WHAT IS A FOSSIL? A MESSAGE FROM DEEP TIME

Pick up a fossil and you are holding evidence of a life.

Not merely an old rock. Not an attractive geological paperweight. Not something the Earth made solely to tempt us into climbing unstable slopes in inappropriate footwear.

A fossil is a message from the past.

It may be a bone, tooth, shell or leaf. It may be the delicate impression of a feather, the tunnel left by a burrowing animal or the footprints of a creature that crossed a muddy shoreline hundreds of millions of years ago.

It may even be fossilized dung.

The fossil record has never been overly concerned with dignity.

Together, fossils preserve the history of life on Earth: its astonishing experiments, spectacular successes, evolutionary detours and occasional catastrophes. They introduce us to organisms no human ever saw alive and to ecosystems that vanished long before our own species appeared.

But what exactly qualifies as a fossil—and how can something as fleeting as a footprint survive for millions of years?

Let us begin at the beginning.

SO, WHAT IS A FOSSIL?

Dinosaur Footprints near Tumbler Ridge, BC

A fossil is naturally preserved evidence of past life. That definition is deliberately broad because life leaves evidence in many different ways.

A fossil can be part of an organism’s body, such as a bone, tooth, shell, leaf or piece of wood. It can also be a mark made by an organism while it was alive: a footprint, burrow, feeding trail, nest or bite mark.

The organism itself does not necessarily need to be present.

This is one of the most important things to understand about fossils. We often picture a magnificent dinosaur skeleton standing in a museum, every rib neatly arranged and every tooth poised for drama. Yet complete skeletons are extraordinarily rare. Most fossils are fragments: a single tooth, part of a shell, a scrap of leaf, one vertebra or a dark smudge of carbon in the rock.

Some fossils are so small that thousands could sit comfortably on the head of a pin. Others belong to animals that stretched longer than a city bus.

All of them are evidence.

We divide fossils into two major categories: body fossils and trace fossils. The distinction is simple, but it opens the door to an astonishing variety of preservation.

BODY FOSSILS: WHEN PART OF THE ORGANISM REMAINS

A body fossil preserves part of the organism itself—or a direct impression, mould or cast of its remains.

The most familiar body fossils include:

• Bones
• Teeth
• Shells
• Exoskeletons
• Scales
• Wood
• Leaves
• Seeds
• Pollen
• Spores

Cenoceras Fossilized Shell Material

Hard parts are much more likely to enter the fossil record because they resist decay longer than soft tissues. Teeth are especially durable. A vertebrate animal may lose and replace thousands of teeth during its lifetime, greatly improving the odds that at least a few will survive long enough to become fossils.

This is one reason isolated fossil teeth are much more common than complete fossil animals. Nature produces teeth generously and skeletons only once per customer.

Shells also have an excellent chance of preservation. Ancient seafloors could accumulate the remains of countless brachiopods, molluscs, corals and other marine organisms. Over time, those shells became part of the sediment and, eventually, part of the rock itself.

The most durable portions of an organism dominate the fossil record. According to the National Park Service overview of body fossils, bones, teeth, shells, mineralized plates and wood are preserved far more frequently than skin, organs, flowers or fruit.

This creates an immediate problem.

The fossil record is not a complete census of everything that ever lived. It has a built-in preference for organisms with hard parts, those living in places where burial could occur and those fortunate enough to die under favourable conditions.

A clam living on a muddy seafloor has a better chance of becoming a fossil than a soft-bodied creature living on a windswept mountain. This does not mean the mountain creature was less important. It was simply less likely to leave us its forwarding address. We find many more of the durable creatures than we do the squishy. 

TRACE FOSSILS: WHEN BEHAVIOUR BECOMES STONE

Theropod Track, Thailand

Trace fossils preserve evidence of what an organism did rather than the organism’s actual body.

They are also called ichnofossils, from the Greek word ichnos, meaning track or trace. Scientists who specialize in studying them are called ichnologists.

Trace fossils include:

• Footprints and trackways
• Burrows and tunnels
• Trails
• Resting impressions
• Nests
• Root traces
• Feeding marks
• Bite marks
• Borings in shells or wood
• Coprolites, or fossilized dung
• Regurgitated material
• Gastroliths associated with an animal

A body fossil can tell us that an organism existed. A trace fossil may reveal what it was doing.

A line of footprints can show whether an animal walked on two legs or four. The distance between prints can help researchers estimate speed. Several parallel trackways may suggest that animals moved together, although such interpretations must be made carefully.

A burrow can reveal how an animal moved through sediment, searched for food or protected itself. Bite marks can document interactions between predator and prey. A resting impression can preserve the outline of an animal settling momentarily onto a soft surface.

Trace fossils often remain in the substrate where the behaviour originally occurred. Unlike bones, which may be carried away by water, scavengers or gravity, a burrow generally records activity at that exact location.

This gives trace fossils an extraordinary quality. They preserve moments. An animal stepped here. A worm burrowed here. Something bit this shell.

A dinosaur crossed this stretch of wet sediment, placing one foot after another beneath a sky no human would ever see. The animal continued on. The moment passed. But the ground remembered.

YES, FOSSILIZED POO IS A REAL FOSSIL

Coprolites are fossilized faeces, and they are among some of our most personal treasures.

They vary enormously in size and appearance. Some resemble pellets, spirals or lumpy stones. Others are difficult to distinguish from ordinary rock without examining their shape, contents or chemical composition.

Coprolites can preserve:

• Bone fragments
• Fish scales
• Plant fibres
• Seeds
• Pollen
• Insect remains
• Parasite eggs
• Chemical evidence of diet

They can help researchers determine whether an animal ate meat, plants, insects, fish—or almost anything unfortunate enough to fit inside it.

The difficulty lies in identifying the producer. Unless a coprolite is found directly associated with a particular animal, assigning it to a species can be challenging. Size, shape, contents and geological context may narrow the possibilities, but we must resist the temptation to point dramatically at every ancient dropping and declare, “Tyrannosaurus!”

Not every large coprolite came from the most famous carnivore available.

Still, fossilized dung offers something bones alone cannot: evidence of a meal passing through an animal’s digestive system. Coprolites are trace fossils that can provide direct clues about ancient diets.

One creature’s private moment has become everyone’s scientific business. Deep time can be terribly indiscreet.

DOES A FOSSIL HAVE TO BE TURNED TO STONE?

No. “Fossil” describes evidence of past life, not one particular style of preservation.

Some fossils are petrified or mineralized. Others preserve original material. Fossils can occur as impressions, carbon films, moulds, casts or remains trapped in substances such as amber, tar or ice.

Let us look at a few possibilities.

Permineralized Fossils

Bones and wood contain microscopic spaces. After burial, mineral-rich water may move through the sediment and deposit minerals inside those spaces.

This process is called permineralization.

The original structure may remain while its pores become filled with minerals such as silica, calcite or iron compounds. The result is denser and heavier than the original material but can preserve remarkable internal detail.

Petrified wood is a beautiful example. Its tissues may become mineralized so precisely that growth rings and cellular structures remain visible.

Replacement Fossils

In some fossils, the original biological material dissolves and is gradually replaced by minerals. The new mineral preserves the form—and sometimes even the microscopic structure—of the original organism.

It is rather like replacing a building one brick at a time while somehow retaining its shape.

Moulds and Casts

Imagine a shell buried in sediment.

The sediment hardens around it, but the shell later dissolves, leaving an empty impression. This cavity is a mould. If minerals or sediment later fill that mould and harden, they create a cast: a three-dimensional replica of the original shell.

An internal mould can form when sediment fills the inside of a shell and hardens before the shell disappears. Such fossils are sometimes called steinkerns, a German term meaning “stone kernel.”

Nothing of the original shell may remain, yet its shape survives. The body is gone. The absence has become the fossil. 

Compression and Carbon Films

McAbee Fossil Plants

Plants and soft-bodied organisms may be buried and flattened beneath accumulating sediment. Pressure drives away liquids and gases, sometimes leaving a thin film rich in carbon.

