VANCOUVER ISLAND'S ICE AGE CAVES: WHERE GIANT GROUND SLOTHS STILL SLEEP

There is a version of Vancouver Island that few ever see.

Not the emerald forests draped in moss, the crashing Pacific surf or the towering Douglas firs reaching skyward, but another world hidden beneath our feet. 

A world of silent limestone chambers where time slows to a crawl and the Ice Age still lingers in the darkness.

Deep within the island's karst cave systems lie the remains of an extraordinary lost ecosystem. 

Long before people paddled these shores, before cedar canoes skimmed the inlets and long before the glaciers finally loosened their grip, these caves became natural vaults, preserving the stories of some of the largest animals ever to call Vancouver Island home.

Among the most remarkable are the giant ground sloths. The thought almost seems impossible. Sloths? On Vancouver Island? Yet it is wonderfully true.

The giant ground sloth Megalonyx jeffersonii, Jefferson's Ground Sloth, wandered British Columbia during the closing chapters of the Pleistocene. 

Unlike the tiny tree sloths that spend their days hanging upside down in the tropical forests of Central and South America, these impressive herbivores stood nearly three metres (10 feet) tall when rearing up on their hind legs. 

Giant Ground Sloth

Built like shaggy tanks, they browsed shrubs and young trees using long, powerful forelimbs tipped with formidable claws that were better suited to pulling branches toward them than defending against predators.

As the last glaciers retreated some 14,000 to 12,000 years ago, Vancouver Island was transforming. 

Vast ice sheets gave way to open parklands, willow thickets and patches of spruce, creating a landscape rich enough to support these gentle giants.

They were not alone.

The caves have yielded an astonishing collection of Ice Age fauna, each discovery adding another piece to the puzzle of a vanished world. 

Ancient bison once grazed these emerging landscapes. Caribou and deer moved across newly exposed valleys. 

Wolves and foxes hunted among the tundra-like plains. Black bears sought shelter in the caves, while the colossal short-faced bear, Arctodus simus, one of North America's largest terrestrial predators, also roamed these lands. 

Arctodus simus, La Brea Tar Pits

There is a wonderful fossil specimen of Arctodus simus on display at the La Brea Tar Pits in California, if you ever have the chance to visit. 

Smaller creatures, from marmots to birds, left their own subtle traces within the cave sediments, creating an extraordinary record of an ecosystem rebuilding itself after the glaciers.

Unlike many fossil localities exposed on cliffs or riverbanks, these treasures survived because they were tucked safely away underground. 

Animals occasionally wandered into cave entrances, became trapped in vertical shafts or sought temporary shelter, their remains gradually buried beneath sediments that remained cool, dry and remarkably undisturbed for thousands of years.

Recovering these fossils has never been the work of a lone adventurer. Their discovery is the story of collaboration. 

Many of Vancouver Island's fossil-bearing caves were first explored by dedicated local cavers and members of the BC Speleological Federation. Crawling through tight passages, descending deep shafts, and carefully mapping these hidden worlds, they occasionally encountered ancient bones resting undisturbed on cave floors. 

Knowing their importance, they did exactly what every responsible caver hopes they would do—they left the remains where they were and contacted researchers, museums and universities so the discoveries could be properly studied.

That decision preserved an irreplaceable scientific record.

My good friend Mike Trask (Oh, how I miss that man!) also contributed greatly to our knowledge of these caves and the wonders held within. 

Port Eliza Cave, Vancouver Island

Over the years, archaeologists Dr. Quentin Mackie and Dr. Duncan McLaren of the University of Victoria have led investigations of several of Vancouver Island's remarkable cave sites, including the famous Port Eliza Cave, located on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island near the Holberg Quatsino Sound region.

Their research has revealed rich fossil assemblages that help us understand how animals—and eventually people—lived as the Ice Age drew to a close.

Quaternary geologist and geoarchaeologist Dr. Michael C. Wilson has also played a pivotal role in documenting these cave deposits. 

His comprehensive analyses of the faunal remains have helped establish the presence of giant ground sloths, bison, short-faced bears and many other species, painting an increasingly detailed picture of Vancouver Island's ancient ecosystems during a period of profound environmental change.

Together, scientists, archaeologists, geologists and volunteer cavers have opened a remarkable window into British Columbia's deep past. 

Vancouver Island has worn many faces. It has been buried beneath kilometres of ice, transformed into open tundra, crossed by giant sloths, stalked by immense bears and slowly reclaimed by the forests we know today.

A special thank you to Shirley Renaud for rekindling this wonder for all of us with her thoughtful questions around these cave systems and the Ice Age assemblages they hold. 

Image: A skeleton of M. jeffersonii on display in the Orton Geological Museum. This skeleton was mounted in 1896. Photo by Fuzheado. 

Image: Arctodus simus, La Brea Tar Pits. Photo by Jonathan Chen

Port Eliza Cave: North American West Coast interstadial environment and implications for human migrations, ScienceDirect: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379103000921

Late Wisconsinan Port Eliza Cave deposits and their implications for human coastal migration, Vancouver Island, Canada. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Location-of-Port-Eliza-Cave-along-the-hypothesized-coastal-migration-route_fig1_229940158

WADI AL-HITAN: VALLEY OF THE WHALES

Fossil Whale Skeleton, Wadi Al-Hitan

Egypt’s Eocene limestones captivate geologists and paleontologists from around the world. 

These pale, fossil-rich rocks hold the story of an ancient sea and the remarkable creatures that once swam through it.

Modern fieldwork in the Fayum Depression, Wadi Al-Hitan — the Valley of the Whales — and the outcrops near Giza and Cairo is revealing how the shoreline of the Tethys Ocean shifted over tens of millions of years — and how life adapted as land and sea traded places again and again.

Researchers from the Egyptian Geological Museum, the University of Michigan, and Cairo University are combining cutting-edge tools with time-honored field methods. Satellite imaging and drone photogrammetry provide sweeping, high-resolution views of the fossil beds, while detailed stratigraphic logging, sediment sampling, and fossil excavation bring the story into focus layer by layer.

Fossil Whale from Wadi Al-Hitan

The work reveals a stunning environmental transformation. 

The lower rock units record shallow marine deposits packed with Nummulites, corals, and mollusks — life that thrived in the warm, clear waters of the early Eocene Tethys. 

