, they had a number of chambers, called septa, filled with gas or fluid that were interconnected by a wee air tube. By pushing air in or out, they were able to control their buoyancy in the water column.

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

They were a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids — octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish) than they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species.

The Ammonoidea can be divided into six orders:

• Agoniatitida, Lower Devonian - Middle Devonian
• Clymeniida, Upper Devonian
• Goniatitida, Middle Devonian - Upper Permian
• Prolecanitida, Upper Devonian - Upper Triassic
• Ceratitida, Upper Permian - Upper Triassic
• Ammonitida, Lower Jurassic - Upper Cretaceous

Ammonites have intricate and complex patterns on their shells called sutures. The suture patterns differ across species and tell us what time period the ammonite is from. If they are geometric with numerous undivided lobes and saddles and eight lobes around the conch, we refer to their pattern as goniatitic, a characteristic of Paleozoic ammonites.

If they are ceratitic with lobes that have subdivided tips; giving them a saw-toothed appearance and rounded undivided saddles, they are likely Triassic. For some lovely Triassic ammonites, take a look at the specimens that come out of Hallstatt, Austria and from the outcrops in the Humboldt Mountains of Nevada.

Hoplites bennettiana (Sowby, 1826).

If they have lobes and saddles that are fluted, with rounded subdivisions instead of saw-toothed, they are likely Jurassic or Cretaceous. If you'd like to see a particularly beautiful Lower Jurassic ammonite, take a peek at Apodoceras. Wonderful ridging in that species.

One of my favourite Cretaceous ammonites is the ammonite, Hoplites bennettiana (Sowby, 1826). This beauty is from Albian deposits near Carrière de Courcelles, Villemoyenne, near la région de Troyes (Aube) Champagne in northeastern France.

At the time that this fellow was swimming in our oceans, ankylosaurs were strolling about Mongolia and stomping through the foliage in Utah, Kansas and Texas. Bony fish were swimming over what would become the strata making up Canada, the Czech Republic and Australia. Cartilaginous fish were prowling the western interior seaway of North America and a strange extinct herbivorous mammal, Eobaatar, was snuffling through Mongolia, Spain and England.

In some classifications, these are left as suborders, included in only three orders: Goniatitida, Ceratitida, and Ammonitida. Once you get to know them, ammonites in their various shapes and suturing patterns make it much easier to date an ammonite and the rock formation where is was found at a glance.

Ammonites first appeared about 240 million years ago, though they descended from straight-shelled cephalopods called bacrites that date back to the Devonian, about 415 million years ago, and the last species vanished in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

They were prolific breeders that evolved rapidly. If you could cast a fishing line into our ancient seas, it is likely that you would hook an ammonite, not a fish. They were prolific back in the day, living (and sometimes dying) in schools in oceans around the globe. We find ammonite fossils (and plenty of them) in sedimentary rock from all over the world.

In some cases, we find rock beds where we can see evidence of a new species that evolved, lived and died out in such a short time span that we can walk through time, following the course of evolution using ammonites as a window into the past.

For this reason, they make excellent index fossils. An index fossil is a species that allows us to link a particular rock formation, layered in time with a particular species or genus found there. Generally, deeper is older, so we use the sedimentary layers rock to match up to specific geologic time periods, rather the way we use tree-rings to date trees. A handy way to compare fossils and date strata across the globe.

References: Inoue, S., Kondo, S. Suture pattern formation in ammonites and the unknown rear mantle structure. Sci Rep 6, 33689 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep33689
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep33689?fbclid=IwAR1BhBrDqhv8LDjqF60EXdfLR7wPE4zDivwGORTUEgCd2GghD5W7KOfg6Co#citeas

Photo: Hoplites Bennettiana from near Troyes, France. Collection de Christophe Marot

BEAUTIFUL QUENSTEDTOCERAS AMMONITE WITH PATHOLOGY

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!

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

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

We have the honour of having Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History where he oversees the world's largest natural history collection as our Keynote Speaker and artist Ray Troll as our dinner speaker. 

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: KIRK JOHNSON

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

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

DINNER SPEAKER: RAY TROLL

​Ray Troll is an American artist based in Ketchikan, Alaska. Ray Troll, draws inspiration from the fossil record and pays homage to the familiar and bizarre in stunning portrayals of lost worlds.  He is best known for his scientifically accurate and often humorous artwork. His most well-known design, "Spawn Till You Die," pops up in the most unexpected places—including the film Superbad worn by actor Daniel Radcliffe. 