These fossils can appear as dark, delicate outlines on the rock. Leaves may preserve their veins. 

Fish may retain the shapes of scales and fins. Soft-bodied animals can sometimes be recorded in astonishing detail.

They are the geological equivalent of silhouettes—life pressed into stone. Some of the lovely specimens we find at the Eocene McAbee Fossil Beds near Cache Creek, British Columbia, are a great example.

Amber Preservation

Amber begins as sticky resin produced by ancient trees. Small organisms such as insects, spiders, mites and fragments of plants can become trapped in the resin. As the resin is buried and chemically altered over time, it becomes amber.

Amber can preserve extraordinary detail: hairs, wings, compound eyes and delicate structures that would normally decay rapidly.

It can even preserve tiny moments of behaviour. Organisms have been found trapped while feeding, mating, carrying pollen or interacting with parasites.

Amber is not a perfect time capsule, however, and it has not provided usable dinosaur DNA. The mosquitoes of Jurassic Park remain unemployed. If you are looking for some superb examples of amber preservation, check out the collection of Harry Tabiner in the UK. He has a remarkable eye and enviable collection, which he shares online.

Ice, Dryness and Natural Tar 

Cold, arid or oxygen-poor conditions can dramatically slow decay. Mammoths preserved in frozen ground may retain hair, skin, muscle and stomach contents. Natural tar deposits can preserve vast collections of bones, although the remains themselves may be stained, altered or compressed.

These forms of preservation remind us that a fossil does not need to resemble a traditional stone skeleton. Fossilization is not a single recipe. It is a vast collection of unlikely outcomes.

WHAT ABOUT FOOTPRINTS? HOW CAN A HOLE BECOME A FOSSIL?

A footprint fossil begins with a perfectly ordinary step.

An animal walks across a surface soft enough to receive an impression but firm enough to retain its shape. Mud and damp sand are excellent candidates.

The track must then be buried before wind, waves, rain, other animals or enthusiastic members of the herd destroy it. A new layer of sediment settles over the surface, filling and protecting the impression.

With continued burial, both layers may harden into rock. Millions of years later, erosion separates them again. One surface may preserve the original footprint as a depression. The layer that filled the print may preserve a raised natural cast.

Tracks are not simply stamps of the foot. The animal’s weight can deform layers beneath the surface, producing structures known as undertracks. These may be less anatomically precise than the original print but can still record the passage of the animal.

Interpreting tracks requires caution. Wetness, sediment texture, erosion and the animal’s movement can all alter a footprint’s appearance. The same animal could leave surprisingly different tracks after walking only a short distance.

We must study the track, the sediment and the entire trackway—not merely find three vaguely pointed marks and immediately summon the media.

HOW OLD DOES SOMETHING HAVE TO BE BEFORE IT BECOMES A FOSSIL?

You may have heard that a fossil must be at least 10,000 years old.

That figure is commonly used as a practical dividing line in educational materials and some regulatory contexts, but nature has not installed an official fossil clock that rings at midnight on an organism’s ten-thousandth birthday.

We may use terms such as subfossil for relatively recent remains that are not fully fossilized or that retain considerable original material. The terminology can vary depending on the field, material and legal jurisdiction.

Age alone is not the only consideration. Geological context, preservation and scientific usage all matter.

An ammonite shell 100 million years old is unquestionably a fossil. A mammoth tusk 30,000 years old is also a fossil, even if some of its original material remains. Very recent bones from an archaeological site may be described as remains rather than fossils.

The boundary is useful, but it is not a magical transformation.

ARE ALL FOSSILS VISIBLE?

Not remotely. Some of the most important fossils on Earth are microscopic.

Microfossils include fossilized pollen, spores, algae, bacteria, protists and the tiny shells or skeletal elements of marine organisms.

They may be smaller than a grain of sand, yet they occur in enormous numbers and can be tremendously useful. Because some microscopic organisms evolved rapidly and lived across wide geographic areas, their fossils can help scientists date and correlate rock layers.

Microfossils also reveal ancient environments. Different species lived under different conditions, so their presence can provide clues about water depth, temperature, salinity, oxygen levels and climate.

Oil and gas exploration has long relied on micropalaeontology to interpret underground rock layers. A microscopic fossil no larger than a speck of dust may help identify the age and environment of rocks buried kilometres beneath the surface.

Dinosaurs receive the posters. Microfossils quietly organize geological time. Alas, always the bridesmaid, never the bride... Dinos get all the love.

CAN MOLECULES BE FOSSILS?

Ancient life can sometimes leave chemical evidence even when no recognizable body or trace remains.

These signals are often called chemical fossils or biomarkers.

Certain molecules are associated with particular groups of organisms or biological processes. Modified versions of those compounds may survive in ancient rocks, providing evidence that particular kinds of life were present.

Stable isotope patterns can also carry biological information. Living organisms use elements in ways that can leave characteristic chemical signatures in their tissues or surrounding sediments.

Chemical fossils require careful interpretation because geological heat, pressure and contamination can alter molecular evidence. But when combined with other data, they can help scientists investigate some of the earliest chapters in the history of life.

Sometimes life leaves a bone. Sometimes it leaves a footprint. Sometimes it leaves little more than chemistry.

IS A DINOSAUR SKELETON IN A MUSEUM MADE OF REAL FOSSILS?

Sometimes entirely. Sometimes partly. Sometimes hardly at all.

Complete dinosaur skeletons are rare. Museum mounts are often composites, combining fossil bones from more than one individual of the same species. Missing elements may be reconstructed as casts.

In some displays, the original fossils are too heavy, fragile or scientifically valuable to suspend in a dramatic pose. Museums may mount lightweight replicas while keeping the genuine fossils safely stored for research.

This does not make the display fake. A high-quality cast reproduces the shape and surface detail of the original fossil while protecting irreplaceable material. Casts can also be shared with museums, schools and researchers around the world.

Labels generally explain which elements are original fossils and which are reconstructed. It is always worth looking.

The glamorous skeleton towering over the gallery may be a carefully assembled ambassador for a far more fragmentary animal.

IS EVERY OLD BONE A FOSSIL?

No. Sometimes an old bone is just that, an old bone. Not a fossil. Age and appearance alone do not prove that something is fossilized. Modern bones can become stained by soil and minerals, making them look ancient. Conversely, genuine fossils do not always appear dramatically different from ordinary bone.

Identification may involve examining:

• Geological context
• Colour and density
• Surface texture
• Internal structure
• Mineral composition
• Associated fossils
• Degree of mineralization
• Evidence of recent organic material

And no, licking it is not the preferred scientific method but, I confess, it is helpful in the field. Not fully diagnostic, but helpful. I have a good friend Skippy who swears by it.

There is an old field trick based on the idea that porous fossil bone may stick slightly to the tongue, but modern bone can do the same, as can many ordinary rocks. The technique is unhygienic, unreliable and particularly regrettable when the mystery specimen is not bone at all.

Use a hand lens. Use comparative anatomy. Use laboratory analysis. Leave your tongue out of the peer-reviewed methodology.

WHY ARE FOSSILS SO RARE?

To become a fossil, an organism must pass through a series of improbable filters. Fossils are not rare per se, as I can think of localities with hundreds spread across the surface and more beneath, but they are rare in the sense that only a small percentage of the organisms that have lived have been preserved this way. To become a fossil is a bit of a process, as you might expect. 

First, the organism, dino, plant, or what have you, must die in a place where preservation is possible.

Then its remains must escape scavengers, decay, trampling, weather and destruction. They must be buried. The sediment must remain intact as it becomes rock. The fossil must survive heat, pressure, chemical alteration, faulting, erosion and the slow recycling of Earth’s crust.

Finally, it must become exposed—or be reached by excavation—at precisely the right time for someone to recognize it. Too early, and it remains buried. Too late, and erosion destroys it.

The fossil record is therefore both magnificent and profoundly incomplete.

Most organisms that ever lived left no known fossil. Entire species may have appeared, flourished and vanished without preserving a trace that we have yet discovered.