Above these layers, the sediments change in both color and character, grading upward into deltaic and freshwater deposits filled with the fossils of turtles, crocodiles, and early land mammals. It is a geological diary of Egypt’s slow emergence from sea to land.

Wadi Al-Hitan — The Valley of the Whales

Wadi Al-Hitan — The Valley of the Whales

Nestled deep in Egypt’s Western Desert, about 150 kilometers southwest of Cairo, lies Wadi Al-Hitan, one of the world’s most extraordinary fossil sites. 

Once part of the vast Tethys seaway, this now-arid valley was a shallow coastal lagoon some 40 to 50 million years ago, during the Eocene.

Here, teams of paleontologists meticulously map and preserve the articulated skeletons of ancient whales — including Basilosaurus isis and Dorudon atrox — whose bones often lie exactly where the animals came to rest on the seafloor. 

Over time, they were entombed in fine-grained sandstone and limestone, preserving everything from vertebrae and skulls to delicate ribs and vestigial hind limbs.

The surrounding rocks tell a parallel story. Their alternating layers of sandstone, marl, and limestone record shifts in sea level and climate — tidal flats giving way to open marine conditions, then to lagoons choked with vegetation and early mangroves. 

Geochemists analyze the isotopic composition of these sediments to reconstruct ancient seawater temperatures and salinity, while microfossil specialists examine foraminifera and ostracods under the microscope to determine just how deep and warm the waters once were.

Wadi Al-Hitan — The Valley of the Whales

Wadi Al-Hitan’s fossil bounty extends beyond whales. 

The valley has yielded remains of sharks, sawfish, rays, sea cows (Sirenia), turtles, crocodiles, and even early land mammals, offering a vivid snapshot of an ecosystem in transition — one of the last great marine habitats before North Africa began its slow drift toward desert.

The Valley of the Whales is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, protected both for its breathtaking fossil record and its haunting desert beauty. 

Walking through it feels like time travel: the sandstone cliffs glow golden in the sun, and the bones of whales lie half-exposed in the sand — silent witnesses to a vanished ocean. It is a peaceful place to visit. Bone dry, barren but with a rich history.

Fossil Whale from Wadi Al-Hitan

Every fossil, every layer of sediment adds a new brushstroke to the portrait of Egypt’s Eocene world — a subtropical paradise where whales swam through mangroves, coral reefs teemed with life, and the ancestors of modern elephants grazed along the shore.

Beneath the desert sands, these rocks still whisper the story of 50 million years of evolution, of seas that rose and fell, and of creatures that bridged the worlds of land and water — all written in stone.

Photo Credits: Wadi al-Hitan | Wikimedia Commons

FOSSILS OF EGYPT: TRACING LIFE FROM LAND TO SEA

Spinosaurus, Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum

Egypt is often celebrated for its pyramids and pharaohs, but beneath those golden sands lies a much older and equally astonishing legacy — the fossil record of a land that has shifted from lush tropical forests to inland seas and back again.

From the Western Desert to the Fayum Depression and Wadi Al-Hitan (the Valley of the Whales), Egypt’s rocks preserve nearly 100 million years of life on Earth, from the Cretaceous dinosaurs that roamed its river plains to the Eocene whales that swam through the Tethys Ocean.

Over the past few posts, we've looked at the geological wonders of Egypt. Here is a deeper look at some of the many interesting fossil species to be found in this rich paleontological playground.

Petrified Wood — A Forest Turned to Stone

Across Egypt’s deserts, the ground often glitters with fossilized trees. The Petrified Wood Protectorate near New Cairo, along the Cairo–Suez road, and wide stretches of the Western Desert are carpeted in ancient trunks and branches turned to stone.

These fossil forests are vivid evidence that much of Egypt was once a humid, tropical landscape, rich with vegetation. The trees, buried in sediments and permineralized over millions of years, became exquisitely preserved in silica. Today, their polished cross-sections shimmer with bands of reds, browns, and golds — a striking reminder of the region’s deep ecological transformations.

Reptiles of the Fayum — Turtles, Crocodiles, and Giants — The Fayum Depression has yielded a wealth of Eocene reptile fossils that speak of a warm, watery world teeming with life. Land tortoises like Testudo ammon roamed the ancient floodplains, while river turtles such as Podocnemis blanckenhorni and Stereogenys pelomedusa swam through slow-moving channels. 

Even more dramatic are the remains of Gigantophis, one of the largest snakes ever discovered, and Tomistoma, a crocodile-like predator from the Qasr al-Sagha Formation. These reptiles hint at an ecosystem that blended mangroves, lagoons, and river deltas — a mosaic of habitats where both freshwater and marine species thrived.

Birds of an Ancient Delta — The Fayum’s fossil beds also record an impressive diversity of Eocene and Oligocene birdlife. The ancient wetlands once supported ospreys (Pandionidae), flamingos (Phoenicopteridae), herons, cranes (Gruidae), cormorants (Phalacrocoracidae), and even the massive shoebilled stork (Balaenicipitidae).

These avian fossils, comparable to species found today around Lake Victoria and the Upper Nile, suggest a vibrant, subtropical ecosystem rich in lakes and marshes — a far cry from the arid desert we see today.

Mammals of the Fayum — Whales, Elephants, and Early Primates

The mammalian fossils of Egypt are among the most extraordinary in the world. In the Fayum Depression and at Wadi Al-Hitan, paleontologists have uncovered a sweeping record of evolution from land to sea and from primitive mammals to the ancestors of modern species.

At Wadi Al-Hitan, skeletons of early whales — Basilosaurus isis, Dorudon atrox, and Phiomicetus — preserve a pivotal evolutionary moment when whales transitioned from walking on land to swimming in the sea. Their long, streamlined bodies and tiny hind limbs are beautiful testaments to nature’s adaptability.

Meanwhile, the terrestrial Fayum deposits reveal a menagerie of early mammals:

• Arsinoitherium, a massive, rhinoceros-like creature with twin horns;
• Moeritherium, a semi-aquatic ancestor of elephants and manatees;
• Palaeomastodon and Phioma, early proboscideans bridging the gap to modern elephants;
• and Megalohyrax, a giant relative of today’s small hyrax.

Carnivorous mammals also prowled these Eocene landscapes — species like Apterodon, Pterodon, and Hyaenodon, formidable predators of their time.

