FOSSILS, LIMESTONE AND SALT: HALLSTATT

Hallstatt Salt Mines, Austria / Permian Salt Diapir

The Hallstatt Limestone is the world's richest Triassic ammonite unit, yielding specimens of more than 500 ammonite species.

Along with diversified cephalopod fauna  — orthoceratids, nautiloids, ammonoids — we also see gastropods, bivalves, especially the late Triassic pteriid bivalve Halobia (the halobiids), brachiopods, crinoids and a few corals. We also see a lovely selection of microfauna represented. 

For microfauna, we see conodonts, foraminifera, sponge spicules, radiolaria, floating crinoids and holothurian sclerites —  polyp-like, soft-bodied invertebrate echinozoans often referred to as sea cucumbers because of their similarities in size, elongate shape, and tough skin over a soft interior. 

Franz von Hauer’s exhaustive 1846 tome describing Hallstatt ammonites inspired renowned Austrian geologist Eduard Suess’s detailed study of the area’s Mesozoic history. That work was instrumental in Suess being the first person to recognize the former existence of the Tethys Sea, which he named in 1893 after the sister of Oceanus, the Greek god of the ocean. As part of the Northern Limestone Alps, the Dachstein rock mass, or Hoher Dachstein, is one of the large karstic mountains of Austria and the second-highest mountain in the Northern Limestone Alps. It borders Upper Austria and Styria in central Austria and is the highest point in each of those states.

Parts of the massif also lie in the state of Salzburg, leading to the mountain being referred to as the Drei-Länder-Berg or three-state mountain. Seen from the north, the Dachstein massif is dominated by the glaciers with the rocky summits rising beyond them. By contrast, to the south, the mountain drops almost vertically to the valley floor. The karst limestones and dolomites were deposited in our Mesozoic seas. The geology of the Dachstein massif is dominated by the Dachstein-Kalk Formation — the Dachstein limestone — which dates back to the Triassic.

Hallstatt and the Hallstatt Sea, Austria

There were several phases of mountain building in this part of the world pushing the limestone deposits 3,000 metres above current sea level. The rock strata were originally deposited horizontally, then shifted, broken up and reshaped by the erosive forces of ice ages and erosion.

The Hallstatt mine exploits a Permian salt diapir that makes up some of this area’s oldest rock. 

The salt accumulated by evaporation in the newly opened, and hence shallow, Hallstatt-Meliata Ocean. This was one of several small ocean basins that formed in what is now Europe during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic when the world’s landmasses were welded together to form the supercontinent Pangea. 

Pangea was shaped like a crescent moon that cradled the famous Tethys Sea. Subduction of Tethyian oceanic crust caused several slivers of continental crust to separate from Pangea, forming new “back-arc basins” (small oceans formed by rifting that is associated with nearby subduction) between the supercontinent and the newly rifted ribbon continents.

The Hallstatt-Meliata Ocean was one such back-arc basin. As it continued to expand and deepen during the Triassic, evaporation ceased and reefs flourished; thick limestone deposits accumulated atop the salt. When the Hallstatt-Meliata Ocean closed in the Late Jurassic, the compression squeezed the low-density salt into a diapir that rose buoyantly, injecting itself into the Triassic limestones above.

The Hallstatt salt diapir and its overlying limestone cap came to rest in their present position in the northern Austrian Alps when they were shoved northward as nappes (thrust sheets) during two separate collision events, one in the Cretaceous and one in the Eocene, that created the modern Alps. It is from the Hallstatt salt diapir that Hallstatt, like so many cities and towns, gets its name.

Deposits of rock salt or halite, the mineral name of sodium chloride with the chemical formula of NaCl, are found and mined around the globe. These deposits mark the dried remains of ancient oceans and seas. Names of rivers, towns and cities in Europe — Salzburg, Halle, Hallstatt, Hallein, La Salle, Moselle — all pay homage to their connection to halite and salt production. The Greek word for salt is hals and the Latin is sal. The Turkish name for salt is Tuz, which we see in the naming of Tuzla, a salt-producing region of northeastern Bosnia-Herzegovina and in the names of towns that dot the coast of Turkey where it meets the Black Sea. Hallstatt with its salt diapir is no exception.

The salt-named town of Hallstatt sits on the shores of the idyllic Hallstätter Sea at the base of the Dachstein massif. Visiting it today, you experience a quaint traditional fishing village built in the typical upper Austrian style. Tourism drives the economy as much as salt as this area of the world is picture-perfect from every angle.

Space is at a minimum in the town. For centuries, every ten years the local cemetery exhumes the bones of those buried there and moves them to an ossuary to make room for new burials. The Hallstatt Ossuary is called Karner, Charnel House, or simply Beinhaus (Bone House). Karners are places of secondary burials. They were once common in the Eastern Alps, but that custom has largely disappeared.

Hallstatt Beinhaus Ossuary, Hallstatt, Austria

A collection of over 700 elaborately decorated skulls rest inside the ossuary. They are lined up on rows of wooden shelves that grace the walls of the chapel. Another 500 undecorated skulls, bare and without any kind of adornment, are stacked in the corners.

Each is inscribed and attached to a record with the deceased's name, profession and date of death. The Bone House is located in a chapel in the basement of the Church of Saint Michael. The church dates from the 12th century CE. 

Decorating the skulls was traditionally the job of the local gravedigger and an honour granted to very few. At the family's request, garlands of flowers were painted on the skulls of deceased as decorative crowns if they were female. The skulls of men and boys were painted wreaths of oak or ivy.

Every building in Hallstatt looks out over the Hallstätter Sea. This beautiful mountain lake considered one of the finest of Austria's Salzkammergut region. It lies at the northern foot of the Dachstein mountain range, sitting eight-and-a-half kilometres long and two kilometres wide. The shoreline is dotted by the villages of  Obertraun, Steeg, and Hallstatt.

The region is habitat to a variety of diverse flora and fauna, including many rare species such as native orchids, in the wetlands and moors in the south and north.

Linked by road to the cities of Salzburg and Graz, Hallstatt and its lake were declared one of the World Heritage sites in Austria in 1997 and included in the Hallstatt-Dachstein Salzkammergut Alpine UNESCO World Heritage Site. The little market village of Hallstatt takes its name from the local salt mine.

Hallstatt, Salzkammergut region, Austria

The town is a popular tourist destination with its quaint shops and terraced cafes. In the centre of town, the 19th-century Evangelical Church of Hallstatt with its tall, slender spire is a lakeside landmark. You can see it here in the photo on the left.

Above the town are the Hallstatt Salt mines located within the 1,030-meter-tall Salzburg Salt Mountain. They are accessible by cable car or a three-minute journey aboard the funicular railway. There is also a wonderful Subterranean Salt Lake.

In 1734, there was a corpse found here preserved in salt. The fellow became known as the Man in Salt. Though no archaeological analysis was performed at the time — the mummy was respectfully reburied in the Hallstatt cemetery — based on descriptions in the mine records, archaeologists suspect the miner lived during the Iron Age. This Old Father, Senos ph₂tḗr, 'ɸatīr 'father' may have been a local farmer, metal-worker, or both and chatted with his friends and family in Celtic or Proto-Celtic.

Salt mining in the area dates back to the Neolithic period, from the 8th to 5th Centuries BC. This is around the time that Roman legions were withdrawing from Britain and the Goths sacked Rome. In Austria, agricultural settlements were dotting the landscape and the alpine regions were being explored and settled for their easy access to valuable salt, chert and other raw materials.