BCPA SYMPOSIUM SOCIAL MEET & GREET

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

BCPA SYMPOSIUM PALEO-BANQUET

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

BCPA SYMPOSIUM PRESENTATIONS

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

BCPA SYMPOSIUM FOSSIL FIELD TRIPS

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

FOSSIL PREPARATION WORKSHOP

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

BCPA SYMPOSIUM REGISTRATION

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

LIVING FOSSILS: PERFECTION FROM THE GET GO

Horseshoe crabs are marine and brackish water arthropods of the order Xiphosura — a slowly evolving, conservative taxa.

Much like (slow) Water Striders (Aquarius remigis), (relatively sluggish) Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) and (the current winner on really slow evolution) Elephant Sharks (Callorhinchus milii), these fellows have a long history in the fossil record with very few anatomical changes. 

But slow change provides loads of great information. It makes our new friend, Yunnanolimulus luoingensis, an especially interesting and excellent reference point for how this group evolved. 

We can examine their genome today and make comparisons all the way back to the Middle Triassic (with this new find) and other specimens from further back in the Ordovician — 445 million years ago. 

These living fossils have survived all five mass extinction events. They are generalists who can live in shallow or deep water and will eat pretty much anything they can find on the seafloor.

The oldest horseshoe crab fossil, Lunataspis aurora, is found in outcrops in Manitoba, Canada. Charmingly, the name means crescent moon shield of the dawn. It was palaeontologist Dave Rudkin and team who chose that romantic name. Finding them as fossils is quite remarkable as their shells are made of protein which does not mineralized like typical fossils.

Even so, the evolution of their exoskeleton is well-documented by fossils, but appendage and soft-tissue preservation are extremely rare. 

A new study analyzes details of the appendage and soft-tissue preservation in Yunnanolimulus luoingensis, a Middle Triassic (ca. 244 million years old) horseshoe crab from Yunnan Province, SW China. The remarkable anatomical preservation includes the chelicerae, five pairs of walking appendages, opisthosomal appendages with book gills, muscles, and fine setae permits comparison with extant horseshoe crabs.

The close anatomical similarity between the Middle Triassic horseshoe crabs and their recent analogues documents anatomical conservatism for over 240 million years, suggesting persistence of lifestyle.

The occurrence of Carcinoscorpius-type claspers on the first and second walking legs in male individuals of Y. luoingensis tells us that simple chelate claspers in males are plesiomorphic for horseshoe crabs, and the bulbous claspers in Tachypleus and Limulus are derived.

As an aside, if you hadn't seen an elephant shark before and were shown a photo, you would likely say, "that's no freaking shark." You would be wrong, of course, but it would be a very clever observation.

Callorhinchus milii look nothing like our Great White friends and they are not true sharks at all. Rather, they are ghost sharks that belong to the subclass Holocephali (chimaera), a group lovingly known as ratfish. They diverged from the shark lineage about 400 million years ago.

If you have a moment, do a search for Callorhinchus milii. The odd-looking fellow with the ironic name, kallos, which means beautiful in Greek, sports black blotches on a pale silver elongate body. And their special feature? It is the fishy equivalent of business in the front, party in the back, with a dangling trunk-like projection at the tip of their snout and well-developed rectal glands near the tail.

As another small point of interest with regards to horseshoe crabs, John McAllister collected several of these while working on his MSc to see if they had microstructures similar to trilobites (they do) and whether their cuticles were likewise calcified. He found no real calcification in their cuticles, in fact, he had a rather frustrating time getting anything measurable to dissolve in acid in his hunt for trace elements. 

Likewise, when looking at oxygen isotopes (16/18) to get a handle on water salinity and temperature, his contacts at the University of Waterloo had tons of fun getting anything at all to analyze. It made for some interesting findings. Sadly, for a number of reasons, he abandoned the work, but you can read his very interesting thesis here: https://dr.library.brocku.ca/handle/10464/1959

Ref: Hu, Shixue & Zhang, Qiyue & Feldmann, Rodney & Benton, Michael & Schweitzer, Carrie & Huang, Jinyuan & Wen, Wen & Zhou, Changyong & Xie, Tao & Lü, Tao & Hong, Shuigen. (2017). Exceptional appendage and soft-tissue preservation in a Middle Triassic horseshoe crab from SW China. Scientific Reports. 7. 10.1038/s41598-017-13319-x.