The Fayum Primates — Our Ancient Cousins — Among the Fayum’s most scientifically valuable discoveries are the fossils of early primates, bridging the gap between ancient prosimians and modern monkeys and apes.

From the lower sequence, we find forms like Oligopithecus savagei and Qatrania wingi, while the upper sequence preserves Catopithecus browni, Proteopithecus sylvia, and the well-known Apidium and Parapithecus species.

Perhaps most famous is Aegyptopithecus zeuxis, a small tree-dwelling primate with forward-facing eyes and a relatively large brain. It is often cited as one of the earliest known ancestors of modern Old World monkeys and apes — and, by extension, of humans.

These fossils from the Jebel Qatrani Formation provide an unparalleled window into primate evolution roughly 35 to 30 million years ago, when Africa’s tropical forests were home to our distant kin.

Dinosaurs of the Cretaceous Desert — Long before the whales and primates, Egypt’s landscape was dominated by Cretaceous dinosaurs. The Bahariya Formation and Nubian Sandstone have yielded fossils of immense sauropods and ferocious theropods, painting a vivid picture of life 95 million years ago.

Among the stars of this ancient cast are:

• The long-necked Aegyptosaurus and Paralititan, massive plant-eating sauropods;
• The sleek, predatory Bahariasaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and Deltadromeus;
• The semi-aquatic Spinosaurus, with its iconic sail-backed spine — perhaps one of the most famous dinosaurs to ever emerge from African rock; and Mansourasaurus, a titanosaur discovered more recently, helping to link Africa’s late Cretaceous fauna with those of Europe and Asia.

These finds demonstrate that Egypt was once a fertile delta world of rivers and floodplains, where dinosaurs thrived long before the Sahara turned to sand.

Egypt’s Fossil Sites — Portals Through Time — Key fossil localities across the country continue to reveal Egypt’s ancient ecosystems:

• Wadi Al-Hitan — Eocene marine fossils, including whales and sea cows.
• Fayum Depression — rich terrestrial and freshwater deposits with early mammals and primates.
• Bahariya Formation — famous for Cretaceous dinosaurs and early vertebrates.
• Jebel Qatrani Formation — Oligocene primates and proboscideans.
• Qasr el Sagha Formation — reptiles, turtles, and early crocodilians.
• Upper Cretaceous Phosphates and Variegated Shale — marine invertebrates and early fish.
• Moghra Oasis — Miocene fossils bridging the gap between ancient and modern fauna.
• Queseir Formation — Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) deposit in the Kharga oasis of the Southwestern Desert where the first side-necked turtle Khargachelys caironensis can be found

Egypt’s fossils offer a spectacular narrative of evolution, climate, and change — from swampy Cretaceous river deltas to lush Eocene seas and forests, to the deserts we see today. 

Each discovery connects the story of Earth’s deep past with the land of the Pharaohs, revealing that Egypt’s most enduring monuments are not her pyramids, nor her simple blocks of stone, but the fossils buried them

Image Credit: Spinosaurus at the special exhibit of Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum by Palaeotaku CC BY 4.0

UPPER CRETACEOUS FOSSILS OF HORNBY ISLAND

The rugged terrain of Hornby Island is formed from sediments of the upper Nanaimo Group which are also widely exposed on adjacent Denman Island and the southern Gulf Islands. 

To understand the ground we are walking upon, we need to peel back the layers of time. Hornby has a total stratigraphic thickness of 1350 m of upper Nanaimo Group marine sandstone, conglomerate and shales. 

These sediments are what we search through to find wonderfully preserved fossils where outcrops along the beachfront proffer them partially exposed. 

Four formations underlie the island from oldest to youngest, and from west to east: the Northumberland, Geoffrey, Spray and Gabriola.

During the upper Cretaceous, between ~90 to 65 Ma, sediments derived from the Coast Belt to the east and the Cascades to the southeast poured seaward to the west and northwest into what was the large ancestral Georgia Basin. This major forearc basin was situated between Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia.

The Nanaimo Group as a whole represents largely coarse-grained units deposited in deep-sea fan systems. In this environment, deeper channels continuously cut through successive shale and sandstone bodies. The channels funnelled density currents into the basin, while also building levee deposits.

Turbidity currents travelled down the channels, and also overtopped the levees spilling across backslope areas. Think of it as a thoroughfare of motion by our softer sediments. 

The sequential sediment formations, from significantly coarse-grained sandstones and conglomerates to fine silts and shale units of the Nanaimo Group, are considered to be partly due to eustacy, but more significantly related to relative sea-level changes induced by regional tectonics in an active forearc setting.

The eustatic sea level is the distance from the centre of the earth to the sea surface. An increase of the eustatic sea-level can be generated by decreasing glaciation, increasing spreading rates of the mid-ocean ridges or more mid-oceanic ridges.

The Northumberland Formation is made up of a massive, dark-grey mudstone that is locally interlaminated and interbedded with siltstone and fine-grained sandstone. 

There are abundant calcium carbonate concretions, parallel and current ripple laminations, clastic dikes and folded layers due to slumping. 

In the Gulf Islands to the south, this formation has yielded abundant and diverse foraminifera, tiny single-celled organisms, members of a phylum of amoeboid protists, that tell us these marine paleodepths formed at 150-1200 metres below the ocean surface.

The more resistive Geoffrey Formation consists of thick-bedded sandstone and conglomerate. It is highly channelized, and some sandstone has exposed parallel and ripple laminations. The Spray Formation exposed on the east end of the island is a massive olive-grey mudstone with interlaminations of sandstone.

Furthest to the east, the youngest exposures on Hornby Island are from the Gabriola Formation, which outcrops on the eastern peninsula. 

This is again a thick-bedded and channelized sequence of conglomerates and massive sandstone with minor mudstone interbeds. South, in the Gulf Islands, this formation has contained ammonites, gastropods and pelecypods. Paleowater-depth from foraminiferal assemblages has been set at 200 m.

Katnick, D.C. and P.S. Mustard (2001): Geology of Denman and Hornby Islands, British Columbia (NTS 92F/7E, 10); British Columbia Geological Survey Branch, Geoscience Map 2001-3.