Soft-bodied organisms are especially underrepresented. Environments such as mountains, forests and tropical soils generally offer fewer opportunities for long-term preservation than lakes, river floodplains and marine sediments.

When we reconstruct ancient ecosystems, we are working with survivors of a second kind—not organisms that survived extinction, but evidence that survived geology.

IS A FOSSIL THE SAME THING AS A ROCK?

A fossil is preserved within a geological material, and many fossils have been heavily mineralized, but “fossil” and “rock” are not interchangeable terms.

A rock forms through geological processes and may contain fossils. A fossil is evidence of past life preserved within rock, sediment, amber, ice or another natural context.

The distinction can become wonderfully complicated.

A fossil shell may retain original shell material. A petrified log may be almost entirely mineral. A mould contains none of the organism but preserves its shape. A trace fossil may consist entirely of disturbed sediment.

So, is a fossil a rock? Sometimes it has effectively become one. But what makes it a fossil is not simply its material. It is the biological information it carries.

WHAT CAN ONE FOSSIL TELL US?

Far more than its name. A fossil’s anatomy may reveal how an organism moved, fed or defended itself. Growth rings can record seasons or age. Microscopic wear on teeth may reveal diet. Bone injuries can preserve evidence of accidents, disease, combat and healing.

The surrounding sediment can tell us whether the organism lived in a river, desert, forest, lake or sea. Associated fossils help reconstruct the plants, animals and microorganisms sharing that environment.

Chemical analysis may reveal temperature, water conditions, migration or food-web relationships. Footprints may preserve speed and direction. Burrows can reveal oxygen levels in ancient sediments. Coprolites can contain the remains of a final meal.

Even the way a body was buried matters. Were the bones scattered by a river? Gnawed by scavengers? Transported by waves? Buried in a sudden flood?

The study of what happens to an organism between death, burial and discovery is called taphonomy. It helps palaeontologists separate evidence of how an animal lived from evidence of what happened after it died. A fossil is not simply an object. It is a scene containing clues.

WHAT IS NOT A FOSSIL?

Not every interesting pattern in rock was created by life.

Mineral crystals, concretions, sedimentary structures and weathered rocks can resemble eggs, shells, bones, skin, feathers or entire mysterious creatures. These geological look-alikes are sometimes called pseudofossils. Or, leaverits, as in leave it right there. 

Manganese minerals can grow in branching patterns resembling ferns. Concretions can look remarkably like eggs. Layered rocks may split into shapes suggesting shells or leaves. Some rocks possess suspiciously skull-like features and an unreasonable amount of charisma.

The human brain excels at recognizing familiar forms. This tendency, called pareidolia, helps us see faces in clouds, animals in tree bark and dinosaurs in the landscaping gravel.

None of this makes an unusual rock uninteresting. A pseudofossil can still be geologically beautiful.

It simply tells a different story.

THE FOSSIL RECORD IS BIASED

The fossil record is sometimes imagined as a great stone library containing the complete history of life.

It is more like a library after fire, flood, renovation, several lost catalogues and four billion years of questionable management.

Some chapters are richly detailed. Others contain a few scattered sentences. Entire volumes are missing.

Organisms with shells, bones or teeth are more likely to be preserved than soft-bodied organisms. Aquatic environments are generally better represented than upland habitats. Abundant and widespread species have a greater chance of discovery than rare, geographically restricted ones.

Even human activity introduces bias. Fossils are more likely to be discovered where rocks are exposed, where researchers can travel and where scientific work has been funded.

Palaeontologists must account for these biases when interpreting patterns of diversity, evolution and extinction. An absence of fossils does not necessarily prove that an organism was absent. It may mean that the right rocks were not deposited, did not survive or have not yet been explored.

The fossil record is incomplete. But incomplete does not mean useless. It means we must read it carefully.

A FOSSIL IS A RELATIONSHIP

There is another way to think about fossils. A fossil is not merely a thing that was once alive. It is the relationship between life and the Earth that preserved it. The organism contributed its body or behaviour. The environment supplied mud, sand, ash, resin, ice or minerals. Time transformed the evidence. Erosion returned it to the light. Then someone noticed.

That final part matters. A fossil can lie exposed among a thousand ordinary stones and remain silent until a curious person stops, looks closely and asks a question.

What made this shape? Why is this shell inside a mountain? Who walked here? What kind of world once existed beneath my feet? Every fossil discovery begins with attention. And many great specimens have been found by folk of all ages (many of them too young to vote) who take notice of the world around them.

A MESSAGE THAT SURVIVED

To hold a fossil is to hold a contradiction. It is evidence of death that teaches us about life. It is a motionless object that may record movement. It is a fragment capable of revealing an ecosystem.

It is ancient, yet newly discovered.

The animal, plant or microorganism did not set out to leave us a message. The footprint was not made for our benefit. The shell did not settle onto the seafloor hoping to appear one day in a museum drawer.

And yet the evidence survived.

Across burial, mineralization, shifting continents, rising mountains and relentless erosion, something remained.

A tooth.

A leaf.

A burrow.

A trail across the mud.

A tiny, stubborn piece of deep time waiting for someone to recognize it.

That is a fossil.

SEX, MOVEMENT AND A 567-MILLION-YEAR-OLD SEAFLOOR

Dickinsonia, Kimberella, and Funisia

Long before teeth began biting, shells began clattering, or trilobites developed the audacity to scuttle fashionably across the seafloor, something was stirring in the ancient waters of northern Canada.

It was soft. It was strange. In some cases, it looked rather like a quilted bathmat.

And according to a remarkable collection of fossils announced in 2026, it was already moving, feeding and finding increasingly creative ways to make more of itself some 567 million years ago.

Welcome to the Ediacaran, an interval of Earth history spanning approximately 635 to 539 million years ago. It was a world before dinosaurs, before forests, before fish and even before the evolutionary enthusiasm of the Cambrian Explosion.

There were no ammonites spiralling through the seas, no crabs shuffling sideways and no vertebrates of any kind looking down their noses at the spineless masses.

Indeed, there were no noses.

For most of Earth’s history, life had been microscopic. Bacteria and other single-celled organisms had occupied the planet for billions of years, quietly transforming its oceans and atmosphere. Then, during the Ediacaran, large, multicellular organisms began appearing in the fossil record.

Some resembled fronds, discs, tubes, cushions or segmented mattresses. Others looked so unlike living organisms that we are still debating where—or whether—they belong on the modern tree of life.

These soft-bodied communities are collectively known as the Ediacara Biota, and the fossils discovered in the Mackenzie Mountains of the Northwest Territories are giving us an extraordinary new look at this evolutionary experiment.

A LOST SEAFLOOR IN THE CANADIAN NORTH

The fossils come from the lower Blueflower Formation near Sekwi Brook, a remote area of the Mackenzie Mountains. We've recovered more than 100 specimens from rocks that once formed part of a deep marine slope on the ancient continent of Laurentia—the continental core upon which much of present-day North America would eventually assemble.

The collection includes several organisms normally associated with what palaeontologists call the White Sea assemblage, a particularly diverse phase of Ediacaran life traditionally dated to between about 559 and 550 million years ago.

The Canadian fossils appear to be older.

Radiometric dates from nearby rock units, combined with their position in the geological sequence, indicate that the fossil-bearing beds may be close to 567 million years old. If that interpretation is correct, these organisms were living five to ten million years earlier than comparable communities were previously thought to have appeared.

Ten million years may seem an almost comically imprecise appointment by human standards. If someone tells you they will meet you for coffee sometime within the next ten million years, I would advise ordering without them.

In evolutionary history, however, pushing the appearance of complex behaviours back by several million years is significant. It changes how we understand the timing, geography and environmental setting of early animal evolution.

The fossils also include six groups not previously documented in North America, connecting this Canadian site with Ediacaran communities found in places such as Russia, South Australia and Namibia.

Apparently, even 567 million years ago, life was already more widely travelled than many of us.