The salt-rich mountains of Salzkammergut and the upland valley above Hallstatt were attractive for this reason. The area was once home to the Hallstatt culture, an archaeological group linked to Proto-Celtic and early Celtic people of the Early Iron Age in Europe, c.800–450 BC.

Bronze Age vessel with cow and calf

In the 19th century, a burial site was discovered with 2,000 individuals, many of them buried with Bronze Age artefacts of amber and ivory.

It was this find that helped lend the name Hallstatt to this epoch of human history. The Late Iron Age, between around 800 and 400 BC, became known as the Hallstatt Period.

For its rich history, natural beauty and breathtaking mountainous geology, Hallstatt is a truly irresistible corner of the world.

Salzbergstraße 1, 4830 Hallstatt.  https://www.salzwelten.at/en/home/

Photo: Bronze vessel with cow and calf, Hallstatt by Alice Schumacher - Naturhistorisches Museum Wien - A. Kern – K. Kowarik – A. W. Rausch – H. Reschreiter, Salz-Reich. 7000 Jahre Hallstatt, VPA 2 (Wien, 2008) Seite 133 Abbildung 6. Hallstatt Village & Ossuary Photos: P. McClure Photography ca. 2015.

Bernoulli D, Jenkyns HC (1974) Alpine, Mediterranean, and Central Atlantic Mesozoic facies in relation to the early evolution of the Tethys. Soc Econ Paleont Mineral Spec Publ 19:129–160

Bernoulli D, Jenkyns H (2009) Ancient oceans and continental margins of the Alpine-Mediterranean Tethys: deciphering clues from Mesozoic pelagic sediments and ophiolites. Sedimentology 56:149–190

MAMMOTH AT THE MUSEUM

Mammoths are a personal favourite of mine and there is a particularly fetching specimen in the Natural History Museum, London. 

Amongst its Ice Age treasures stands the mighty woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius — a shaggy titan of the Pleistocene whose kind roamed the frozen steppes of Europe, Asia, and North America until just 4,000 years ago.

The museum’s mammoth skeleton, with its great spiralled tusks curving forward like ivory crescents, is both imposing and oddly elegant. 

These animals were close cousins of modern elephants, adapted for cold with thick insulating fur, a layer of fat beneath the skin, and small ears to conserve heat. 

Their molars — massive, ridged grinding plates — were built for chewing tough Ice Age grasses across windswept tundra.

Britain itself once hosted mammoths during colder phases of the last Ice Age. As glaciers advanced and retreated, herds wandered across what is now the North Sea basin — then dry land known as Doggerland — and into southern England. 

Fossils dredged from gravel pits and offshore sediments remind us that mammoths were not exotic strangers but part of Britain’s own prehistoric fauna.

Standing beneath those sweeping tusks in the museum, you can almost feel the cold breath of the Ice Age. It is a wonderful place to spend the afternoon. If you go, wear comfortable shoes!

CREAMY APORRHAIS FOSSIL GASTROPOD

This creamy, beige specimen of Aporrhais sp., is a fossil marine gastropod from the Goodland Formation of Fort Worth, Texas, a limestone unit laid down during the Lower Cretaceous (Albian), roughly 113–100 million years ago. 

At that time, north-central Texas lay beneath a warm, shallow epicontinental sea connected to the broader Western Interior Seaway, an environment ideal for shelled invertebrates to flourish.

Aporrhais is a thick-shelled sea snail, part of a lineage well adapted to life on carbonate seafloors. Its inflated, smoothly rounded whorls and robust form suggest a slow-moving grazer or detritivore, creeping across soft sediments in calm, sunlit waters. 

The pale colouration you see today reflects mineral replacement during burial, with the original aragonitic shell long since altered to limestone.

The Goodland Formation is famous for its diverse fossil assemblage. Alongside gastropods, collectors and researchers regularly find ammonites (including forms such as Douvilleiceras), bivalves like oysters and rudists, echinoids (sea urchins), corals, and occasional crustaceans. Together, these fossils paint a vivid picture of a thriving Cretaceous reef-adjacent ecosystem.

Exposures of the Goodland around Fort Worth have been known and collected since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often through quarrying and construction cuts. Early geological and paleontological work in the region was carried out by figures such as Robert T. Hill, W. S. Adkins, and T. W. Stanton, whose studies helped establish the stratigraphy and fossil content of the Texas Cretaceous. 

Since then, generations of professional paleontologists and dedicated local collectors have continued to document and refine our understanding of this richly fossiliferous formation.

This specimen was collected by Jack Whittles in the 1990s, shared with the Pacific Museum of the Earth (the precursor museum to the one now at UBC, and then shared with me...)

COILED PERFECTION: LYTOCERAS

A superbly prepped and extremely rare Lytoceras (Suess, 1865) ammonite found as a green ammonite nodule by Matt Cape in the Lower Lias of Dorset. 

Lytoceras are rare in the Lower Lias of Dorset — apart from the Belemnite Stone horizon — so much so that Paul Davis, whose skilled prep work you see here, initially thought it might be a Becheiceras hidden within the large, lumpy nodule. 

One of the reasons these lovelies are rarely found from here is that they are a Mediterranean Tethyian genus. The fossil fauna we find in the United Kingdom are dominated by Boreal Tethyian genera. 

We do find Lytoceras sp. in the Luridum subzone of the Pliensbachian showing that there was an influx of species from the Mediterranean realm during this time. This is the first occurrence of a Lytoceras that he has ever seen in a green nodule and Paul's seen quite a few. 

This absolutely cracking specimen was found and is in the collections of the awesome Matt Cape. Matt recognized that whatever was hidden in the nodule would take skilled and careful preparation using air scribes. Indeed it did. It took more than five hours of time and skill to unveil the lovely museum-worthy specimen you see here. 

We find Lytoceras in more than 1,000 outcrops around the globe ranging from the Jurassic through to the Cretaceous, some 189.6 to 109.00 million years ago. Once this specimen is fully prepped with the nodule material cut or scraped away, you can see the detailed crinkly growth lines or riblets on the shell and none of the expected coarse ribbing. 

Lytoceras sp. Photo: Craig Chivers

If you imagine running your finger along these, you would be tracing the work of decades of growth of these cephalopods. 

While we cannot know their actual lifespans, but we can make a healthy guess. 

The nautilus, their closest living cousins live upwards of 20 years — gods be good — and less than three years if conditions are poor.

The flanges, projecting flat ribs or collars, develop at the edge of the mouth border on the animal's mantle as they grow each new chamber. 

Each delicate flange grows over the course of the ammonites life, marking various points in time and life stages as the ammonite grew. There is a large variation within Lytoceras with regards to flanges. They provide both ornamentation and strength to the shell to protect it from water pressure as they moved into deeper seas.

The concretion prior to prep

This distinctive genus with its evolute shells are found in the Cretaceous marine deposits of: 

Antarctica (5 collections), Austria (19), Colombia (1), the Czech Republic (3), Egypt (2), France (194), Greenland (16), Hungary (25), Italy (11), Madagascar (2), Mexico (1), Morocco (4), Mozambique (1), Poland (2), Portugal (1), Romania (1), the Russian Federation (2), Slovakia (3), South Africa (1), Spain (24), Tanzania (1), Trinidad and Tobago (1), Tunisia (25); and the United States of America (17: Alaska, California, North Carolina, Oregon).