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

Photo: Heidi Henderson aka the Fossil Huntress — Palaeo Sommelier / Explorer-in-Residence

CANADA'S FIRST SMILODON

This fierce predator with the luxurious coat is Smilodon fatalis — a compact but robust killer that weighed in around 160 to 280 kg and was 1.5 - 2.2 metres long.

Smilodon is a genus of the extinct machairodont subfamily of the felids. It is one of the most famous prehistoric mammals and the best known saber-toothed cat. Although commonly known as the saber-toothed tiger, it was not closely related to the tiger or other modern cats.

Up until a few years ago, all the great fossil specimens of this apex predator were found south of us in the United States. That was until some interesting bones from Medicine Hat, Alberta got a second look.

A few years ago, a fossil specimen caught the eye of researcher Ashley Reynolds as she was rummaging through the collections at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. 

Back in the 1960s,  University of Toronto palaeontologist C.S. Churcher and his team had collected and donated more than 1,200 specimens from their many field seasons scouring the bluffs of the South Saskatchewan River near Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Churcher is a delightful storyteller and a palaeontologist with a keen eye. I had the very great pleasure of listening to many of his talks out at the University of British Columbia and a few Vancouver Paleontological Society meetings in the mid-2000s. 

"Rufus" was a thoroughly charming storyteller and shared many of his adventures from the field. 

He moved out to the West Coast for his retirement, first to Gabriola Island then to Victoria, but his keen love of the science kept him giving talks to enthralled listeners keen to hear about his survey of the Dakhleh Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt, geomorphology, stratigraphy, recent biology, Pleistocene and Holocene lithic cultures, insights learned from Neolithic Islamic pottery to Roman settlements.

The specimens he had collected had been roughly sorted but never examined in detail. Reynolds, who was researching the growth patterns and life histories of extinct cats saw a familiar-looking bone from an ancient cat's right front paw. That tiny paw bone had reached through time and was positively identified as Canada's first Smilodon.

These Apex Predators used their exceptionally long upper canine teeth to hunt large mammals. 

Isotopes preserved in the bones of S. fatalis in the La Brea Tar Pits in California tell us that they liked to dine on bison (Bison antiquus) and camels (Camelops) along with deer and tapirs. Smilodon is thought to have killed its prey by holding it still with its forelimbs and biting it. And that was quite the bite!

Their razor-sharp incisors were arranged in an arch. Once they bit down, the teeth would hold their prey still and stabilize it while the canine bite was delivered — and what a bite that was. They could open their mouths a full 120 degrees.

Smilodon died out at the same time that most North and South American megafauna disappeared, about 10,000 years ago. Its reliance on large animals has been proposed as the cause of its extinction, along with climate change and competition with other species. 

OWLS: MASTERS OF THE HUNT

They move through the night as if stitched into it, seamless and soundless. You don’t hear an owl arrive. 

You feel it—the brief shift in the air above your head, a whisper of movement. It always feels me with a sense of awe. 

The silence is part of the hunt. Each feather, soft-edged and velvet-fringed, pulls the air apart without letting it stitch back into a sound. It is the most refined stealth technology evolution ever produced.

Out of the dusk they come, low and spectral. A heart-shaped face turns like a satellite dish, searching, mapping the world not with sight but with sound—every rustle of vole or beetle sketched in invisible lines. 

In Kwak’wala, the language of the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples of northern Vancouver Island, both an owl and a carved owl mask are called, Da̱xda̱xa̱luła̱mł, (though I have also heard them called Gwax̱w̱a̱lawadi, names that carries deep layers of meaning within their sounds. 

Snowy Owl

Amongst the Kwagu’ł and cousin Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations (those who speak Kwak'wala), the owl is often regarded as a messenger between worlds—a being that moves freely between the realm of the living and the spirit world. 

Its nocturnal calls are heard as sounds of the forest but also messages from ancestors, guiding, cautioning, or reminding listeners of their connection to those who came before. 

The owl’s ability to see in darkness and to travel silently through the night makes it a symbol of perception, transformation, and spiritual awareness, woven into the ceremonial stories and teachings that link human life to the greater cycles of nature and the unseen.

The Barn Owl, Tyto alba, pale as old linen and light as breath, drifts over stubble fields and meadows on a night wind. Its back is mottled with gold and grey, a shimmer of faded ochre dusted with starlight, while its underparts are moon-pale, unmarked. To see one cross a field in darkness is to glimpse a ghost that has learned to eat.

Barn Owls wear the night differently from their kin. Where they are gold and ivory, the Great Grey Owl, Strix nebulosa, is a storm of silver mist and charcoal, all rings and ripples of smoke. The Snowy Owl, Bubo scandiacus, gleams white as an Arctic sunbeam, each feather edged in ink like frost-shadow on snow. 

The Tawny Owl, Strix aluco, one of my favourite woodland companions, takes the colour of leaf litter and bark, warm brown and russet, perfectly disguised against a tree trunk’s skin. 

The diversity of owl plumage tells the story of their worlds—the open field, the frozen tundra, the dense woodland—and of their mastery of concealment. 

Every pattern is a negotiation with light and habitat, a balance between being unseen and seeing everything.

The eyes, of course, are what we remember. They are not round but tubes, locked in place by bone, forcing the head to turn instead. Two great wells of amber, gold, or black glass, evolved to harvest every drop of night. Behind them, the facial disc funnels sound to asymmetrical ears—one higher than the other, tuned to triangulate the faintest scurry in the dark. 

An owl hears in three dimensions; it knows precisely not just where a mouse is, but how far beneath the snow or under the leaf mould it crouches. 

The result is a predator with seemingly supernatural powers. The flight is the confirmation.

Yet for all their modern perfection, owls are ancient creatures. Their lineage stretches far back into the Oligocene and beyond. 

The earliest fossils we can confidently call owls—members of the order Strigiformes—appear around 60 million years ago, just after the age of dinosaurs gave way to the age of mammals. 

One of the oldest known is Ogygoptynx wetmorei, found in the Paleocene deposits of Colorado, a time when tropical forests spread across what is now the Rocky Mountain region. 

Slightly later, in the early Eocene, we meet Berruornis from France and Primoptynx from Wyoming—owls large and powerful, already showing the curved talons and forward-facing eyes that mark their descendants.

The fossil record reveals that the ancestors of modern owls were even larger and, in some cases, more diurnal than today’s secretive forms. 