MEET THE QUILTED BATHMAT

Dickensonia Fossils

Among the most intriguing fossils is Dickinsonia, one of the great celebrities of the Ediacaran—although celebrity looked considerably flatter in those days.

Dickinsonia had an oval, segmented body that could range from a few millimetres to well over a metre in length, depending upon the species and specimen. Its repeated rib-like units gave it the appearance of a quilted cushion, a bathmat or perhaps a very ambitious pancake.

For many years, scientists debated whether Dickinsonia was an animal, a fungus, a giant single-celled organism, a lichen or a member of an entirely extinct branch of life.

Chemical evidence preserved in some specimens, including cholesterol-related molecules associated with animals, has strengthened the argument that Dickinsonia belonged somewhere within the animal kingdom.

It did not possess an obvious mouth, gut, head or limbs. Instead, it may have absorbed nutrients through the underside of its body as it moved across microbial mats covering the seafloor.

Fossilized impressions sometimes occur alongside patches where the microbial mat appears to have been disturbed or consumed. These “feeding traces” suggest that Dickinsonia did not simply sit in one place looking decorative. It moved from one patch of food to another.

This was not movement in the style of a cheetah, a salmon or even an especially motivated snail. There was no dramatic pursuit, no snapping of jaws and certainly no soundtrack.

But movement directed toward food represents behaviour. It means an organism could interact with its surroundings, respond to opportunity and relocate its remarkably bathmat-like self when dinner required it.

The Mackenzie Mountain specimens may extend the known record of such mobile animals by millions of years.

ENTER THE SEAFLOOR SCRAPER

Then there is Kimberella.

This low, oval organism possessed a more clearly defined front and back than many of its Ediacaran neighbours. It may have had a muscular foot and moved across the seafloor in a manner somewhat comparable to a mollusc.

Scientists have found distinctive scratch-like feeding traces called Kimberichnus associated with Kimberella. These marks were probably produced as the animal scraped or raked microbial material from the seafloor.

At Sekwi Brook, both the body fossil and its characteristic traces occur within the ancient community. Together, they provide compelling evidence that Kimberella lived and fed in this deep-water environment rather than being washed in from somewhere shallower.

Whether Kimberella was a true mollusc, a close relative of molluscs or something branching near the base of the bilaterian family tree remains debated. Bilaterians are animals with broadly symmetrical left and right sides—a sprawling evolutionary club that eventually came to include worms, insects, molluscs, dinosaurs and ourselves.

If Kimberella was an early bilaterian, then it represents an important step toward the more mobile, muscular and behaviourally complex animals that would flourish during the Cambrian.

It also suggests that the ancient seafloor had acquired its own small cleaning crew.

No eyes. No teeth. No tiny branded apron. Just a soft-bodied scraper working methodically across the microbial buffet. 

I think of it as the Ediacaran’s plecostomus—Hypostomus plecostomus, the suckermouth catfish, or common pleco—merrily scraping away. No relation, of course, but I cannot shake the association from my mind.

AND THEN THERE WAS SEX—PROBABLY

The wonderfully provocative part of our story belongs to Funisia.

Funisia was a tube-shaped organism that lived attached to the seafloor, often in dense clusters. Individuals grew close together, forming communities that might have resembled stands of narrow marine tubes rising from the sediment.

Previous research on similarly sized clusters of Funisia from South Australia suggested that the organisms may have reproduced sexually through synchronized spawning. Modern corals and other marine animals use a comparable strategy, releasing eggs and sperm into the surrounding water at roughly the same time.

We cannot, of course, observe an Ediacaran spawning event directly. No fossil preserves a discreet little sign reading, “Reproduction underway—please give the tubes some privacy.”

The interpretation comes from the organisms’ distribution, size patterns and colonial growth. The evidence suggests that Funisia may have reproduced through waterborne stages, perhaps dispersing offspring or larvae over considerable distances.

The Canadian fossils show that Funisia was not confined to South Australia, as once thought. Its presence on Laurentia supports the idea that some Ediacaran organisms could disperse across ancient oceans.

One specimen from the Blueflower Formation may also record an early stage of branching growth.

So, while the site does not preserve sex itself, it contains a member of a lineage associated with some of the earliest evidence for sexual reproduction among complex organisms.

Sex, it appears, may be nearly as old as awkwardness—though awkwardness, being soft-bodied, has left a frustratingly poor fossil record.

LIFE BELOW THE LIGHT

The depth of the Canadian site may be just as important as the age of its fossils.

White Sea communities were previously best known from comparatively shallow marine environments. 

The Blueflower fossils, however, lived on a deeper continental slope, probably below the photic zone—the depth to which sufficient sunlight penetrates for photosynthesis.

This was not a bright tropical reef. It was a dark offshore world beyond the regular disturbance of waves and storms.

At first glance, deep water might seem an inhospitable nursery for early animals. Yet it may have offered one considerable advantage: stability.

Shallow environments can experience rapid changes in temperature, oxygen, currents and storm activity. Deeper settings may remain more consistent over time. That stability could have provided early animals with an environment in which new body plans and ecological strategies could develop.

The discovery supports a fascinating possibility: some early animal groups may have become established offshore and later expanded into shallower environments.

That is the reverse of a pattern commonly observed later in the fossil record, when evolutionary innovations often appear first in shallow, nearshore habitats before spreading into deeper water.

Early animal evolution may not have followed the rules we derived from its descendants.

This is one of the delights of palaeontology. The rocks are under no obligation whatsoever to respect our favourite theories.

PRESERVING THE IMPROBABLE

Finding these fossils is remarkable because the organisms had few hard parts—or none at all.

Bones, teeth and shells fossilize relatively readily because their mineralized tissues resist decay and destruction. Soft bodies normally collapse, decompose or become someone else’s lunch long before burial can preserve them.

Ediacaran fossils required exceptional circumstances. Organisms had to be covered quickly by sediment, and microbial mats may have helped stabilize their impressions. Even then, what remains is often a faint outline, ridge or textured surface rather than a conventional body fossil.

Researchers examined the Blueflower specimens using carefully controlled lighting and Reflectance Transformation Imaging. This technique combines photographs taken with light coming from different directions, allowing subtle surface details to be examined digitally.

In palaeontology, lighting is everything. A fossil that looks like an unremarkable slab beneath flat light can suddenly reveal the ghost of an organism when illuminated from the side.

The specimens collected during the study are housed at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, where these ancient residents of the North remain in the North.

BEFORE THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION

The Mackenzie Mountain fossils also help soften the old idea that complex animal life appeared suddenly during the Cambrian Explosion, beginning around 539 million years ago.

The Cambrian remains one of the most spectacular evolutionary intervals in Earth history. Animals developed mineralized skeletons, increasingly complex sensory systems, new feeding strategies and an impressive assortment of grasping, burrowing, swimming and biting equipment.

But it was not a beginning from nothing.

The Ediacaran world was already experimenting with movement, symmetry, feeding, reproduction, ecological communities and relationships between organisms and their environments.

The Cambrian Explosion had a prelude.

It was quiet, soft-bodied and frequently shaped like household furnishings, but it mattered.

The Blueflower fossils suggest that the transition from the older Avalon communities to the more diverse White Sea organisms was not necessarily a sharp replacement. The two groups may have overlapped in time and environment, pointing toward a more gradual evolutionary progression.

Evolution rarely arrives on cue, neatly replaces the previous cast and pauses for scientists to label the scene. It branches, overlaps, experiments and leaves us to reconstruct the performance hundreds of millions of years later.

THE SEAFLOOR THAT CHANGED THE STORY

Some 567 million years ago, the ancient seafloor of northern Laurentia hosted a community unlike anything alive today.

Dickinsonia moved across microbial mats, absorbing food beneath its quilted body.

Kimberella crept and scraped, leaving evidence of purposeful feeding behind it.

Funisia gathered in tubular communities and may have relied upon a reproductive strategy capable of carrying new generations across ancient seas.