We also find them in Jurassic marine outcrops in:

Austria (15), Canada (9: British Columbia), Chile (6), France (181), Germany (11), Greenland (1), Hungary (189), India (1), Indonesia (1), Iran (1), Italy (50), Japan (14), Kenya (2), Luxembourg (4), Madagascar (2), Mexico (1), Morocco (43), New Zealand (15), Portugal (1), Romania (5), the Russian Federation (1), Slovakia (1), Spain (6), Switzerland (2), Tunisia (11), Turkey (12), Turkmenistan (1), Ukraine (5), the United Kingdom (12), United States (11: Alaska, California) — in at least 977 known collections. 

References:

Sepkoski, Jack (2002). "A compendium of fossil marine animal genera (Cephalopoda entry)". Bulletins of American Paleontology. 363: 1–560. Archived from the original on 2008-05-07. Retrieved 2017-10-18.

Paleobiology Database - Lytoceras. 2017-10-19.

Systematic descriptions, Mesozoic Ammonoidea, by W.J Arkell, Bernhard Kummel, and C.W. Wright. 1957. Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part L. Geological Society of America and University of Kansas press.

UPPER CAMBRIAN TRILOBITE PROCERATOPYGE

Proceratopyge rectispinata

A lovely creamy brown Proceratopyge rectispinata trilobite from Upper Cambrian deposits in the McKay Group near Cranbrook, British Columbia. 

Trilobites, as you no doubt already know, are extinct marine arthropods that lived in Earth’s oceans for over 270 million years, first appearing in the Early Cambrian and disappearing at the end of the Permian. 

They are named for their three-lobed, segmented exoskeleton, which is divided lengthwise into a central axis and two pleural lobes.

The Upper Cambrian strata of the McKay Group near Cranbrook, southeastern British Columbia, preserve a modest but scientifically important assemblage of trilobites that record life along the western margin of Laurentia roughly 497–485 million years ago. 

During this interval, the region lay beneath a warm, shallow epicontinental sea, where fine-grained siliciclastic sediments accumulated on a broad continental shelf.

The trilobite faunas from the McKay Group are dominated by polymerid trilobites typical of Upper Cambrian shelf environments, including representatives of the families Pterocephaliidae and Elviniidae, with taxa comparable to Pterocephalia, Elvinia, and allied genera documented elsewhere in the Cordilleran margin. 

They are characterised by well-developed cephalic borders, pronounced glabellar furrows, and reduced or effaced pygidia—morphological features commonly associated with soft-substrate, low-energy settings.

Preservation is generally as disarticulated sclerites—isolated cephala, thoracic segments, and pygidia—suggesting post-mortem transport or periodic storm reworking on the Cambrian seafloor. 

As a guest of Chris New and Chris Jenkins (and collecting with great friends from the VIPS & VanPS) I have gleefully explored these Upper Cambrian exposures. 

Most of my earlier travels in the area focused on the Lower Cambrian Eager Formation, and it was only in the early 2000s that I first explored the bounty nearby. 

The McKay group offers a tantalizing selection of fauna and vastly different preservation than what we find in the Eager Formation. 

Much of my collecting benefited from natural erosion, leaving the fossils sitting pretty on the surface. Excavation did yield some finds, including my best specimen of all my trips. I'll find that lovely and share a photo with all of you.   

The assemblage provides valuable biostratigraphic control, allowing correlation of the McKay Group with coeval Upper Cambrian successions in the western United States and other parts of British Columbia.

A huge thank you to Dan Bowden and Chris Jenkins (who are both deeply awesome) for their help with the ID!  Appreciate you two!

FOSSIL DOLPHIN VERTEBRAE FROM THE NORTH SEA

Dolphin Fossil Vertebrae

Pulled from the cold, turbid bottom of the North Sea, a fossil dolphin vertebra is a small but eloquent survivor of a very different ocean. 

Today, the North Sea is shallow, busy, and heavily worked by trawlers, dredges, and offshore infrastructure. Beneath that modern churn lies a remarkable archive of Cenozoic life, quietly releasing its fossils when nets and dredges scrape sediments that have not seen daylight for millions of years.

Fossil cetacean bones—vertebrae, ribs, mandibles, and the occasional ear bone—are among the most evocative finds recovered from the seafloor. 

Dolphin vertebrae are especially common compared to skulls, as their dense, spool-shaped centra survive transport and burial better than more delicate skeletal elements. 

These fossils are typically dark brown to black, stained by long exposure to iron-rich sediments and phosphates, and often bear the polished surfaces and rounded edges that speak to a history of reworking by currents before final burial.

The North Sea is famous for yielding a mixed assemblage of fossils spanning multiple ice ages and interglacial periods, but many marine mammal remains originate from Miocene deposits, roughly 23 to 5 million years old. During the Miocene, this region was not the marginal, shallow sea we know today. It formed part of a broad, warm to temperate epicontinental sea connected to the Atlantic, rich in plankton, fish, sharks, and early whales and dolphins. 

This was a critical chapter in cetacean evolution, when modern groups of toothed whales, including early delphinids and their close relatives, were diversifying and refining the echolocation-based hunting strategies that define dolphins today.

Most North Sea cetacean fossils are found accidentally rather than through targeted excavation. Commercial fishing trawls, aggregate dredging for sand and gravel, and construction linked to wind farms and pipelines routinely disturb Miocene and Pliocene sediments. 

Fossils are hauled up tangled in nets or mixed with shell hash and glacial debris, often far from their original point of burial. As a result, precise stratigraphic context is usually lost, and age estimates rely on sediment still adhering to the bone, associated microfossils, or comparison with well-dated onshore Miocene marine deposits in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and eastern England.

A dolphin vertebra from this setting tells a story of both life and loss. In life, it was part of a flexible, powerful spine built for speed and agility, driving rapid tail beats through warm Miocene waters. 

After death, the carcass likely sank to the seafloor, where scavengers stripped it and currents scattered the bones. Over time, burial in sand and silt allowed mineral-rich waters to replace organic material with stone, locking the bone into the geological record. 

Much later, Ice Age glaciers reshaped the seafloor, reworking older sediments and concentrating fossils into lag deposits that modern dredges now disturb.

Though often found in isolation, these vertebrae are scientifically valuable. They confirm the long presence of dolphins in northern European seas and help refine our understanding of Miocene marine ecosystems, biogeography, and climate.

MIDDLE TRIASSIC MIXOSAURUS: TAIWAN STYLE

Mixosaurus sp. from Middle Triassic Seas

If you ever wanted to meet an ichthyosaur halfway between “sleek dolphin missile” and “awkward crocodile-fish,” Mixosaurus delivers. 

This extinct marine reptile cruised the Middle Triassic seas around 242–235 million years ago, back when the world’s continents were still shuffling seats and experimenting with new ocean ecosystems.

The Taiwan specimen of Mixosaurus sp. on display at the Natural History Branch of the National Taiwan Museum captures that transitional vibe perfectly. It is a very, very purdy specimen!

With an elongated snout, well-developed fins, and a body still figuring out hydrodynamic fashion, Mixosaurus sits smack in the ichthyosaur family tree between early, lizard-shaped forms and the more streamlined torpedo models that would show up in the Jurassic. 