The Miocene produced giants like Ornimegalonyx oteroi of Cuba—standing nearly a metre tall, possibly flightless, stalking prey through forest shadows. Europe once hosted Strix intermedia, and North America its share of extinct Tyto species, some with wingspans rivaling modern eagles. 

By the Pleistocene, many of the owl forms we know today had already arrived: Snowy Owls gliding over Ice Age steppes, Barn Owls haunting caves where mammoth bones lay.

Those caves, in fact, preserve some of our best records of owl life. Owls, being generous regurgitators, leave behind pellets—compressed bundles of fur and bone that fossilize beautifully in dry shelters. 

Through these, we reconstruct vanished ecosystems: field mice of species long extinct, voles that once roamed British lowlands before the sea cut us from the continent. Each pellet is a time capsule, the residue of a meal but also of a habitat. These little truth revealing pellets are a delight to find (don't be squeamish!) and pull apart as they tell us as much today as they do from the past. 

There’s something wonderfully contradictory about owls in prehistory: creatures so adapted to darkness, yet so enduring in stone. The silent of their wings does not fossilize, but echoes persist in bone and pellet and in the gouge marks of their claws on ancient prey. 

In the fossil layers of Rancho La Brea in California, the tar pits have trapped the remains of owls that hunted across the Late Pleistocene grasslands—Barn Owls and Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) caught in the sticky legacy of bitumen. 

In Europe, the famous Messel Pit of Germany has yielded exquisite Eocene specimens, complete with impressions of feathers and talons—evidence that the essential owl form has changed little in 50 million years. 

Once you reach perfection, evolution tends to leave you alone.

Their success lies in specialisation: asymmetrical hearing, silent flight, low metabolic rate, unmatched night vision. Yet their story is also one of vulnerability. The very silence that serves them in the wild renders them invisible to us until they are gone. Barn Owl numbers have fallen in much of Europe as hedgerows vanish and grasslands are ploughed. 

In contrast, urban owls like the adaptable Great Horned Owl have expanded their ranges, turning city parks into hunting grounds. Some species are reclaiming ancient territories; others fade into absence, leaving only their echoes and fossils behind. Where I live on Vancouver Island, I can hear their call in the night and early morning as they send out their plaintive calls for a mate.

So much of what makes an owl remarkable—the hush of its wings, the glimmer of its eyes, the shape of its face—seems almost designed for myth. We have read them as omens, messengers, symbols of wisdom or death. But the truth, as the fossil record reminds us, is simpler and deeper. 

Owls are survivors, engineers of silence that have watched the world change for sixty million years. When one glides over a moonlit field, I stand in humility watching its perfect design and adaptation to this world and its connection to realms I can only dream of.

PROEUHOPLITES: TREASURES FROM THE BLUE SLIPPER

Cradled within the soft blue-grey embrace of the Gault Clay lies this beautifully preserved Proeuhoplites subtuberculatus, collected from Bed II (iv) of the Folkestone Gault in Kent, southeast England. 

Measuring just 35 millimetres across, this small ammonite carries within its coiled shell the memory of an ancient sea that covered much of what is now southern England and northern France some 105–110 million years ago.

Known locally as the Blue Slipper, the Gault Clay was laid down during the Middle to Upper Albian stages of the Lower Cretaceous. 

Fine mud settled slowly through calm waters onto a continental shelf that stretched beneath warm, open seas. The absence of freshwater or estuarine fossils tells us these sediments accumulated far from river mouths, in a fully marine environment where life flourished beneath gentle waves.

The Gault Sea was neither abyssal nor shallow. Studies of foraminifera and the traces left by algae-grazing gastropods suggest depths of around 40 to 60 metres. Surface waters may have reached a balmy 20–22°C, while the seafloor remained a little cooler, between 17 and 19°C. 

It was a world of filtered sunlight and drifting plankton, where ammonites navigated the water column alongside belemnites, fishes, crustaceans, and other marine life of the mid-Cretaceous.

Folkestone is the type locality for the Gault Clay and has long been celebrated by collectors and palaeontologists alike for its astonishing diversity of fossils. 

Ammonites abound here, joined by elegant belemnites such as Neohibolites, delicate bivalves including Birostrina and Pectinucula, the beautifully ornamented gastropod Anchura, solitary corals, shark teeth, crinoid fragments, and crustaceans such as the crab Notopocorystes. Even occasional fragments of driftwood, carried far out to sea, found their final resting place within these muddy sediments.

The Isle of Wight preserves Gault deposits too, though generally with fewer fossils. Even so, those clays have yielded handsome specimens of Hoplites, Paranahoplites, and Beudanticeras, offering further glimpses into these thriving Cretaceous ecosystems.

As for this particular ammonite, taxonomy has its own gentle currents of debate. Not all researchers recognise Proeuhoplites as distinct from Euhoplites. Some regard this robust little shell as simply a particularly thick form of Euhoplites loricatus, with Proeuhoplites representing a synonym rather than a separate genus. 

Such discussions are part of the living science of palaeontology, where each new specimen invites us to look again and ask new questions of the ancient past.

There is something quietly extraordinary about holding a creature such as this in your hand. 

Once, it drifted through warm Cretaceous seas beneath unfamiliar constellations, sharing its world with marine reptiles, fishes, and countless other invertebrates. Then came burial beneath layers of soft seabed mud, followed by millions of years of geological transformation, until chance and curiosity reunited it with the light of day.

This lovely specimen was collected, prepared, and photographed by Thomas Miller. Special thanks also to Jack Wonfor, whose knowledge and collections have enriched the understanding of the Gault and its remarkable ammonites.

For those wishing to delve deeper into these ancient seas, Andrew S. Gale's excellent Fossils of the Gault Clay, published by the Palaeontological Association, offers an invaluable guide. Fred Clouter's long-standing website dedicated to the Gault ammonites and Folkestone fossil beds is another wonderful resource for both seasoned collectors and those newly enchanted by the Blue Slipper and the stories it preserves.

SEXUAL DIMORPHISM: APODEROCERAS

Apoderoceras / Stonebarrow Fossils

Meet Apoderoceras, one of the Jurassic's finest ammonites.

This beauty is a personal fav of mine and you can see why!

These elegant ammonites were masters of sexual dimorphism. The macroconchs — females — could grow to impressive diameters exceeding 40 cm, while the microconchs, the males, remained considerably more modest in size. 