None had bones. None had teeth. None could have imagined trilobites, dinosaurs, mammoths or palaeontologists hiking through the Mackenzie Mountains in search of their faint impressions.

Yet within these soft bodies were some of the behaviours that would come to define animal life: movement, feeding, environmental awareness, community and reproduction.

The ancient Canadian seafloor was not empty and it was not waiting for the Cambrian to make life interesting.

It was already alive with evolutionary possibility.

Soft, strange and quietly getting on with the complicated business of becoming an animal.

The 2026 research was published by Scott D. Evans, Erik A. Sperling, Kimberly V. Lau and Justin V. Strauss in Science Advances as “Discovery of White Sea assemblage fossils from Laurentia.” 

Additional information sourced from the American Museum of Natural History, and an institutional research article published by Dartmouth’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences on June 9, 2026. 

If you're searching for it, it is not a separate scientific study; it explains the same peer-reviewed Science Advances paper in accessible language.

Dartmouth is directly connected to the research through Dr. Justin Strauss, an associate professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Dartmouth. Strauss was a co-corresponding author of the scientific paper and led the expedition that recovered the fossils from the Mackenzie Mountains.

Dickensonia Image: Asset id: 1960060888.

EUROPEAN FLAMINGO: STILT WALKERS OF ANTIQUITY

European Flamingo

At dawn along the salt lagoons of the Mediterranean, the European flamingo rises like a soft-feathered sunrise, a sweep of pale rose and ember pink drifting across mirror-still water. 

Their long, reed-thin legs stitch delicate ripples through the shallows, while their downcurved bills — precision tools of evolutionary engineering — sift brine shrimp and algae with gentle, rhythmic sweeps.

But Phoenicopterus roseus, the European flamingo, is more than a creature of luminous wetlands. 

It is the living remnant of a lineage forged in deep time, a story that stretches back more than 30 million years into a world utterly transformed.

For decades, flamingos stood as an evolutionary puzzle — strange in form, stranger still in habit. Their closest relatives were unclear. Then the fossil record began offering clues.

The earliest birds recognizable as flamingo ancestors appear in the Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, a period when the world was cooling and vast salt lakes spread across what is now Europe and North America.

The star of this ancient cast is Palaelodus, a long-legged wader known from deposits in France, Germany, and even North America. Often described as an “unfinished flamingo,” Palaelodus stood tall on slender legs but lacked the extreme bill curvature of modern species.

Paleontologists see it as a sister lineage — a bird halfway between the ancestral stock and the unmistakable modern flamingo form.

Their environments tell the same tale: shallow, alkaline waters rich with diatoms, crustaceans, and blue-green algae. The perfect proving ground for a future flamingo.

By the Miocene, true flamingos had fully arrived. Fossil flamingos — many nearly indistinguishable from modern species — appear in the lakebeds of Spain, Italy, Hungary, and Greece.

Some highlights of Europe’s deep flamingo past include:

• Phoenicopterus minutus, an elegant early species known from the Late Miocene of Hungary
• Phoenicopterus gracilis, which stalked ancient Iberian wetlands

Abundant trackways in Miocene lakebeds of Spain, showing flocks wading and foraging as they do today

What’s striking is how little the flamingo body plan has changed. Once their ecological niche crystallized — the brackish shallows, the sieving bill, the social flocking behaviour — evolution held its breath. Flamingos became masters of a lifestyle so successful it needed no further remodeling.

Until recently, the flamingo’s closest living relatives were uncertain. For years, hypotheses bounced between storks, herons, waders, and even waterfowl. Then genetics reshaped the field.

Flamingos are now grouped with grebes in a clade called Mirandornithes.

It’s a pairing that initially seems improbable — one bird is a pink desert ballerina, the other a compact diver of northern lakes. Yet the fossil record supports it: early grebe-like birds and Palaelodus share key skeletal traits, hinting at a common aquatic ancestor before their lineages diverged.

Today the European flamingo thrives in the wetlands of:

• The Camargue, France
• Doñana, Spain
• Sardinia and Sicily
• The salt pans of Turkey
• Coastal lagoons of North Africa

Their pink colour, borrowed from carotenoid pigments in their prey, is a living reminder of their deep bond with saline waters. Their massive colonial nests, sculpted from mud into miniature towers, echo the behaviour of flamingos preserved in Miocene fossil beds.

Each bird, elegant and improbable, embodies a lineage honed by climate shifts, vanished lakes, and ancient ancestors who once stepped cautiously through Europe’s long-lost wetlands.

From the lithified sediments of the Oligocene to the shimmering pink flocks drifting across the Mediterranean today, flamingos stand as one of the great evolutionary constants: birds whose story is etched into stone, water, and sunlight.

HOW DO FOSSILS FORM? THE MOST UNLIKELY AFTERLIFE ON EARTH

Let us begin with a rather brutal truth. You are probably not going to become a fossil.

Neither am I.

Neither is the salmon that washed onto the riverbank, the beetle beneath the cedar tree nor the unfortunate vole currently being carried away by an owl.

Most living things disappear completely after death. 

They are eaten, scavenged, scattered, dissolved, trampled, weathered or dismantled by bacteria and fungi. Their nutrients return to the ecosystem, but their physical remains leave no lasting geological record.

Fossilization is the exception. Yet, it is still a conversation I have with my fossil friends more times than I can count. We would all love to become fossils ourselves. Geeky? Yes, but one can dream!

To become a fossil requires the right organism to die in the right place, at the right time, under the right conditions—and then remain protected through thousands, millions or even billions of years of geological upheaval.

To become a fossil is to win one of the most improbable lotteries on Earth.

Even then, success is not guaranteed. A fossil must survive burial, pressure, mineral-rich water, chemical change, shifting continents, rising mountains and erosion. Finally, it must reach the surface at precisely the moment when someone is there to recognize it.

Too early, and it remains hidden. Too late, and it erodes into dust.

Fossilization is therefore not a single event. It is a journey—a long and perilous passage from life to stone and, with extraordinary luck, back into the light.

STEP ONE: SOMETHING DIES

Upper Cambrian Trilobite

Every body fossil begins with death. This may happen quietly. A leaf drops into a lake. A clam dies on the seafloor. A fish sinks into deep water.

Or it may happen with considerably more geological enthusiasm.

A volcanic eruption blankets an ecosystem in ash. A flood sweeps animals into a river channel. A mudslide buries an entire community. A tree releases sticky resin around a struggling insect. A creature wanders into natural tar and discovers, much too late, that the surface is not as solid as advertised.

The cause of death can influence what happens next, but death alone does not begin fossilization.

The critical issue is what happens to the remains immediately afterward.

A dead organism is suddenly of great interest to nearly everything around it. Scavengers arrive. Insects feed and lay eggs. Microorganisms begin breaking down tissues. Sunlight, oxygen, water and temperature all accelerate physical and chemical change.

Fossilization begins as a race between destruction and preservation. Destruction usually wins.

STEP TWO: THE BODY BEGINS TO DECAY

Soft tissues generally disappear first.

Eyes, skin, internal organs, muscles and other delicate tissues are quickly attacked by bacteria, fungi, insects and scavengers. Under ordinary conditions, little may remain after days, weeks or months.

Hard parts last longer. Bones, teeth, shells, exoskeletons and wood resist decay, giving them a greater opportunity to be buried. This is why the fossil record contains far more shells and teeth than jellyfish and worms.

It is also why our picture of ancient life is biased.

An ecosystem may have been filled with soft-bodied creatures, but unless unusually favourable conditions preserved them, their absence from the fossil record can make them nearly invisible to us.

Imagine trying to reconstruct the modern ocean using only shark teeth, clam shells and the occasional whale bone. You would learn a great deal, but you would miss most of the story.

Hard body parts and rapid burial are two of the most important factors increasing an organism’s chance of fossilization. Without them, the journey often ends before it begins.

STEP THREE: RAPID BURIAL CHANGES EVERYTHING

Burial is the great opportunity.

When remains are quickly covered by mud, sand, silt, volcanic ash or another material, they become less accessible to scavengers and less exposed to weather.