LOVE CAN TRAVEL ANYWHERE IN AN INSTANT

Nunatsiarmiut Mother and Child, Baffin Island, Nunavut

Warm light bathes this lovely Nunatsiarmiut mother and child from Baffin Island, Nunavut. 

They speak Inuktitut, the mother tongue of the majority of the Nunatsiarmiut who call Baffin Island home. 

Baffin is the largest island in the Arctic Archipelago in the territory of Nunavut in Canada's far north—the chilliest region of Turtle Island. 

As part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Baffin Island is home to a constellation of remote Inuit communities each with a deep cultural connection to the land—Iqaluit, Pond Inlet, Pangnirtung, Clyde River, Arctic Bay, Kimmirut and Nanisivik. 

The ratio of Inuit to non-Inuit here is roughly three to one and perhaps the reason why the Inuktitut language has remained intact and serves as the mother tongue for more than 36,000 residents. Inuktitut has several subdialects—these, along with a myriad of other languages—are spoken across the north.  

If you look at the helpful visual below you begin to get a feel for the diversity of these many tongues. The languages vary by region. There is the Iñupiaq of the Inupiatun/Inupiat; Inuvialuktun of the Inuinnaqtun, Natsilingmiutut, Kivallirmiutut, Aivilingmiutut, Qikiqtaaluk Uannanganii and Siglitun. Kalaallisut is spoken by many Greenlandic peoples though, in northwest Greenland, Inuktun is the language of the Inughuit.

We use the word Inuktitut when referring to a specific dialect and inuktut when referring to all the dialects of Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun.

Northern Language Map (Click to Enlarge)

Should you travel to the serene glacier-capped wilds and rolling tundra of our far north, you will want to dress for the weather and learn a few of the basics to put your best mukluk shod feet forward. 

The word for hello or welcome in Inuktitut is Atelihai—pronounced ahh-tee-lee-hi. And thank you is nakurmiik, pronounced na-kur-MIIK.  

Perhaps my favourite Inuktitut expression is Naglingniq qaikautigijunnaqtuq maannakautigi, pronounced NAG-ling-niq QAI-kau-ti-gi-jun-naqtuq MAAN-na-KAU-ti-gi. This tongue-twister is well worth the linguistic challenge as it translates to love can travel anywhere in an instant. Indeed it can. 

So much of our Indigenous culture is passed through stories, so language takes on special meaning in that context. It is true for all societies but especially true for the Inuit. Stories help connect the past to the present and future. They teach how to behave in society, engage with the world and how to survive in the environment. They also help to create a sense of belonging. 

You have likely seen or heard the word Eskimo used in older books to refer to the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit or Yupik. This misnomer is a colonial term derived from the Montagnais or Innu word ayas̆kimew—netter of snowshoes. 

It is a bit like meeting a whole new group of people who happen to wear shoes and referring to them all as cobblers—not as a nickname, but as a legal term to describe populations from diverse communities disregarding the way each self-refer. 

Inukshuk / Inuksuk Marker Cairn

For those who identify as Inupiaq or Yupik, the preferred term is Inuit meaning people—though some lingering use of the term Eskimo lives on. The Inuit as a group are made up of many smaller groups. 

The Inuit of Greenland self-refer as Kalaallit or Greenlanders when speaking Kalaallisut. 

The Tunumiit of Tunu (east Greenland), speak Tunumiit oraasiat ("East Greenlandic"); and the Inughuit of north Greenland, speak Inuktun "Polar Eskimo."

The Inupiat of Alaska, or real people, use Yupik as the singular for real person and yuk to simply mean person.

When taken all together, Inuit is used to mean all the peoples in reference to the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit and Yupik. Inuit is the plural of inuk or person. 

You likely recognize this word from inuksuk or inukshuk, pronounced ih-nook-suuk — the human-shaped stone cairns built by the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, and other peoples of the Arctic regions of northern Canada, Greenland, and Alaska—as helpful reference markers for hunters and navigation. 

The word inuksuk means that which acts in the capacity of a human, combining inuk or person and suk, as a human substitute. 

A World of Confusion

You may be disappointed to learn that our northern friends do not live in igloos. I remember answering the phone as a child and the fellow calling was hoping to speak to my parents about some wonderful new invention perfect for use in an igloo. 