One can't help but imagine the males arriving fashionably late to the Pliensbachian party, only to discover their dates had turned up looking like magnificent spiral battleships.

This lovely specimen was collected from the beaches of Charmouth in West Dorset, though Apoderoceras has been found across much of Europe, as well as Argentina and beyond. During the Early Jurassic, around 190.8 million years ago, these ammonites suddenly swept into the seas of northwestern Europe with all the subtlety of an unexpected house guest who somehow ends up running the place.

In fact, Apoderoceras appears in the fossil record at the very beginning of the Pliensbachian and quickly comes to dominate the local ammonite faunas. 

The puzzling bit? No one is entirely sure where it came from. It bears a passing resemblance to the earlier Eteoderoceras, but the similarities seem to be only skin deep. Its ancestry remains wonderfully mysterious.

Cat's Paw Suture Walls of Apoderoceras

Some have eyed the Pacific genus Andicoeloceras from Chile as a possible relative — perhaps even an ancestor. 

But correlating ammonite timelines between the Pacific and northwestern Europe is rather like trying to synchronise two watches that have spent 190 million years at the bottom of the sea. 

The clues remain tantalisingly out of reach.

As the Taylori Subzone progressed, Apoderoceras evolved locally. The shells became more inflated, the ribs more widely spaced, and the macroconchs appear to have grown ever larger. 

The ladies, it seems, embraced the philosophy that bigger was better, their more spacious body chambers likely offering advantages for egg production.

Then, as abruptly as they had arrived, Apoderoceras vanished from northwestern Europe. The ammonite cast changed, and other lineages stepped into the spotlight. No dramatic farewell. No lingering encore. One day they were the dominant stars of the Jurassic seas; the next, they had exited stage left.

The Taylori Subzone was not entirely an Apoderoceras production, of course. Sharing these ancient waters were the streamlined oxycones Radstockiceras and the exceedingly rare Oxynoticeras, along with Phricoderoceras, Tetraspidoceras, and the enigmatic Bifericeras donovani. It was a remarkably diverse marine community, each species carving out its own ecological niche beneath Jurassic waves.

The beautiful macroconch pictured here was almost certainly female. Her larger shell was not simply a matter of style but of biology — exquisitely adapted for producing the next generation of these curious cephalopods.

Apoderoceras has been found in the Lower Jurassic of Argentina, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, and most of North-West and central Europe, including as this one is, the United Kingdom. This specimen was found on the beaches of Charmouth in West Dorset.

Neither Apoderoceras nor Bifericeras donovani are strictly index fossils for the Taylori subzone, the index being Phricodoceras taylori. Note that Bifericeras is typical of the earlier Oxynotum Zone, and ‘Bifericeras’ donovani is doubtfully attributable to the genus. The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) has assigned the First Appearance Datum of genus Apoderoceras and of Bifericeras donovani the defining biological marker for the start of the Pliensbachian Stage of the Jurassic, 190.8 ± 1.0 million years ago.

Apoderoceras, Family Coeloceratidae, appears out of nowhere in the basal Pliensbachian and dominates the ammonite faunas of NW Europe. It is superficially similar to the earlier Eteoderoceras, Family Eoderoceratidae, of the Raricostatum Zone, but on close inspection can be seen to be quite different. It is therefore an ‘invader’ and its ancestry is cryptic.

The Pacific ammonite Andicoeloceras, known from Chile, appears quite closely related and may be ancestral, but the time correlation of Pacific and NW European ammonite faunas is challenging. 

Even if Andicoeloceras is ancestral to Apoderoceras, no other preceding ammonites attributable to Coeloceratidae are known. We may yet find clues in the Lias of Canada. Apoderoceras remains present in NW Europe throughout the Taylori Subzone, showing endemic evolution. It becomes progressively more inflated during this interval of time, the adult ribs more distant, and there is evidence that the diameter of the macroconch evolved to become larger. 

At the end of the Taylori Subzone, Apoderoceras disappeared as suddenly as it appeared in the region, and ammonite faunas of the remaining Jamesoni Zone are dominated by the Platypleuroceras–Uptonia lineage, generally assigned (though erroneously) to the Family Polymorphitidae.

In the NW European Taylori Subzone, Apoderoceras is accompanied (as well as by the Eoderoceratid, B. donovani, which is only documented from the Yorkshire coast, although there are known examples from Northern Ireland) by the oxycones Radstockiceras (quite common) and Oxynoticeras (very rare), the late Schlotheimid, Phricoderoceras (uncommon) 

Note: P. taylori is a microconch, and P. lamellosum, the macroconch), and the Eoderoceratid, Tetraspidoceras (very rare). The lovely large specimen (macroconch) of Apoderoceras pictured here is a female — prepped beautifully by Stonebarrow Fossils — her larger body perfected for egg production. 

ASAPHISCUS WHEELERI TRILOBITE: WHISPERS FROM THE WHEELER FORMATION

This beauty is Asaphiscus wheeleri, one of the most beloved trilobites from North America's Cambrian seas.

This elegant species lived roughly 505 million years ago during the Middle Cambrian, a time when complex animal life was blossoming in what is often called the Cambrian Explosion. 

The landscapes we know today did not yet exist. There were no forests rustling in the wind, no birdsong, no flowers, and certainly no dinosaurs. Much of western North America lay beneath warm, shallow tropical seas teeming with unfamiliar life.

Asaphiscus wheeleri is most famously found in the Wheeler Formation of Utah, particularly in Millard County. These dark shales and limestones have yielded some of the most extraordinary windows into Cambrian marine ecosystems. 

The Wheeler Formation is renowned not only for its abundance of trilobites but also for preserving the softer-bodied creatures that rarely survive the passage of deep time.

The Wheeler Formation has attracted many bright minds to its enticing strata. Researchers, including Harry B. Whittington of Cambridge University, helped revolutionize our understanding of Cambrian life by re-examining many of these enigmatic creatures and revealing that the Cambrian seas were far more diverse and experimental than previously imagined. 

More recently, scholars such as Richard A. Robison of the University of Kansas devoted decades to studying Utah's Cambrian strata, refining the biostratigraphy of the Wheeler Formation and illuminating the lives of its trilobites, including Asaphiscus. 