Burial can also reduce the amount of oxygen reaching the remains. Many bacteria and scavenging organisms require oxygen, so low-oxygen conditions can slow decomposition.

This does not mean all buried organisms become fossils. Most do not. But rapid burial buys time.

The best locations for fossilization are therefore usually places where sediment accumulates:

• River channels and floodplains
• Lakes
• Deltas
• Beaches
• Shallow seas
• Deep ocean basins
• Sand dunes
• Caves
• Volcanic ash deposits
• Tar seeps
• Peat bogs

An animal dying on a rocky mountaintop has poor prospects. Its remains may be scattered by wind, water and scavengers without ever being buried.

A clam dying on a muddy seafloor has much better odds. Sediment is already accumulating around it, and its shell is resistant to decay.

This is one reason marine organisms are so well represented in the fossil record. Oceans have covered enormous portions of the planet, and their floors provide vast areas where sediment can accumulate.

Many rocks now exposed high in mountains began as sediment beneath ancient seas.

Finding seashells on a mountain does not mean clams were once exceptionally skilled climbers. It means the seafloor was lifted. We can look to the Burgess Shale Biota as a wonderful example of this.

HOW MUCH BURIAL IS ENOUGH?

The first thin layer may protect remains temporarily, but continued burial is usually necessary for long-term preservation.

New sediment settles on top of older sediment. Layer after layer accumulates, gradually increasing the pressure on the material below.

The sediment becomes compacted. Water is squeezed from the spaces between grains. Dissolved minerals precipitate and act like cement, binding those grains together.

Loose mud may become shale. Sand may become sandstone. Accumulations of shells and carbonate mud may become limestone.

Sedimentary rocks form when deposited material is buried, compacted and cemented. These rocks are particularly important to palaeontology because they form at Earth’s surface under conditions capable of preserving evidence of life.

Fossils are rarely found in rocks that once existed as molten magma. Lava is not known for its gentle handling of organic remains.

Metamorphism can also destroy fossils. When sedimentary rocks are subjected to intense heat and pressure, their minerals recrystallize. Delicate structures may be distorted or erased entirely.

Fossils therefore survive best when their rocks experience enough burial to become solid, but not so much heat and pressure that their history is cooked beyond recognition.

It is a narrow path. Sinking to the bottom of a body of water with little to no oxygen will also do the trick in many cases. 

THE ODDS ARE NOT IN YOUR FAVOUR

Even rapid burial does not guarantee fossilization. The remains may later dissolve. Groundwater may carry them away. Geological pressure may crush them. The surrounding rock may be heated, folded, faulted or dragged deep into Earth’s crust.

Entire fossil-bearing formations can disappear through erosion or be transformed so completely that no recognizable trace of life remains.

Then there is the final difficulty: discovery.

A fossil may remain safely hidden underground for millions of years. Tectonic movement must lift the fossil-bearing rocks, and erosion must remove enough material to expose them at the surface.

Exposure creates another race against time.

Wind, rain, waves, frost and flowing water reveal fossils—but they also destroy them. A bone that survived 100 million years underground may begin crumbling within a few seasons of reaching the surface.

Someone must pass by during that brief window, notice an unusual shape and understand that it matters.

A line of vertebrae. The curve of a shell. A tooth emerging from sandstone. A delicate leaf pressed into shale.

The moment of discovery may feel sudden, but it is the final stage of a journey that began with death and continued through deep time.

AN IMPROBABLE MESSAGE FROM THE PAST

Fossils are often described as the remains of dead organisms. I prefer to think of them as survivors.

They survived decay, scavengers and weather. They survived burial, pressure and chemical change. They survived the shifting, folding and fracturing of Earth’s crust. Finally, they survived erosion long enough for someone to find them.

SVALBARD: A WINDOW INTO THE END PERMIAN EXTINCTION EVENT

Trekking in Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic

When the end-Permian extinction struck 252 million years ago, it nearly wiped the slate clean. 

More than 80% of marine species vanished. Coral reefs collapsed. Food webs unraveled. 

We've long believed that ocean life, particularly vertebrates, clawed its way back slowly and stepwise, with ecosystems taking millions of years to re-establish complexity.

But new research from the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard is rewriting that narrative.

Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole. One of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas, it's known for its rugged, remote terrain of glaciers and frozen tundra sheltering polar bears, Svalbard reindeer and Arctic foxes. 

It's a place close to my heart as a lover of cold, rugged landscapes and tasty fossils. We've been excavating Jurassic and Triassic marine reptile skeletons here since the early 2000s. 

It is a brutal place to do fieldwork, but the results are worth it, as Aubrey J. Roberts and team (and others) have discovered. The frozen tundra hides the answers to mysteries millions of years in the making.

A study led by Roberts and colleagues reveals a remarkable fossil treasure: a condensed bone bed on the island of Spitsbergen that captures an entire marine ecosystem only ~3 million years after the cataclysmic event. 

Rather than a slow, cautious re-entry into marine ecosystems, vertebrates appear to have surged back in a series of rapid evolutionary radiations—filling ecological niches far sooner than anyone expected.

A Fossil Window Into Early Triassic Seas

The newly described site dates to the early Spathian stage of the Early Triassic (~249 Ma), a time when Earth was still recovering from its worst biological crisis. Yet the bone bed tells a story of surprising ecological richness.

This ecosystem hosted:

• Apex predator ichthyosaurians — large, streamlined marine reptiles at the top of the food chain.
• Small-bodied ichthyopterygians — early relatives of ichthyosaurs, nimble hunters of smaller prey.
• Durophagous ichthyosauriforms — animals with crushing teeth adapted to hard-shelled prey.
• Semiaquatic archosauromorphs — early representatives of a group that later gave rise to crocodiles, dinosaurs, and birds.
• Euryhaline temnospondyls — amphibians comfortable in both fresh and salt water.
• Coelacanths and lungfish — living fossils of a lineage stretching back hundreds of millions of years.
• Ray-finned fish and sharks — the ever-present backbone of marine food webs.

Ichthyosaur Bone Bed

Taken together, these species formed an unexpectedly complex trophic network, one far more diverse and structured than previously assumed for such an early recovery interval.

We had once imagined a slow buildup of post-extinction ecosystems—simple communities giving way to more complex ones as time allowed evolutionary innovation. 

But the Svalbard bone bed challenges this view.

Diversity analyses by Roberts et al. show that heterogeneous marine vertebrate communities were already present by the late-earliest Triassic (Dienerian–Smithian, ~251 Ma).

These fully variegated tetrapod niches were re-established by ~3 million years after the extinction. Meaning vertebrates rebounded quickly, diversifying explosively into vacant ecological spaces left behind by the crisis. The recovery was not slow and linear—it was dynamic, fast, and opportunistic.

The discovery suggests that the complexification of marine ecosystems occurred through rapid radiations, not gradual, stepwise escalation. This is a new vision of our post-extinction oceans.

Picture the Early Triassic seas of Spitsbergen: warm, oxygen-stressed waters swirling with predators and prey, from sleek ichthyosaurs to ancient coelacanths. Against a backdrop of environmental turmoil, these animals built ecosystems every bit as intricate as the ones that existed before the extinction.

The implications reach far beyond Svalbard. They reshape our understanding of how life rebounds from global crises, hinting at a resilience and evolutionary adaptability more powerful than previously imagined.

The world after the end-Permian extinction was bruised, battered, and biologically diminished—but not for long. Within a geological blink, vertebrates were back in force, pioneering new ways of life in oceans still recovering from near-total collapse.

Life, as ever, found a way.

Reference: Earliest oceanic tetrapod ecosystem reveals rapid complexification of Triassic marine communities. https://scim.ag/4i1IKqK.

TRENT RIVER FOSSIL TURTLE

The Trent River near Courtenay, British Columbia is a hotbed of 85-million-year-old fossil fauna immortalized in stone. 

The bedrock of the Trent River has yielded both marine and terrestrial fossils. 