Think of it as the “adolescent ichthyosaur phase,” complete with growth spurts and evolving lifestyles.

Taxonomically, Mixosaurus belongs to the order Ichthyosauria and is commonly grouped within Mixosauridae. Its relatives include the earlier Utatsusaurus and Grippia (more on the reptilian side of things) and later speed demons like Temnodontosaurus and Stenopterygius. 

While all ichthyosaurs shared adaptations for marine life — big eyes, paddle limbs, and that delightful habit of birthing live young — Mixosaurus kept a few primitive traits, making it a favorite for paleontologists trying to reconstruct evolutionary pathways in Triassic oceans.

As for its museum home: the National Taiwan Museum has a long pedigree. Founded in 1908 during the Japanese era, it’s the oldest museum in Taiwan and houses natural history, anthropology, geology, and zoology collections spanning deep time to present day. 

The Natural History Branch, nestled in a dedicated exhibition space, is where geology, paleontology, and biology truly shine — a quiet refuge where extinct reptiles like Mixosaurus can enjoy their retirement in glass cases while humans politely stare, point, and whisper variants of “whoa.”

If you’re lucky enough to visit, you’ll find Mixosaurus presented not as some dusty relic of a bygone sea, but as a charismatic stepping-stone in reptile evolution — a reminder that even in the Triassic, life was busy experimenting. 

And occasionally, those experiments worked so well they became crowd-pleasers 240 million years later.

The National Taiwan Museum is in Taipei, Taiwan, right in the city’s historic downtown. The main building sits along Xiànběi Road (Xiànběi Rd., Zhongzheng District) facing 228 Peace Memorial Park, making it easy to combine extinct reptiles with a lovely urban stroll.

The Natural History Branch — where the Mixosaurus hangs out — is part of the same museum system and also located in central Taipei. It focuses on geology, biology, and deep time, so it’s very fossil-friendly territory.

If you’re ever in Taipei (or plotting a paleontology-tour itinerary — which, honestly, is something you should do), it’s a fun stop: compact, historic, and just nerdy enough to make Triassic ichthyosaurs feel right at home.

NESSIE: THE OPALIZED PLIOSAUR OF THE EARLY CRETACEOUS

Nessie the Opalized Marine Reptile

At the Opal Museum in Queensland glitters one of the more improbable fossils ever pulled from the ancient seabed — an opalized pliosaur affectionately nicknamed “Nessie.” 

Beneath its shimmering surface lies the story of a powerful marine reptile that ruled the Early Cretaceous oceans roughly 110 million years ago, at a time when much of inland Australia was drowned beneath a warm, shallow epicontinental sea.

The lovely remains you see here are from one of those amazing marine reptiles, a pliosaur, who swam in those ancient seas. So what exactly is a pliosaur?

Pliosaurs are a subgroup within the Plesiosauria, the great marine reptiles (not dinosaurs!) of the Mesozoic. 

While long-necked plesiosaurs favored dainty heads and elongated cervical vertebrae for sweeping, panoramic strikes at small fish and cephalopods, pliosaurs evolved in the opposite direction:

• Skulls short and massive
• Necks abbreviated
• Jaws deep and muscular
• Teeth robust and conical

These were the ambush predators, built less like swans and more like crocodilian torpedoes, with four powerful flippers and a muscular body plan that let them sprint through the water column to surprise prey.

Though not an ichthyosaur — those fast, fish-shaped reptiles that converged spectacularly toward the form of modern dolphins — pliosaurs shared the same ecosystems. 

Ichthyosaurs hunted squid and fish in speed-based chases, while pliosaurs handled bigger, tougher fare: other marine reptiles, ammonites, and the occasional large fish unlucky enough to cross their path.

The Early Cretaceous seas hosted a diverse guild of reptiles:

• Ichthyosaurs (fish-shaped pursuit predators)
• Long-necked plesiosaurs (precision feeders)
• Pliosaurs (apex ambush predators)
• Crocodyliforms (semi-aquatic opportunists)
• Ammonites & belemnites (cephalopods forming the backbone of the food web)

Nessie sits among a lineage that includes broad-skulled bruisers like Kronosaurus queenslandicus, a fellow Australian celebrity whose skull approached 3 meters in length and whose bite force was probably among the strongest of any Mesozoic reptile.

Pliosaurs didn’t so much swim as fly underwater. Their four hydrofoil flippers generated lift in alternating strokes, allowing bursts of speed followed by graceful pursuit. Streamlined bodies meant low drag, essential for surprise attacks in open water.

Dentition tells the tale:

• Deep-rooted conical teeth resist torsional stress
• Interlocking jaws grip slippery prey
• Short snout adds leverage for skull-crushing force

Ammonites — including opalized forms from the same Australian basins — bear puncture marks suggestive of pliosaur predation. Large fish and other marine reptiles likely rounded out the menu.

Like ichthyosaurs and most plesiosaurs studied from articulated skeletons, pliosaurs were viviparous — they gave birth to live young at sea. No nests, no frantic beach crawls, and no hatchling gauntlet. Babies were miniature versions of adults, already hydrodynamic and hungry.

How do we know this? Well, a few ways. We have fossilized pregnant plesiosaur specimens with embryos and there is always the biomechanical absurdity of hauling such a creature onto land to lay eggs. So, wee ones at sea it is!

Why Opal? Why Here?

Opalization is an Australian specialty, the result of silica-rich groundwater percolating through Cretaceous sediments and replacing bone over geologic time. Fossils from Lightning Ridge and Coober Pedy preserve everything from ammonites to plesiosaurs as shockingly colourful silica pseudomorphs — Earth chemistry as jeweler.

Nessie’s preservation is thus a double marvel for its biological rarity (pliosaur skeletons are uncommon) and mineralogical rarity (precious opal replacement is even rarer)

Pliosaurs survived well into the Late Cretaceous before vanishing in a wave of marine turnover alongside ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs, and ammonites. Their departure marks a reshuffling of oceanic power dynamics — a story of climate, sea levels, and evolutionary competition.

QUIET DAREDEVILS OF THE NORTHERN FORESTS: FLYING SQUIRRELS

Flying squirrels are the quiet daredevils of the northern forests, tiny nocturnal acrobats that turn the darkened canopy into an aerial highway. 

Mammals have always found inventive ways to move across the landscape — walking, hopping, swimming, flying — and a select few, such as the marsupial sugar gliders of Australia, have mastered the art of gliding. 

But with fifty-two species scattered across the Northern Hemisphere, flying squirrels are the most successful gliders ever to take to the trees.

They are not true fliers, at least not in the way bats or birds command the air. Instead, these diminutive rodents hurl themselves into space with astonishing confidence, stretching their limbs wide to transform their bodies into living parachutes. It is a leap that looks both reckless and charming: an adorable woodland pilot bounding into the night inside a furry paper airplane, with just enough tooth and claw to remind you they are still wild.

Their improbable flight depends on an extraordinary bit of anatomy — a thin membrane of skin, the patagium, that stretches from wrist to ankle. When they leap, the membrane balloons outward, turning their entire body into a gliding surface. 

Hidden within their tiny wrists are elongated, cartilaginous struts, unique among squirrels, that help spread and stabilize the winglike skin. These distinctive wrist bones mark them as gliders and set them apart from their earthbound cousins.