The call came while I was in the kitchen of our family home in Port Hardy. He was disappointed to hear that I was standing in a wooden house with the standard four walls to a room and a handy roof topping it off. 

I also had my own room with Scooby-Doo wallpaper, but he was having nothing of it.

"Well, what about your neighbours? Surely, a few of them live in igloos..." 

It seems that some atlases in circulation at the time, and certainly the one he was looking at, simply blanketed everything north of the 49th parallel in a snowy white. His clearly showed an igloo sitting proudly in the centre of the province.

Interestingly, I only learned this morning (thank you, Jen) that that type of playful map is called a Counter Map and can be used in delightful ways to draw the reader in to the mapping of a landscape, region, people or culture—often out of scale and with many wonderful images added to give you a beautiful sense of the people, plants, animals and topography of a place.

My cousin Shawn brought one such simplified book back from his elementary school in California. British Columbia had a nice image of a grizzly bear and a wee bit further up, a polar bear grinned smugly. 

British Columbia's beaver population would be sad to know that they did not inhabit the province though there were two chipper beavers with big bright smiles—one in Ontario and another gracing the province of Quebec. Further north, where folk do build igloos, their icy domes were curiously lacking. 

Igloos are used for winter hunting trips much the same way we use tents for camping. The Inuit do not have fifty words for snow—you can thank the ethnographer Franz Boas for that wee fabrication—but within the collective languages of the frozen north there are more than fifty words to describe it. And kisses are not nose-to-nose. To give a tender kiss or kunik to a loved one, you press your nose and upper lip to their forehead or cheek and rub gently. 

Fancy trying a wee bit of Inuktitut yourself? This link will bring you to a great place to start: https://inhabitmedia.com/inuitnipingit/

Inuit Language Map:  By Noahedits - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0. If you want to the image full size, head to this link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85587388

TIKTAALIK, TETRAPODS AND MIGUASHA

Elpistostege watsoni

In the late 1930s, our understanding of the transition of fish to tetrapods — and the eventual jump to modern vertebrates — took an unexpected leap forward. The evolutionary a'ha came from a single partial fossil skull found on the shores of a riverbank in Eastern Canada. 

Meet the Stegocephalian, Elpistostege watsoni, an extinct genus of finned tetrapodomorphs that lived during the Late Givetian to Early Frasnian of the Late Devonian — 382 million years ago. 

Elpistostege watsoni — perhaps the sister taxon of all other tetrapods — was first described in 1938 by British palaeontologist and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Thomas Stanley Westoll. Westoll's research interests were wide-ranging. He was a vertebrate palaeontologist and geologist best known for his innovative work on Palaeozoic fishes and their relationships with tetrapods. 

As a specialist in early fish, Westoll was asked to interpret that single partial skull roof discovered at the Escuminac Formation in Quebec, Canada. His findings and subsequent publication named Elpistostege watsoni and helped us to better understand the evolution of fishes to tetrapods — four-limbed vertebrates — one of the most important transformations in vertebrate evolution. 

Hypotheses of tetrapod origins rely heavily on the anatomy of but a few tetrapod-like fish fossils from the Middle and Late Devonian, 393–359 million years ago. These taxa — known as elpistostegalians — include Panderichthys, Elpistostege and Tiktaalik — none of which had yet to reveal the complete skeletal anatomy of the pectoral fin. 

Elpistostege watsoni

None until 2010 that is, when a complete 1.57-metre-long articulated specimen was found and described by Richard Cloutier et al. in 2020. 

The specimen helped us to understand the origin of the vertebrate hand. Stripped from its encasing stone, it revealed a set of paired fins of Elpistostege containing bones homologous to the phalanges (finger bones) of modern tetrapods and is the most basal tetrapodomorph known to possess them. 

Once the phalanges were uncovered, prep work began on the fins. The fins were covered in wee scales and lepidotrichia (fin rays). The work was tiresome, taking more than 2,700 hours of preparation but the results were thrilling. 

Origin of the Vertebrate Hand

We could now clearly see that the skeleton of the pectoral fin has four proximodistal rows of radials — two of which include branched carpals — as well as two distal rows organized as digits and putative digits. 