The formation has also benefited from the careful work of countless museum curators, collectors, preparators, and researchers whose combined efforts continue to expand our understanding of this remarkable slice of deep time — curious minds piecing together the story of life from fragments of ancient seas.

Like many trilobites, Asaphiscus wheeleri wore its skeleton on the outside. Its broad cephalon, or head shield, segmented thorax, and neatly rounded pygidium gave it a graceful, balanced appearance. 

It likely spent much of its life moving across the seafloor, feeding on organic material and whatever morsels it could gather from the soft sediment beneath those ancient waves. And what company it kept.

Swimming overhead were strange predators such as Anomalocaris, one of the largest animals of its day, armed with grasping appendages and a circular mouth that has fascinated us for generations. 

Nearby drifted jellyfish-like organisms and delicate sponges anchored to the seabed. Worms burrowed through the mud, leaving behind trace fossils that still tell their stories today. Other trilobites shared these waters as well, each occupying their own ecological niche in this increasingly complex marine world.

The Wheeler Formation also preserves enigmatic creatures such as Peytoia, the spiny worm-like Ottoia, and beautifully preserved algae and soft-bodied animals that help us reconstruct life during this remarkable chapter in Earth's history. It was a world both alien and familiar — ecosystems beginning to take on the intricate relationships we recognise in modern oceans.

Asaphiscus wheeleri lived during a time of tremendous evolutionary innovation, navigating seas filled with both opportunity and danger. 

Yet here it is, half a billion years later, resting in stone and offering us a glimpse into a world long vanished.

Photo: Asaphiscus wheeleri, Middle Cambrian, Wheeler Formation, Utah, USA. ~505 million years old.

CREAMY PERFECTION: MUSASHIA FOSSIL GASTROPOD

Fossil Gastropod: Musashia

If you’ve ever set foot on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, you know it feels like walking into awe inspiring nature—towering evergreens breathing fog, lush moss, the surf lapping at her shores and rivers that coil like dragons guarding secrets. 

What most visitors don’t know is that beneath all that soft green wizardry lies one of the wildest geologic patchwork quilts on the continent, stitched together from bits of wandering seafloor, ancient islands, and the sorts of rocks that only a subduction zone could love.

Let’s start with the big mover and shaker: the Juan de Fuca Plate, Earth’s most polite tectonic dinner guest, eternally slipping under North America with the quiet persistence of someone trying not to disturb the table. 

For millions of years, the seafloor has been bulldozed downward, its sediments scraped off, rolled up, smushed, and plastered onto the edge of the continent. 

This collection of recycled deep-ocean debris—sandstones, shales, basalts, the occasional volcano gone rogue—forms the Olympic Subduction Complex, a name that sounds like a niche gymnastics event but is, in fact, the bedrock of the peninsula.

Now here’s where it gets juicy: among all that tectonic tumbleweed lie fossils. Unexpected fossils. Delightful fossils. 

Fossils that survived a one-way trip toward the mantle and still managed to hang on long enough for you to admire them.

Take the Makah Formation along the peninsula’s rugged northwest edge—a dramatic stretch where Eocene-age marine rocks (think 35–40 million years old) preserve the remains of ancient deep-water creatures. 

Here you can find the ghostly traces of prehistoric whales, fish, and even the occasional bird that took one wrong turn over the Pacific. 

These fossils are often so beautifully preserved that they look like they’ve been waiting under the waves for their close-up. 

Look at the amazing preservation in the picture perfect gastropod, Musashia, a type of fossil snail or gastropod, belonging to the subgenus Fulgoraria (Musashia) and are part of the larger family Volutidae. 

The beauty in my hand here is from the Lower Miocene, Clallam Formation from Washington state's oh-so-purdy Olympic Peninsula. 

It is a wonderful place to collect as the beach exposures are pure beauty in their own right.

MISTY SHORES AND DAPPLED LIGHT: HAIDA GWAII

Misty shores, moss-covered forests, dappled light, and the smell of salt air—these are my memories of Haida Gwaii, a land where ancient stories are written in stone.

Formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, the archipelago of Haida Gwaii lies at the far western edge of Canada, where the Pacific Ocean meets the continental shelf. 

These islands—steeped in the rich culture of the Haida Nation—are not only a cultural treasure but a geologic and paleontological wonderland.

Geologically, Haida Gwaii is part of Wrangellia, an exotic tectonostratigraphic terrane that also includes parts of Vancouver Island, western British Columbia, and Alaska. The region's complex geological history spans hundreds of millions of years and includes volcanic arcs, seafloor spreading, and the accretion of entire landmasses.

The Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) has long been fascinated with these remote islands. 

Their geologists and paleontologists have led numerous expeditions over the past century, documenting the diverse sedimentary formations and fossiliferous beds. 

Much of the foundation for this work was laid by Joseph Frederick Whiteaves, the GSC’s chief paleontologist in Ottawa during the late 19th century.

In 1876, Whiteaves published a pioneering paper on the Jurassic and Cretaceous faunas of Skidegate Inlet. This work firmly established the paleontological significance of the archipelago and cemented Whiteaves’ reputation as a global authority in the field. His paper, "On the Fossils of the Cretaceous Rocks of British Columbia" (GSC Report of Progress for 1876–77), remains a key early reference for West Coast palaeontology.

Later, Whiteaves would go on to describe Anomalocaris canadensis from the Burgess Shale—an “unlike other shrimp” fossil that would later be recognized as one of the most extraordinary creatures of the Cambrian explosion.

Whiteaves' early work on the fossil faunas of Haida Gwaii, particularly in the Haida Formation, created a foundation for generations of researchers to follow.

One of our most memorable fossil field trips was to the Cretaceous exposures of Lina Island, part of the Haida Formation. We considered it one of our “trips of a lifetime.” 

With great sandstone beach exposures and fossil-rich outcrops dating from the Albian to Cenomanian, Lina Island offered both scientific riches and stunning natural beauty.

Haida Fossil Fauna

Our expedition was supported and organized by John Fam, Vice Chair of the Vancouver Paleontological Society, and Dan Bowen, Chair of the British Columbia Paleontological Alliance and the Vancouver Island Paleontological Society. 

Their dedication to fostering collaborative research and building relationships with local Haida communities was key. 

We were warmly welcomed, and field trips to fossil sites were arranged in partnership with community members and cultural stewards.