The evolutionary origins of these sky-graceful rodents, however, have long puzzled scientists. Genetic studies suggest that flying squirrels branched off from tree squirrels around twenty-three million years ago. But fossil evidence tells a different story. 

The oldest remains—mostly cheek teeth—hint that gliding squirrels were already slicing through forest air thirty-six million years ago. 

To complicate matters further, the subtle dental traits used to distinguish gliding squirrels from non-gliding ones may not be exclusive after all. Teeth, it seems, do not always tell the whole truth.

In 2002, a routine excavation at a dumpsite near Barcelona, Spain, brought the mystery into sharper focus. As workers peeled back layers of clay and debris, a peculiar skeleton began to emerge. 

First came a remarkably long tail. Then two robust thigh bones, so unexpectedly large that the team briefly wondered whether they belonged to a small primate. But as each bone was freed and reassembled, the truth took shape. This was no primate. It was a rodent.

The breakthrough came during preparation, when screen-washing the surrounding sediment revealed a set of minute, exquisitely specialized wrist bones — the unmistakable calling card of a glider. From that mud rose the tiny, ancient hands of Miopetaurista neogrivensis, an extinct flying squirrel whose nearly complete skeleton would become the oldest known representative of its kind.

Studied in detail by Casanovas-Vilar and colleagues, the 11.6-million-year-old fossil revealed an animal belonging to the lineage of large flying squirrels, the same branch that today includes the giant gliders of Asia. Molecular and paleontological data, when combined with this new find, painted a richer story: flying squirrels may have arisen between thirty-one and twenty-five million years ago — and perhaps even earlier. 

The skeleton of Miopetaurista was so similar to those of modern Petaurista that the living giants of Asia might fairly be called “living fossils,” their basic form barely altered across nearly twelve million years of evolutionary time.

It is rare for molecular and fossil evidence to agree so neatly, yet in this case, both strands appear to weave the same narrative. The Barcelona specimen anchors the timeline, offering a crucial calibration point that reconciles genetic divergence estimates with the scattered hints found in teeth alone. It also underscores how conservative evolution can be: once perfected, the gliding design of flying squirrels changed little through the ages.

Still, much remains hidden in the shadows of deep time. Older fossils, or transitional forms showing the first experimental steps toward gliding, could help illuminate how these rodents took to the air. What combination of strength, membrane, and courage first allowed a squirrel to turn a fall into a flight? And how did these early pioneers spread so widely across the forests of the Northern Hemisphere?

Flying squirrels remain unique among mammals that glide, remarkable for both their diversity and their broad geographical reach. Yet their lineage is a riddle still missing key chapters. For now, the fossil from Barcelona stands as a rare and precious window into their past — the moment when a small rodent stretched its skin, trusted the air, and opened an entirely new evolutionary pathway between the branches.

SPISULA FOSSIL CLAMS FROM HAIDA GWAII

Some lovely Spisula praecursor (Dall) fossil clams from the Skonun Formation of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, captured from the Miocene when this coastline looked very different from today. 

These fossil bivalves belong to the surf clam lineage, a group well adapted to shallow, energetic marine environments with shifting sands and strong wave action. 

Their robust, equivalve shells and streamlined form speak to a life spent burrowed just beneath the sediment surface, filtering seawater for food while riding out constant motion above.

The Skonun Formation preserves a rich snapshot of nearshore marine life along the northeastern Pacific margin during the Miocene, roughly 23 to 5 million years ago. 

At that time, Haida Gwaii lay along an active tectonic edge, with sediments accumulating in coastal and shelf settings influenced by currents, storms, and abundant nutrient flow. 

Fossils such as Spisula praecursor help us reconstruct these dynamic environments, offering clues about water depth, substrate type, and even paleoclimate.

These particular specimens came from a single block only accessible on a falling tide. Timing, as ever, was everything—and the tide had other ideas. 

The excavation involved equal parts determination and seawater, leaving both collector and fossils thoroughly soaked. Still, there is something fitting about getting wet while freeing marine clams from their ancient shoreline, a small reminder that fieldwork often mirrors the environments we are trying to understand.

CHENGJIANG: A WINDOW INTO THE DAWN OF LIFE

Maotianshania cylindrica

High in the mist-softened hills of Yunnan Province, China, a band of ochre and grey shale holds one of Earth’s most extraordinary archives—a fossil record so exquisitely preserved that even the gills, antennae, and gut tracts of animals from over 518 million years ago remain visible. 

This is Chengjiang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most important early Cambrian Lagerstätten on the planet.

Here, at the base of the Maotianshan shales, paleontologists have uncovered a moment of evolutionary ignition: the rapid diversification of complex animal life known as the Cambrian Explosion.

The Geological Setting: Maotianshan Shales

The Chengjiang fossil exposures occur within the Yu’anshan Member of the Heilinpu Formation, deposited in a quiet, offshore marine environment during the Cambrian. 

These fine-grained mudstones accumulated under low-oxygen conditions—an essential factor that inhibited decay and burrowing, allowing soft tissues to fossilize with remarkable fidelity.

Key geological features:

• Age: ~518–520 Ma
• Depositional environment: Distal, oxygen-poor shelf
• Sediment: Fine mudstones and shales ideal for preserving delicate structures
• Taphonomy: Rapid burial via storm-induced sediment flows, sealing organisms beneath thin laminae

It is this marriage of rapid burial and anoxic bottom waters that created one of Earth’s rare Konservat-Lagerstätten, preserving not only bones and shells but organs, musculature, and entire life assemblages.

Lead Image Credit: Maotianshania cylindrica. Phylum: Nematomorpha Early Cambrian Chengjiang, Maotianshan Shales, SNP. Released under the GNU Free Documentation License

TASEKO LAKES FOSSIL ADVENTURE

John Fam, VIPS & VanPS

Over three field seasons, thirty-five taxa from the Mineralense and Rursicostatum zones were studied and three new species were discovered and named: Fergusonites hendersonae, Eolytoceras constrictum and Pseudaetomoceras victoriense. 

The late Hettangian ammonite fauna from Taseko Lakes is diverse and relatively well‐preserved.

This material is very important as it greatly expands our understanding of the fauna and ranges of ammonites currently included in the North American regional ammonite zonation. 

Castle Peak, Taseko Lakes

If you look closely, you can see a wee jet ranger helicopter hovering over a very chilly Castle Peak in the southern Chilcotin Range, British Columbia, Canada. 

Castle Peak served as our glorious landmark and loadstone of basalt that marked the spot on our Jurassic/Triassic palaeo adventures collecting about 7000 ft. 

The peak itself reaches higher still to around 8,176 ft. 

The site is special, both in terms of its geology and paleontological bounty, but also for the time spent there with friends. 

I had the very great honour of having the newly named, Fergusonites hendersonae, a new species of nektonic carnivorous ammonite, named after me by palaeontologist Louse Longridge from the University of British Columbia. 

Fergusonites hendersonae (Longridge, 2008)

I had met Louise as an undergrad and was pleased as punch to hear that she would be continuing the research by Dr. Howard Tipper, the authority on this area of the Chilcotins and Haida Gwaii — which he dearly loved. 

"Tip" was a renowned Jurassic ammonite palaeontologist and an excellent regional mapper who mapped large areas of the Cordillera. 

He made significant contributions to Jurassic paleobiogeography and taxonomy in collaboration with Dr. Paul Smith, Head of Earth and Ocean Science at the University of British Columbia. 