Despite this skeletal pattern — which represents the most tetrapod-like arrangement of bones found in a pectoral fin to date blurring the line between fish and land vertebrates — the fin retained lepidotrichia (those wee fin rays) distal to the radials. 

This arrangement confirmed an age-old question — showing us for the first time that the origin of phalanges preceded the loss of fin rays, not the other way around.

E. watsoni is very closely related to Tiktaalik roseae found in 2004 in the Canadian Arctic — a tetrapodomorpha species also known as a Choanata. These were advanced forms transitional between fish and the early labyrinthodonts playfully referred to as fishapods — half-fish, half-tetrapod in appearance and limb morphology. 

Up to that point, the relationship of limbed vertebrates (tetrapods) to lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygians) was well known, but the origin of major tetrapod features remained obscure for lack of fossils that document the sequence of evolutionary changes — until Tiktaalik. While Tiktaalik is technically a fish, this fellow is as far from fish-like you can be and still be a card-carrying member of the group. 

Tiktaalik roseae

Complete with scales and gills, this proto-fish lacked the conical head we see in modern fish but had a rather flattened triangular head more like that of a crocodile. 

Tiktaalik had scales on its back and fins with fin webbing but like early land-living animals, it had a distinctive flat head and neck. He was a brawny brute. The shape of his skull and shoulder look part fish and part amphibian.

The watershed moment came as Tiktaalik was prepped. Inside Tiktaalik's fins, we find bones that correspond to the upper arm, forearm and even parts of the wrist — all inside a fin with webbing — remarkable! 

Its fins have thin ray bones for paddling like most fish, but with brawny interior bones that gave Tiktaalik the ability to prop itself up, using his limbs for support. I picture him propped up on one paddle saying, "how you doing?" 

Six years after Tiktaalik was discovered by Neil Shubin and team in the ice-covered tundra of the Canadian Arctic on southern Ellesmere Island, a team working the outcrops at Miguasha on the Gaspé Peninsula discovered the only fully specimen of E. watsoni found to date — greatly increasing our knowledge of this finned tantalizingly transitional tetrapodomorph. 

E. watsoni fossils are rare — this was the fourth specimen collected in over 130 years of hunting. Charmingly, the specimen was right on our doorstop — extracted but a few feet away from the main stairs descending onto the beach of Miguasha National Park. 

L'nu Mi’gmaq First Nations of the Gespe’gewa’gi Region

Miguasha is nestled in the Gaspésie or Gespe’gewa’gi region of Canada — home to the Mi’gmaq First Nations who self-refer as L’nu or Lnu. The word Mi’gmaq or Mi’kmaq means the family or my allies/friends in Mi'kmaw, their native tongue (and soon to be Nova Scotia's provincial first language). They are the people of the sea and the original inhabitants of Atlantic Canada having lived here for more than 10,000 years. 

The L'nu were the first First Nation people to establish contact and trade with European explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries — and perhaps the Norse as early as the turn of the Millenium. Sailing vessels filled with French, British, Scottish, Irish and others arrived one by one to lay claim to the region — settling and fighting over the land. As each group rolled out their machinations of discovery, tensions turned to an all-out war with the British and French going head to head. I'll spare you the sordid details but for everyone caught in the crossfire, it went poorly.

North America Map 1775 (Click to Enlarge)

Cut to 1760, the British tipped the balance with their win at the Battle of the Restigouche, the last naval battle between France and England for possession of the North American continent — Turtle Island. 

The bittersweet British victory sparked the American War of Independence. 

For the next twenty years, the L'nu would witness and become embroiled in yet another war for these lands, their lands — first as bystanders, then as American allies, then intimidated into submission by the British Royal Navy with a show of force by way of a thirty-four gun man-of-war, encouraging L'nu compliance — finally culminating in an end to the hostilities with the 1783 Treaty of Paris. 

The peace accord held no provisions for the L'nu, Métis and First Nations impacted. None of these newcomers was Mi'kmaq — neither friends nor allies.

It was to this area some sixty years later that the newly formed Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) began exploring and mapping the newly formed United Province of Canada. Geologists in the New Brunswick Geology Branch traipsed through the rugged countryside that would become a Canadian province in 1867. 

It was on one of these expeditions that the Miguasha fossil outcrops were discovered. They, too, would transform in time to become Miguasha National Park or Parc de Miguasha, but at first, they were simply the promising sedimentary exposures on the hillside across the water —  a treasure trove of  Late Devonian fauna waiting to be discovered.