While you might just gloss over that tidbit of information with a casual nod, consider how unlikely this particular fossil site is. 

We find fossils of species that lived on the land just metres from those who lived in our ancient oceans — remarkable!

We have found a nearly complete terrestrial helochelydrid turtle, the bones of a juvenile elasmosaur marine reptile and the caudal vertebrae of a Hadrosauroid dinosaur who munched on plants, all within spitting distance of one another.

If you stroll along the Trent solo or as part of a guided tour through the Courtenay Museum, you can walk right up to the Hadrosaur site. 

It was here many years ago that Mike Trask (whose name may ring a bell as he found the first elasmosaur on the Puntledge River) found bones from a duck-bill dinosaur. Now in Alberta, the province just east of British Columbia, there are areas where if you throw a rock, you'll hit a duck-bill bone, but in British Columbia, they were unheard of. 

This was not just the first duck-billed dinosaur, it was also the first dinosaur found on Vancouver Island — ever.   

Let's park that little bit of goodness for now and hold your awe and applause for the bounty of the Trent and walk just a wee bit down from the hadrosaur site where you come to the greyish bedrock that looks so plain it seems hardly worth noting, but it was once the resting place of a fossil ratfish, one of the ocean's oddest fish.  

If you head a wee bit upriver, you come to the delineation zone marking the contact between the dark grey marine shales and mudstones of the Haslam Formation where they meet the sandstones of the Comox Formation. 

Fossilized material in the Comox sandstones is less abundant but still well worth a look. If you look closely you begin to see fossilized wood and identifiable fossil plant material. So, hadrosaur, terrestrial, ratfish, marine, then terrestrial plant material. This river just keeps on giving.

Further upstream, there is a small tributary, Idle Creek, where you can find more of this terrestrial material in the sandy shales. A little further up the river, you see more identifiable fossil plants beneath your feet and jungle-like, overgrown snarly trees all around you.

Mesopuzosia sp.; Collection of Rick Ross

If you started your journey at the Trent River Falls and walked west, you pass the infamous Ammonite Alley, where you can find Mesopuzosia sp. and Kitchinites sp. of the Upper Cretaceous (Santonian), Haslam Formation. 

I have included one of the yummy, chocolate coloured Mesopuzosia sp. ammonite found, prepped and photographed by the deeply awesome Rick Ross of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society for you to enjoy. 

You are now in the Polytychoceras vancouverense zone. Continuing west, we reach the first of two fossil turtle sites on the river — one terrestrial and one marine. I thought I would share a bit about the terrestrial turtle found here as it is one of my favourite discoveries — after the excitement of the elasmosaur excavated last summer.   

Helochelydrids are a group of poorly known turtles from Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous deposits in North America and Europe. It is the only known North American member of Helochelydridae.

Naomichelys is known from numerous specimens throughout western North America, most notably the holotype partial shell from the Early Cretaceous Cloverly Formation of Montana and a complete skeleton from the Antlers Formation of Texas. The Cloverly Formation includes a number of vertebrate fossils including a diverse assemblage of dinosaur fossils. the site was designated as a National Natural Landmark by the National Park Service in 1973.

Naomichelys is a member of the family Helochelydridae. We find their fossilized remains in Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous deposits in North America and Europe. Within North America, only the species Naomichelys speciosa is known from relatively complete material which makes comparisons between specimens from other localities challenging. The delightful Phil Currie along with co-authors Matthew J. Vavrek, Derek W. Larson, Donald B. Brinkman and Courtenay's own Joe Morin described the new species of Helochelydrid terrestrial turtle and put the Trent River near Courtenay, British Columbia on the palaeontological map once again.

The new genus and species of helochelydrid turtle were based on the relatively complete shell from the bedrock of the Trent. This area is a section of the marine Haslam Formation (Santonian) of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

The new species is characterized by several distinctive shell features, notably a forward curving process on the anterior portion of the hyoplastra, strongly distinguishing it from N. speciosa. 

The shell is relatively small — and much smaller than one might expect — but does appear to be from a fully grown individual and not a juvenile, suggesting that the species was generally much smaller than other known helochelydrids.

Previously most records of helochelydrids in North America had been assigned to N. speciosa, regardless of actual diagnosable characters. 

The presence of an additional species of helochelydrid from North America tells us that a greater diversity of the taxon was present than was previously recognized. While the interspecific relationships of helochelydrids remain difficult to fully assess, due to the lack of well-preserved specimens, this new species provides additional geographic and phylogenetic data that aids our understanding of this enigmatic group.

As the rock of the Trent River slowly erodes away, it will be interesting to see what it reveals next. We have now found both marine and terrestrial reptiles along with plants, ammonites and other fossil goodies. Tis a story — and river — to keep an eye on!

What to Know Before You Go — Trent River Walk

The full Trent River Walk is 14.8 kilometres of moderate hiking on a well-maintained trail. You may choose to enjoy the wide, flat beginning section of the loop and leave off the narrower sections of the trail where you need to navigate roots and rock. Dogs on leash are welcome. 

You can do this as a family year-round. The trail provides access to the many collecting areas of the river. Be mindful of slippery rocks and keep your eyes peeled for fossils. To enter the trail and find parking, set 375 Hatton Road, Courtenay, British Columbia, into your GPS. Enjoy!   

MOSASAURS: PREDATORS OF THE DEEP

Slip beneath the surface of a Late Cretaceous ocean—if you dare—and you enter the domain of one of Earth’s most spectacular marine predators: the mosasaur. 

Long before whales ruled the deep, these muscular, paddle-limbed lizards patrolled warm inland seas with the quiet confidence of creatures that knew very little could challenge them for long.

Picture a body built like a torpedo, jaws hinged like a bear trap, and teeth designed for the twin jobs of slicing and holding. 

Some species stretched more than 15 metres in length—longer than a city bus—yet they moved through the water with the agility of an oversized crocodile on turbo mode. 

With a powerful tail beating side to side, they could lunge forward in explosive bursts, swallowing ammonites whole or ambushing unsuspecting fish, turtles and even sharks. Yes—sharks were on the menu.

Scientifically, mosasaurs are a wonderful paradox. They were reptiles—close cousins of modern monitor lizards—but they evolved flippers, streamlined skulls and powerful tail flukes remarkably similar to those of whales and ichthyosaurs. 

It’s convergent evolution at its flashiest: different lineages arriving at the same sleek design for life in the fast lane of the sea.

Their fossils tell a sweeping story of ancient oceans that once covered vast swaths of the planet. The chalk cliffs of Europe, the phosphate beds of Morocco and the great Western Interior Seaway of North America have all yielded the remains of these sea dragons. Each vertebra and jawbone is a relic of a vanished world where reptiles ruled the waves.

Along the rugged shores of Vancouver Island, mosasaurs left their mark as well. During the Late Cretaceous, much of what is now the island lay beneath a warm coastal sea. 

The rocks of the Nanaimo Group—thick marine sandstones and shales laid down between roughly 90 and 66 million years ago—preserve tantalising traces of the predators that cruised this ancient Pacific margin.

Several mosasaur taxa have been reported from these deposits, including Tylosaurus, Mosasaurus, Plioplatecarpus, and Clidastes, animals that would have prowled these coastal waters alongside plesiosaurs, sharks and vast schools of fish. 

These remains are often fragmentary—vertebrae, teeth, bits of jaw—but they speak clearly of formidable hunters moving through the same seas that deposited the coal beds and marine fossils of the Nanaimo Basin.

One of the most exciting discoveries came from the Comox Valley. In 1988, local fossil enthusiast Rick Ross discovered mosasaur remains near Dove Creek, just south of Courtenay on Vancouver Island. 

The specimen, preserved in the marine rocks of the Nanaimo Group, included vertebrae and portions of the skeleton that confirmed the presence of these apex predators along our ancient coastline. 

The Dove Creek mosasaur remains one of the most significant mosasaur finds on Vancouver Island and a wonderful reminder that our local rocks still hold secrets from the final chapters of the Age of Reptiles.