Tip’s regional mapping within BC has withstood the test of time and for many areas became the region's base maps for future studies. The scope of Tip’s understanding of Cordilleran geology and Jurassic palaeontology will likely never be matched. He passed away on April 21, 2005. His humour, knowledge and leadership will be sorely missed. 

Badouxia ammonites

Before he left us, he shared that knowledge with many of whom would help to secure his legacy for future generations. 

We did several trips over the years up to the Taseko Lake area of the Rockies joined by many wonderful researchers from the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society and Vancouver Paleontological Society, as well as the University of British Columbia. 

Both Dan Bowen and John Fam were instrumental in planning those expeditions and each of them benefited greatly from the knowledge of Dr. Howard Tipper. 

If not for Tipper's early work in the region, our shared understanding and much of what was accomplished in his last years and after his passing would not have been possible. 

Over the course of three field seasons, we endured elevation sickness, rain, snow, grizzly bears and very chilly nights  — we were sleeping right next to a glacier at one point — but were rewarded by the enthusiastic crew, and helicopter rides — which really cut down the hiking time — excellent specimens including three new species of ammonites, along with a high-spired gastropod and lobster claw that have yet to be written up. 

This area of the world is wonderful to hike and explore — a stunningly beautiful country. We were also blessed with access as the area is closed to all fossil collecting except with a permit.

BRITISH MUSEUM LONDON

Hope Whale

Stepping into the Natural History Museum, I was immediately greeted by Hope, the enormous blue whale skeleton gliding above Hintze Hall. 

It’s an impressive welcome—one that sets the tone for the rest of the visit. I wandered first into the Fossil Marine Reptile Gallery, where ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs stretched out in long, elegant arcs along the walls. 

There’s something grounding about standing beside creatures that ruled the seas millions of years before humans took their first steps.

From there, I couldn’t resist the Dinosaur Gallery. Stegosaurus—one of the most complete specimens of its kind—is a standout, and I paused for a while to take in the armour plates and that iconic spiked tail. 

Nearby, familiar favourites like Triceratops and Corythosaurus anchor the room, drawing steady streams of families and wide-eyed kids.

The Earth Galleries offered a completely different kind of magic. 

Gemstones glittered under soft lights, meteorites sat quietly in their cases, and huge crystals seemed almost unreal in their clarity. Each display felt like a reminder of how beautiful and varied our planet really is.

I ended my visit in the Darwin Centre, where rows of preserved specimens and interactive exhibits gave a glimpse into the research happening behind the scenes. 

It’s easy to forget that the museum isn’t just a place to display the natural world—it’s an active hub for studying it.

By the time I left, I’d only scratched the surface, but that’s the best part. The museum is the kind of place you can return to again and again, always finding something new tucked into its halls.

I returned at three different times in a week to catch the galleries at various times of day to see the natural light hitting the displays, especially in the marine reptile gallery, so I could take in all the wonderful details. 

HERMIT CRAB: REAL ESTATE TYCOONS OF THE FORESHORE

This little cutie is a hermit crab and he is wearing a temporary home borrowed from one of our mollusc friends. 

His body is a soft, squishy spiral that he eases into the perfect size shell time and time again as he grows. 

His first choice is always the empty shell of a marine snail but will get inventive in a pinch — nuts, wood, serpulid worm tubes, aluminium cans or wee plastic caps. 

They are inventive, polite and patient. 

You see, a hermit crabs' desire for the perfect bit of real estate will have them queueing beside larger shells — shells too large for them — to wait upon a big hermit crab to come along, discard the perfect home and slip into their new curved abode. This is all done in an orderly fashion with the hermit crabs all lined up, biggest to smallest to see who best fits the newly available shell. 

There are over 800 species of hermit crab — decapod crustaceans of the superfamily Paguroidea. Their lineage dates back to the Jurassic, 200 million years ago. 

Their soft squishy, weakly calcified bodies do not fossilize all that often but when they do the specimens are spectacular. Think of all the species of molluscs these lovelies have had a chance to try on — including ammonites — and all the shells that were never buried in sediment to become fossils because they were harvested as homes.  

On the shores of British Columbia, Canada, the hermit crab I come across most often is the Grainyhand hermit crab, Pagurus granosimanus. 

These wee fellows have tell-tale orange-brown antennae and olive green legs speckled with blue or white dots. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, a shell is known as x̱ala̱'is and gugwis means house on the beach. 

I do not know the Kwak’wala word for a hermit crab, so I will think of these cuties as x̱ala̱'is gugwis — envisioning them finding the perfect sized shell on the surf worn shores of Tsax̱is, Fort Rupert, Vancouver Island. 

BANFF NATIONAL PARK, CANADA

Banff National Park is breathtaking from any angle, but from the air it feels otherworldly—an alpine tapestry of turquoise lakes, braided rivers, and peaks stitched with glacier-light. 

Flying above it, you see the Rockies as the early surveyors must have: raw, immense, and defiantly ancient.

The town of Banff itself began humbly in the 1880s, growing from a railway stop on the new transcontinental line into Canada’s first national park. Railroad workers stumbled upon the Cave and Basin hot springs, sparking a cascade of interest in the area’s geology, wildlife, and deep-time history.

That same geology would soon draw paleontologists into the region’s wild backcountry. Just west of Banff, high on a ridge in Yoho National Park, lies the legendary Burgess Shale—one of the most important fossil sites on Earth. 

Discovered in 1909 by Charles Doolittle Walcott of the Smithsonian, the Burgess Shale preserves exquisitely detailed soft-bodied creatures from over 500 million years ago, offering a rare window into early animal evolution. 

Banff became the nearest hub—its hotels, trails, and later its research community supporting generations of scientists, students, and fossil-hungry adventurers heading into the high passes.

Seen from the sky today, Banff is a quiet modern town nestled among mountains that have been sculpted for hundreds of millions of years. Its story—of hot springs, railways, and extraordinary fossils—is always a delight to explore nestled in Canada's glorious Rockies.

LIVING FOSSILS: MASTERS OF MASS EXTINCTION EVENTS

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.

FOSSIL FELINES: MOZART

Mister Mozart

Cats—those purring enigmas who act like they invented gravity and disdain—have been perfecting their aloof charm for tens of millions of years. 

Long before domestic life on the couch, they prowled prehistoric forests and savannas, already masters of stealth.

The feline family tree begins about 25 million years ago with the Proailurus, whose name literally means “first cat.” 

This Miocene-era predator lived in Europe and Asia and probably looked like your housecat—if your housecat could take down small deer. 

Proailurus gave rise to the Pseudaelurus, the cat that would eventually split into two great evolutionary lineages: the big cats (Pantherinae, including lions, tigers, and leopards) and the small cats (Felinae, which include your couch companion, Felis catus), and snuggle bunnies like Mister Mozart you see here.

By the Pleistocene, cats had diversified spectacularly—from the legendary Smilodon, the sabre-toothed showstopper of Ice Age fame, to the lithe wildcats that would one day move into our granaries, charm our ancestors, and domesticate us. 

Yes, evidence suggests that around 10,000 years ago, humans didn’t so much tame cats as cats decided that humans were helpful enough to tolerate. A trend that continues to this day. 

Their fossils—sleek jaws, retractable claws, and the occasional pawprint—tell a story of evolutionary precision. Cats didn’t just evolve; they optimised. Every leap, pounce, and inscrutable stare has been honed by millions of years of predatory perfection.