The Haida Formation yielded beautifully preserved specimens embedded both in bedding planes and in concretions—hard, rounded nodules that often house exceptionally preserved fossils. 

Collecting in the mists along the foreshore, our finds included:

• Douvilleiceras spiniferum
• Brewericeras hulenense
• Cleoniceras perezianum
• Fossil cycads, evidence of rich Cretaceous plant life

These fossils offered a rare glimpse into an ancient marine ecosystem that once teemed with life. Douvilleiceras, a spiny ammonite, is particularly striking. 

Douvilleiceras spiniferum, Haida Gwaii

This genus, first identified by Whiteaves from Haida Gwaii, ranges from the Middle to Late Cretaceous and has been found across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.  

The Haida specimens, from the early to mid-Albian, to my eye are the most beautiful—and beautifully preserved.

  Douvilleiceras is one of my favourite ammonites of all time and I was blessed to find several good examples of that species from our expeditions to these fossil-rich outcrops.

All of the fossils I collected from Haida Gwaii have been skillfully prepped and donated to the Haida Gwaii Museum in Skidegate, British Columbia. 

It is a privilege to contribute in a small way to the scientific and cultural understanding of these extraordinary islands.

References and Further Reading:

Whiteaves, J.F. (1876). On the Fossils of the Cretaceous Rocks of British Columbia. Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress.

Jeletzky, J.A. (1970). Paleontology of the Cretaceous rocks of Haida Gwaii. Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 175.

Haggart, J.W. (1991). New Albian (Early Cretaceous) ammonites from Haida Gwaii. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 28(1), 45–56.

Haggart, J.W. & Smith, P.L. (1993). Paleontology and stratigraphy of the Cretaceous Queen Charlotte Group. Geological Survey of Canada Paper 93-1A.

Carter, E.S., Haggart, J.W., & Mustard, P.S. (1988). Early Cretaceous radiolarians from Haida Gwaii and implications for tectonic setting. Micropaleontology, 34(1), 1–14.

ANCIENT ELEGANCE: UINTACRINUS OF KANSAS

There is a particular kind of quiet magic in the world, the sort that sends a small shiver of awe through you when all the elements of deep time align. 

Every so often, nature grants us a perfect moment: minerals seep gently into ancient flesh, sediments cradle a creature’s delicate form, and the slow choreography of preservation captures a life in astonishing detail. 

For me, nothing embodies that magic quite like crinoids. These elegant echinoderms—equal parts flower and animal—feel like whispers from an ancient sea, caught forever in stone.

The specimen before us is no exception. If you lean in close and let your eyes wander across its intricate geometry, you will find yourself face to face with a stunning representative of Uintacrinus socialis. 

This Upper Cretaceous beauty, hailing from the Santonian roughly 85 million years ago, was first named nearly a century and a half ago by O.C. Marsh in honour of the Uinta Mountains of Utah. 

This specimen hail from the soft chalky layers of the Smoky Hills Niobrara Formation in central Kansas—a region that once lay beneath the warm, shallow waters of the Western Interior Seaway. Here, entire colonies of Uintacrinus drifted like living chandeliers, their feathery arms extended into the sun-dappled currents.

Crinoids are the quiet dancers of the animal kingdom. Although they appear plant-like—an underwater blossom swaying gracefully in the tide—they are very much animals, part of the illustrious echinoderm clan that includes sea stars, brittle stars, and urchins. 

Imagine a lily turned sentient: a cup-shaped central body holding a mouth on its upper surface, surrounded by delicate, branching arms that sweep food particles from the water. 

And, in true echinoderm fashion, add an anus inconveniently positioned right beside the mouth. Evolution, it seems, has a sense of humour.

The anchored species, traditionally called sea lilies, rise from the seafloor on slender stalks composed of stacked calcite rings—columnals—that resemble beads fallen from some ancient necklace. In shallower waters, the stalks can be short and sturdy, but in deeper seas they may stretch a metre or more, holding the crinoid aloft like the mast of a living ship, swaying gently with each passing current.

Yet most crinoids in today’s oceans are not anchored at all. The feather stars, or comatulids, break free from their juvenile stalks and spend their adulthood drifting, crawling, or even swimming with slow, balletic strokes of their arms. 

They cling to rocks and coral with tiny curved structures called cirri—delicate as eyelashes yet strong enough to grip firmly in swirling water. These cirri also allowed many fossil crinoids to hold fast to the Cretaceous seafloor, weathering tides and storms in the vast expanse of the Western Interior Seaway.

Like all echinoderms, crinoids exhibit pentaradial symmetry: a five-fold architecture expressed in their plates, arms, and feeding grooves. The aboral, or underside, of the calyx is encased in a mosaic of calcium carbonate plates that form their internal skeleton—robust enough to fossilize beautifully. 

The top surface, the oral area, is mostly soft tissue in life, opening into five deep ambulacral grooves where tube feet once reached outward like tiny graceful fingers. Between these lie the interambulacral zones, together forming the elegant star-like pattern that both living and fossil crinoids display.

Their fossil record is ancient and abundant. Crinoids first appear in the Ordovician over 450 million years ago—unless one counts Echmatocrinus, that strange and controversial form from the Burgess Shale whose affinities still spark debate among paleontologists. 

Through the Paleozoic, crinoids flourished in such numbers that their disarticulated columnals often blanket limestone beds. In some places, these columnals form the very fabric of the rock itself, creating entire cliffs built from the remnants of ancient underwater meadows. To run your fingers along such a rock is to touch a community that lived hundreds of millions of years before humans ever drew breath.

And yet, crinoids endure. They survive today in tropical reefs, deep ocean slopes, and soft-bottomed basins, their lineage stretching unbroken from those early Paleozoic seas to the modern oceans. 

Some cling to the seafloor in twilight depths; others drift like feathered ghosts, arms unfurling in silent, rhythmic pulses. 

When a fossil like Uintacrinus socialis emerges from the chalk of Kansas or the limestone of Utah, we are granted a rare window into that vanished age. 

And for those of us who spend our days searching riverbeds, quarries, and sea cliffs for such wonders, as I am sure you do, it is for the thrill of having a satisfying split and letting the past shine through.

That, to me, is pure magic.

FOSSILS AND FIRST NATIONS HISTORY: NOOTKA

Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dan Bowen searching an outcrop. Photo: John Fam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know Before You Go — Nootka Trail

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

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

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

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