Imagine that Cretaceous shoreline for a moment: broad deltas feeding sediment into a shallow sea, ammonites drifting through the water column, and somewhere below the surface a mosasaur gliding silently past—sleek, powerful and very much in charge.

Their reign, however spectacular, was brief in geological terms. When the asteroid struck 66 million years ago, oceans darkened, food chains collapsed, and even these magnificent hunters could not outswim the global catastrophe that followed.

But in stone, they still roar. Their bones—sleek, predatory, impossibly elegant—remind us that the waters around Vancouver Island were once home to sea lizards the size of whales… and that the rocks beneath our feet are pages from an ocean epic still waiting to be read.

If you fancy listening to the story of the Dove Creek Mosasaur, check out the Fossil Huntress Podcast on your favourite listening stream. Tis an epic tale! 

Science owes a great thank you to Rick Ross for his quick thinking and above-and-beyond action in saving that specimen! 

QUIKY CAMBRIAN CURIOSITIES: OPABINIA

Meet one of the most wonderfully peculiar animals to ever grace our ancient seas. 

This five-eyed marvel swam through the Cambrian oceans some 508 million years ago, its soft body drifting above the seafloor of what is now British Columbia—preserved in exquisite detail within the famed Burgess Shale of Yoho National Park.

At first glance, Opabinia regalis feels almost mischievous in its design. I think of them as Cambrian submarines. Five stalked eyes sit atop its head like a crown of periscopes, scanning a world teeming with early life. 

Along its sides, a series of delicate lobes ripple in coordinated waves, propelling it forward with gentle, undulating grace. But it is the feeding apparatus that truly steals the show—a long, flexible proboscis ending in a tiny claw, perfectly suited for plucking soft prey from the seafloor and delivering it to its backward-facing mouth tucked beneath the head.

Yes—five eyes. And a claw-tipped trunk. Nature was experimenting, and Opabinia was one of her boldest sketches.

When Charles Doolittle Walcott first described this curious creature in 1912, it puzzled generations of paleontologists. At the time, he believed it was an anostracan branchiopod. I don't see the resemblance but I wasn't looking at a fossil mystery with his lived experience of the time.

Walcott named the species Opabinia after Opabin Peak in the Canadian Rockies. While his initial classification as a crustacean was later debated and revised by researchers like Harry Whittington in the 1970s—who identified it as a far more enigmatic "weird wonder"—Walcott's 1912 publication remains the initial scientific description of this marvelous fancy of nature.

For decades, its place on the tree of life remained uncertain, its anatomy so unlike anything alive today that it seemed almost alien. 

Thanks to the careful work of Harry Whittington and colleagues—that Opabinia was understood as part of an early branch of arthropod evolution, a relative—albeit a very strange one—of the lineage that would eventually give rise to insects, crustaceans and spiders.

Soft-bodied and delicate, Opabinia would never have fossilized under ordinary circumstances. It is only through the extraordinary preservation of the Burgess Shale—where rapid burial in fine mud and low-oxygen conditions halted decay—that we are gifted this glimpse into deep time’s more experimental chapters.

In Opabinia, we see evolution not as a straight line, but as a riot of possibilities—forms tried, tested, and sometimes abandoned with countless strange and beautiful designs flickering briefly before fading into the stone. I am truly thrilled that we got a chance to see this one as so many never had the chance to fossilize and we'll never get to know their quirky selves. 

FOSSILS, TEXTILES AND URINE: YORKSHIRE HISTORY

Yorkshire Coast

You may recall the eight-metre Type Specimen of the ichthyosaur, Temnodontosaurus crassimanus, found in an alum quarry in Yorkshire, northern England.

The Yorkshire Museum was given this important ichthyosaur fossil back in 1857 when alum production was still a necessary staple of the textile industry. Without that industry, many wonderful specimens would likely never have been unearthed.

These quarries are an interesting bit of British history as they helped shape the Yorkshire Coast, created an entirely new industry and gave us more than a fixative for dyes. 

With them came the discovery of many remarkable fossil specimens and, oddly, local employment in the collection of urine.

In the 16th century, alum was essential in the textile industry as a fixative for dyes. 

By the first half of the 16th century, the clothing of the Low Countries, German states, and Scandinavia had developed in a different direction than that of England, France, and Italy, although all absorbed the sobering and formal influence of Spanish dress after the mid-1520s. Those fashions held true until the Inquisition when religious persecution, politics and fashion underwent a much-needed overhaul to something lighter.

Fashion in Medieval Livonia (1521): Albrecht Dürer

Elaborate slashing was popular, especially in Germany. In the depiction you see here, an artist pokes a bit of fun at Germanic fashion from the time. Bobbin lace arose from passementerie in the mid-16th century in Flanders, the Flemish Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium. Black was increasingly worn for the most formal occasions.

This century saw the rise of the ruff, which grew from a mere ruffle at the neckline to immense, slightly silly, cartwheel shapes. They adorned the necklines of the ultra-wealthy and uber-stylish men and women of the age.

At their most extravagant, ruffs required wire supports and were made of fine Italian reticella, a cutwork linen lace. You can imagine the many hours of skill and patience that would have gone into each piece to create the artful framework of these showy lace collars.

16th Century Fashion / Ruff Collars and Finery

In contrast to all that ruff, lace and cutwork linen, folk needed dyed fabrics. And to fix those dyes, they needed Alum. For a time, Italy was the source of that alum.

The Pope held a tidy monopoly on the industry, supplying both alum and the best dyes. He also did a nice trade in colourful and rare pigments for painting. And for a time, all was well with dandy's strutting their finery to the local fops in Britain.

All that changed during the Reformation. Great Britain, heathens as they were, were cut off from their Papal source and needed to fend for themselves.

The good Thomas Challoner took up the charge and set up Britain's first Alum works in Guisborough. Challoner looked to palaeontology for inspiration. Noticing that the fossils found on the Yorkshire coast were very similar to those found in the Alum quarries in Europe, he hatched a plan to set-up an alum industry on home soil. 

As the industry grew, sites along the coast were favoured as access to the shales and subsequent transportation was much easier.

Alum House, Photo: Joyce Dobson and Keith Bowers

Alum was extracted from quarried shales through a large scale and complicated process which took months to complete. 

The process involved extracting then burning huge piles of shale for 9 months, before transferring it to leaching pits to extract an aluminium sulphate liquor. This was sent along channels to the alum works where human urine was added.

At the peak of alum production, the industry required 200 tonnes of urine every year. That's the equivalent of all the potty visits of more than 1,000 people. Yes, strange but true.

The steady demand was hard to keep up with and urine became an imported resource from markets as far away as London and Newcastle upon Tyne in the northeast of England. Wooden buckets were left on street corners for folk to do their business then carted back to the south to complete the alum extraction process. The urine and alum would be mixed into a thick liquid. Once mixed, the aromatic slosh was left to settle and then the alum crystals were removed.

I'm not sure if this is a folktale or plain truth, but as the story goes, one knows when the optimum amount of alum had been extracted as you can pop an egg in the bucket and it floats on its own.

Alum House. Photo: Ann Wedgewood and Keith Bowers

The last Alum works on the Yorkshire Coast closed in 1871. This was due to the invention of manufacturing synthetic alum in 1855, then subsequently the creation of aniline dyes that contained their own fixative.

Many sites along the Yorkshire Coast bear evidence of the alum industry. These include Loftus Alum Quarries where the cliff profile is drastically changed by extraction and huge shale tips remain.

Further South are the Ravenscar Alum Works, which are well-preserved and enable visitors to visualize the processes which took place. The photos you see here are of Alum House at Hummersea. The first shows the ruin of Alum House printed on a postcard from 1906. The second (bottom) image shows the same ruin from on high with Cattersty Point in the background.

The good folk at the National Trust in Swindon are to thank for much of the background shared here. If you'd like to learn more about the Yorkshire area or donate to a very worthy charity, follow their link below.

Reference: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/yorkshire-coast/features/how-alum-shaped-the-yorkshire-coast.