So when your cat knocks your favourite mug off the counter and looks smug about it, remember: you’re gazing into the eyes of a finely tuned Miocene hunter. Evolution, it seems, has a sense of humour—and a soft spot for whiskers.

Kane & Mozart divving up the best bed spots

Despite centuries of cartoon propaganda suggesting otherwise, cats and dogs can form some of the most endearing interspecies friendships in the animal kingdom. 

While their social codes differ—dogs being pack-oriented and demonstrative, cats favouring solitary stealth and subtlety—mutual respect (and occasionally a shared sunny spot or prime position on your bed) often bridges the divide. 

Studies in animal behaviour show that early socialisation, body language recognition, and individual temperament play key roles in fostering harmony between felines and canines. 

A confident cat and a calm, well-socialised dog are a recipe for peaceful coexistence—and sometimes, genuine affection. Watching a cat gently groom a dog’s ears or a Ridgeback stoically endure a kitten’s playful ambush brings a smile to us all. Evolution may have set them on different paths, but friendship, it seems, is a universal instinct.

PARIS MUSEUM D'HISTOIRE NATURELLE

Step through the Jardin des Plantes on a misty Paris morning and you can almost hear the echo of centuries: the whisper of early botanists brushing past medicinal herbs, the tap-tap of fossil preparators chiselling bone from matrix, the distant murmur of scholars arguing over geology, zoology, and the new—dangerous—idea of evolution. 

This is the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, an institution whose roots stretch back over three and a half centuries, and whose halls contain the very heartbeat of French natural science. It is one of my favourite museums, both for its collections, its history and my personal histoire with this gorgeous institution and curators over the years. 

From Royal Garden to Scientific Powerhouse

The Museum began humbly in 1635 as the Jardin du Roi, a royal medicinal garden established by King Louis XIII. Initially devoted to growing plants for healing, it soon attracted scholars hungry for classification, exploration, and discovery. By 1793, during the fervour of the French Revolution, the garden transformed into the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, formally dedicated to the full study of nature—its rocks, its creatures, its ancient past.

The new Museum wasn’t just a repository of curiosities. It became an intellectual engine, a place where comparative anatomy, paleontology, and evolutionary science were tested, debated, and sometimes fought over with near-religious intensity. Naturalists trained here went on to explore every corner of the globe, collecting specimens that would build one of the world’s greatest scientific archives.

Galleries That Feel Like Time Machines

Grande Galerie de l’Évolution

Entering this gallery feels like walking into a cathedral built for life itself. Under its towering iron-and-glass nave, rebuilt in 1994, enormous whales hang suspended above schools of preserved fish, birds, mammals, and invertebrates. These iconic displays are storytelling machines, showing how organisms diversify, adapt, flourish, and sometimes vanish.

Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie Comparée

This is where your pulse quickens. Completed in 1898, the paleontology hall is a long gallery glowing with raw scientific drama. Grinning skulls and articulated skeletons stride along the central walkway: Iguanodon, Allosaurus, Diplodocus, and early horses like Anchitherium. The fossil collection here is one of Europe’s richest, built from centuries of field expeditions and intense scientific rivalry.

I had the very great pleasure of exploring this gallery to photograph it using natural light early in the mornings before the crowds were let in to explore. It is the picture perfect museum in terms of how they choose to display the specimens and the rich history they tell. 

As I peered at each fossil, I was thrilled to think of its moment of discovery and deeply honoured to view it unhurried in the quiet hush of my early morning visits. Looking closer, my eyes were delighted by so many treasures:

The holotype of Anoplotherium commune, studied by Georges Cuvier as he developed his revolutionary ideas on extinction.

A beautifully preserved Mammuthus primigenius skull hauled from Siberian permafrost.

Jurassic marine invertebrates—ammonites, belemnites, and ichthyosaur remains—collected from classic French sites such as Normandy, the Causses, and the Paris Basin.

The upstairs gallery houses comparative anatomy, where countless skeletons and organs are preserved in glass jars—a dizzying testament to centuries of study.

Galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie

A quieter but equally dazzling space. Massive amethyst geodes glow violet in dim light, meteorites sit in solemn rows, and cabinets showcase minerals collected during Napoleonic-era expeditions. The Museum’s mineral collection is legendary, containing more than 600,000 specimens.

The Paleontologists Who Shaped the Museum—and Science

Georges Cuvier (1769–1832)

Often called the father of vertebrate paleontology, Cuvier worked in the galleries that predate the Museum and helped build the foundations of its collections. His meticulous anatomical studies of fossil vertebrates established extinction as a scientific fact—a radical idea at the time. Many specimens he worked on still sit in climate-controlled cabinets within meters of where he once lectured.

Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844)

Cuvier’s intellectual rival—famous for his battles over anatomical homology. Their debates filled lecture halls and contributed to the Museum’s reputation as a crucible of scientific progress.

Albert Gaudry (1827–1908)

A pioneering paleontologist whose work on Miocene mammals from Pikermi, Greece, helped advance early evolutionary theory. Many of his comparative specimens form the backbone of the Museum’s rich mammalian fossil collection.

Marcellin Boule (1861–1942)

Director of the Museum and one of the most influential paleontologists of the early 20th century. Boule described the famous La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neanderthal, shaping early views of human evolution—sometimes incorrectly, sometimes brilliantly. His office overlooked the very galleries where those fossils are still displayed.

The Museum weathered both world wars—sometimes narrowly.

World War I — Many staff members were conscripted, and scientific expeditions halted. Parts of the collections were quietly relocated away from potential bombing sites. Yet the Museum remained open, a place of solace for Parisians seeking continuity amid chaos.

World War II — This was the more dangerous period for the museum. As German occupation tightened, curators scrambled to protect vulnerable collections:

Rare manuscripts and irreplaceable type fossils were packed into crates and hidden in cellars beneath the galleries. Some specimens were quietly transferred to rural estates outside Paris.

The Museum’s botanical greenhouses were kept running despite shortages, symbolically maintaining the “living” portion of the institution when much around it seemed precarious.

A lesser-known fact: Allied bombing raids damaged parts of the Jardin des Plantes, shattering glasshouses and breaking roof sections in several galleries. Miraculously, no major fossil collections were destroyed, largely thanks to the foresight of curators who had reinforced windows with sandbags and internal bracing.

Perhaps most intriguingly, German officers with interests in natural science reportedly toured the galleries—but staff resisted all pressure to surrender key specimens, sometimes hiding them within other displays or tucking them out of view.

Today, the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle remains one of the world’s most active centers for research in biodiversity, paleontology, anthropology, and geoscience. Its galleries invite millions of visitors to wander through deep time, marvel at natural wonders, and walk the same floors once trod by Cuvier, Saint-Hilaire, Boule, and generations of explorers whose stories are embedded in every fossil case and herbarium drawer.

I highly recommend you take the time to visit the Museum and stroll through its many galleries, enjoying the history of life on Earth and the many individuals who have dedicated their lives to understanding it.

CAMBRIAN FAUNA FROM THE EAST KOOTENAY REGION

Upper Cambrian Trilobite Outcrops

When most people imagine British Columbia, they picture sky-scraping mountains, temperate rainforests dripping with moss, and coastlines sculpted by Pacific storms. 

But beneath these landscapes lies a vastly older, stranger world—one that thrived more than half a billion years before humans set foot on this continent.