In the summer of 1842, Abraham Gesner, New Brunswick’s first Provincial Geologist, crossed the northern part of the region exploring for coal. Well, mostly looking for coal. Gesner also had a keen eye for fossils and his trip to the Gaspé Peninsula came fast on the heels of a jaunt along the rocky beaches of Chignecto Bay at the head of the Bay of Fundy and home to the standing fossil trees of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. 

Passionate about geology and chemistry, he is perhaps most famous for his invention of the process to distil the combustible hydrocarbon kerosene from coal oil — a subject on which his long walks exploring a budding Canada gave him a great deal of time to consider. We have Gesner to thank for the modern petroleum industry. He filed many patents for clever ways to distil the soft tar-like coal or bitumen still in use today.

He was skilled in a broad range of scientific disciplines — being a geologist, palaeontologist, physician, chemist, anatomist and naturalist — a brass tacks geek to his core. Gesner explored the coal exposures and fossil outcrops across the famed area that witnessed the region become part of England and not France — and no longer L'nu.

Following the Restigouche River in New Brunswick through the Dalhousie region, Gesner navigated through the estuary to reach the southern coast of the Gaspé Peninsula into what would become the southeastern coast of Quebec to get a better look at the cliffs across the water. He was the first geologist to lay eyes on the Escuminac Formation and its fossils.

In his 1843 report to the Geologic Survey, he wrote, “...I found the shore lined with a coarse conglomerate. Farther eastward the rocks are light blue sandstones and shales, containing the remains of vegetables. (...) In these sandstone and shales, I found the remains of fish and a small species of tortoise with fossil foot-marks.”

We now know that this little tortoise was the famous Bothriolepis, an antiarch placoderm fish. It was also the first formal mention of the Miguasha fauna in our scientific literature. Despite the circulation of his report, Gesner’s discovery was all but ignored — the cliffs and their fossil bounty abandoned for decades to come. Geologists like Ells, Foord and Weston, and the research of Whiteaves and Dawson, would eventually follow in Gesner's footsteps.

North America Map 1866 (Click to Enlarge)

Over the past 180 years, this Devonian site has yielded a wonderfully diverse aquatic assemblage from the Age of Fishes — five of the six fossil fish groups associated with the Devonian including exceptionally well-preserved fossil specimens of the lobe-finned fishes. 

This is exciting as it is the lobe-finned fishes — the sarcopterygians — that gave rise to the first four-legged, air-breathing terrestrial vertebrates – the tetrapods. 

Fossil specimens from Miguasha include twenty species of lower vertebrates — anaspids, osteostra-cans, placoderms, acanthodians, actinopterygians and sarcopterygians — plus a limited invertebrate assemblage, along with terrestrial plants, scorpions and millipedes.

Originally interpreted as a freshwater lacustrine environment, recent paleontological, taphonomic, sedimentological and geochemical evidence corroborates a brackish estuarine setting — and definitely not the deep waters of the sea. This is important because the species that gave rise to our land-living animals began life in shallow streams and lakes. It tells us a bit about how our dear Elpistostege watsoni liked to live — preferring to lollygag in cool river waters where seawater mixed with fresh. Not fully freshwater, but a wee bit of salinity to add flavour.  

• Photos: Elpistostege watsoni (Westoll, 1938 ), Upper Devonian (Frasnian), Escuminac formation, Parc de Miguasha, Baie des Chaleurs, Gaspé, Québec, Canada. John Fam, VanPS
• Origin of the Vertebrate Hand Illustration, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2100-8
• Tiktaalik Illustration: By Obsidian Soul - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47401797

References & further reading:

• From Water to Land: https://www.miguasha.ca/mig-en/the_first_discoveries.php
• UNESCO Miguasha National Park: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/686/
• Office of L'nu Affairs: https://novascotia.ca/abor/aboriginal-people/
• Cloutier, R., Clement, A.M., Lee, M.S.Y. et al. Elpistostege and the origin of the vertebrate hand. Nature 579, 549–554 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2100-8
• Daeschler, E. B., Shubin, N. H. & Jenkins, F. A. Jr. A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan. Nature 440, 757–763 (2006).
• Shubin, Neil. Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion History of the Human Body.
• Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03972-8

NOOTKA: FOSSILS AND FIRST NATIONS HISTORY

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