This was the Cambrian, the era of Earth’s first great biological flowering. And ruling those early seas were the trilobites.

Trilobites were among the earliest complex animals to populate Earth’s oceans—marine arthropods with armor-like exoskeletons, jointed legs, compound eyes, and astonishing evolutionary variety. 

Over 270 million years, they adapted to almost every marine habitat imaginable and diversified into more than 20,000 species.

Today, their fossilized forms—ribbed, spined, streamlined, or elaborately ornamented—are found on every continent. But few places on Earth preserve their story with the richness and fidelity of southeastern British Columbia.

A Fossil Time Machine in the Rockies

The province’s Cambrian-aged formations offer a rare window into early marine ecosystems. The world-famous Burgess Shale preserves soft-bodied creatures with near-photographic clarity. But nearby, just outside the city of Cranbrook, another treasure trove reveals the rise of the trilobites in even earlier seas.

This is the Eager Formation—a Burgess Shale–type Lagerstätte from Cambrian Series 2, Stage 4, roughly 515 million years old. Long considered a low-diversity deposit, new research has transformed its scientific importance.

New Species from an Ancient Sea

A sweeping study by Mark Webster, Jean-Bernard Caron and colleagues, published in the Journal of Paleontology in March 2025, combined with new trilobite taxonomy uncover a thriving community of early trilobites—including several species new to science or newly named favourites from some earlier known colloquially from Lisa Bohach's unpublished thesis.

Among them:

• Olenellus santuccii Webster n. sp.
• Wanneria cranbrookense Webster n. sp.
• Olenellus? schofieldi
• Mesonacis eagerensis

These four olenelloids dominate the fauna, forming the backbone of a “typical” benthic trilobite community from the middle Dyeran Stage in Laurentia (ancient North America).

Alongside them are rare representatives from the enigmatic dorypygid and “ptychoparioid” lineages—groups whose fragmentary preservation leaves some species unnamed but no less scientifically important.

This diversity places the Cranbrook trilobite assemblage on par with other remarkable Cambrian deposits across Laurentia, filling a major stratigraphic gap between earlier and later Burgess Shale–type localities.

Even more remarkable: sedimentologic and preservational clues indicate these creatures died close to where they lived, their bodies settling gently into Cambrian muds with minimal transport. This is time travel at its most precise.

Lower Cambrian – The Eager Formation

Wanneria cranbrookense Webster n. sp.

The site outcrops at a few locations as you head east out of Cranbrook towards Fort Steele. 

The first trilobites were discovered with the building of the Kootenay Highway connecting Cranbrook to Fort Steele and beyond. 

Several other localities, including the outcrops at the Silhouette Rife Range — which is literally on a Rifle Range where folks go to shoot at things — is a shade older than the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale but the fauna here is much less varied. 

The site has been known and collected since the 1920s. Back in the day, fossil collecting was a family affair with folks heading out in their lightly coloured finery to picnic and surface collect the eroding exposures. 

Cranbrook local, Clement Hungerford Pollen was an engineer and avocational palaeontologist. He promoted collecting the exposures of the Eager Formation around 1921. As a pedigreed Englishman of considerable means, he had invested in the Kootenay Central Railway, revitalizing the town by opening up railway access within the region. Locals have been actively collecting at this site ever since. 

Recent work by Mark Webster et al. highlighted other Lower Cambrian species from this area, including:

• Fritzaspis – a small, early olenellid.
• Elliptocephala – known for its elongated head shield.
• Repinaella – a primitive form key to understanding trilobite origins.

Together, these fossils help correlate the Eager Formation with Lower Cambrian deposits across western Laurentia, refining the timeline of trilobite evolution.

Upper Cambrian – The McKay Group

A short drive from the Eager outcrops lies the McKay Group, a sequence of shales and limestones preserving spectacular Upper Cambrian trilobites.

Here, paleontologists such as Brian Chatterton have documented a flourishing array of species, including:

• Pterocephalia norfordi
• Elvinia roemeri
• Calyptaulax
• Prosaukia
• Orygmaspis contracta

Recent fieldwork by dedicated scientists and citizen collectors—Chris New, Chris Jenkins, Guy Santucci, Don Askew, and Stacey Gibb—continues to expand this list, even turning up Pseudagnostus securiger, a Jiangshanian-age species not previously known from southeastern BC.

Names That Tell a Story of Some Very Awesome Folk...

Paleontology is not just about fossils—it’s also about the people who dedicate their lives (and weekends) to uncovering them. In British Columbia, several trilobite species honour those contributions:

• Pterocephalia santuccii – named for geologist Guy Santucci, whose mapping and fieldwork brought attention to the Cranbrook area.
• Orygmaspis newi – recognizing Chris New, a tireless and deeply awesome citizen scientist.
• Calyptaulax jenkinsi – honouring Chris Jenkins, whose meticulous collecting enriched scientific collections.

These names are more than labels—they’re tributes to the collaboration between professionals, institutions, and passionate community members.

A Cast of Characters Spanning Millions of Years

Across the Cambrian rocks of BC, several trilobites stand out as icons of their time:

• Olenoides serratus – the Burgess Shale classic, often preserved with legs and antennae intact.
• Wanneria walcottana – an Early Cambrian form.
• Mesonacis eagerensis – the signature trilobite of the Eager Formation.
• Pterocephalia santuccii, Orygmaspis newi, Calyptaulax jenkinsi – Upper Cambrian forms marking the twilight of trilobite diversity in the region.

Together, these species chart an evolutionary journey from the earliest trilobites to the sophisticated, ornamented forms of the late Cambrian.

Collecting fossils is restricted in national parks like Yoho, but other formations around Cranbrook allow regulated scientific access. Here, fossil hunters navigate weathered shale slopes and scree-covered ridges, scanning for the ribbed arcs and crescent-shaped cephalons of long-dead arthropods.

Trilobites are as beautiful as they are informative. Their perfect bilateral symmetry, paired spines, and geometric patterns have inspired artists and scientists alike for centuries.

Tuzoia, Lower Cambrian, Eager Formation

For those eager to explore this deep past without a rock hammer, the Cranbrook History Centre, located on the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa First Nation, offers superb displays of Cambrian trilobites, including Tuzoia and other arthropods—plus a delightful collection of Devonian fish.

Trilobites may have vanished 250 million years ago, but their legacy endures.

They help us understand:

• How ecosystems rebounded after ancient climate disruptions
• How early animals diversified and competed
• How continents moved and reshaped marine habitats
• How life evolved complex sensory systems and behaviours

Every fossil is a data point from a vanished ocean, a chapter in Earth’s deep-time biography.

Next time you find yourself walking the rocky outcrops of southeastern British Columbia, pause for a moment. Beneath your feet lies the fossilized remains of vibrant, bustling seas—worlds where trilobites crawled, hunted, burrowed, and thrived long before mountains rose or forests took root.

These ancient mariners whisper stories from half a billion years ago. And thanks to ongoing research—from Caron’s foundational work to the newest species described by Webster and dedicated field collectors—we are finally learning to hear them.

Mark Webster and Jean-Bernard Caron "Trilobites of the Cranbrook Lagerstätte (Eager Formation, Cambrian Stage 4), British Columbia," Journal of Paleontology 98(4), 460-503, (6 March 2025). https://doi.org/10.1017/jpa.2023.89