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

DIGS, DISCOS AND DINOSAURS: FOSSIL PREP IN MIAMI

Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum PaleoLab

If you find yourself wandering through downtown Miami with a coffee in one hand and a healthy appreciation for ancient dead things in the other, make your way to the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science. 

Tucked inside this sleek, sunshine-soaked palace of science is one of my favourite museum features anywhere — a living, breathing fossil lab called The Dig. And yes, it is exactly as wonderful as it sounds.

And now, the Frost Museum has dug up something especially exciting — the PaleoLab. 

Visitors can watch a chasmosaur emerge from its rocky tomb alongside a still-unidentified hadrosaur slowly revealing itself bone by bone beneath the careful hands of fossil preparators. 

That is the sort of sentence that makes paleontology folk spill their tea with excitement.

This is not one of those dusty back-room museum spaces where fossils disappear behind closed doors, never to be seen again. 

Oh no. 

The Frost Museum throws open the curtains and lets visitors peer directly into the delicate, painstaking work of paleontology in real time. 

You can watch South Florida’s first research paleontology program in action as Fossil Preparation Technicians meticulously clean and prepare fossils collected in the field by Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Dr. Cary Woodruff and his team.

Tiny air scribes buzz softly as technicians remove stubborn matrix grain by grain. Brushes sweep delicately over bones that have not seen daylight in tens of millions of years. 

It is equal parts science, surgery, archaeology, and wizardry. One wrong move and a specimen that survived asteroid impacts, shifting continents, and geological chaos could snap like a stale biscuit. No pressure there then.

The stars of the show are often Florida’s ancient marine fossils — enormous prehistoric fish, marine vertebrates, and beautifully preserved skeletons pulled from sediments that tell stories of warm shallow seas teeming with life millions of years ago. 

Florida may not be the first place folk think of when they picture fossils, but the Sunshine State is an absolute treasure chest of ancient marine life. 

During much of the Cenozoic, much of Florida lounged beneath warm tropical seas while giant sharks, dugongs, whales, rays, and schools of strange prehistoric fish cruised overhead like some beautifully chaotic underwater ballet.

And here is the lovely bit: you are not just staring at fossils trapped behind glass after all the fun is done. You are witnessing the actual process of discovery and preparation. 

Fossils emerge slowly from stone like ancient secrets, finally deciding they are ready to gossip.

The Dig also leans beautifully into hands-on learning. Visitors can explore tactile displays and even try digital fossil preparation activities themselves. 

Which is excellent because many of us secretly believe we could prepare fossils professionally after watching exactly six minutes of someone else doing it. The digital prep stations are a wonderfully safe way to test that theory without accidentally obliterating a 15-million-year-old fish skull.

The museum itself sits at 1101 Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami, all gleaming architecture and waterfront views. 

It is worth setting aside a good chunk of your day because Frost Science is packed with delights beyond paleontology — aquariums, planetarium shows, and enough science goodness to make your inner nerd very happy indeed.

If you go, check museum hours and tickets ahead of time as lab activity schedules can vary. And do give yourself time to linger at The Dig. 

There is something deeply magical about watching ancient life emerge slowly from stone under the careful hands of modern scientists. 

One moment, you are standing in humid, modern Miami, surrounded by traffic and palm trees… and the next, your mind is drifting through vanished seas filled with horned dinosaurs, hadrosaurs, giant fish, and creatures that vanished millions of years before humans arrived to marvel at them.

. . . . . 

As a funny aside, the last time I found myself in Miami, I was only meant to be passing through on my way to Nassau and Mayaguana Island. A missed connecting flight forced an unexpected overnight stay. 

The hotel clerk informed me — somewhat suspiciously — that only one room remained available on the 22nd floor. There was a great deal of awkward hesitation and “Are you sure?” energy at the front desk, which naturally made me think the room might be haunted, flooded, or home to a mildly aggressive iguana. 

What they neglected to mention was that directly above my room sat the hotel disco, where enthusiastic dancers in stilettos were hammering the floorboards like caffeinated woodpeckers attempting to excavate for oil. 

After lying awake for an hour trying to determine why the ceiling was experiencing tectonic activity, I finally gave up, got dressed, strolled upstairs, and joined the party. 

Which, honestly, feels very much in keeping with Miami’s general energy. That city is relentless. Resistance is futile...

CERATIOCARIS, YE KEN

Well now, would you have a look at this bonnie wee beastie. 

This braw Scottish lad is Ceratiocaris papilio (Salter in Murchison, 1859), a pod shrimp from the Silurian mudstones of the Kip Burn Formation in Scotland’s Midland Valley. 

About 430 million years ago, he would have paddled through warm rising seas teeming with crinoid meadows, coral reefs, brachiopods, trilobites, and some of the newest show-offs on the evolutionary stage — fish sporting jaws for the very first time. Imagine the drama. 

Up until then, most fish were essentially gummy wee vacuum cleaners. Suddenly, evolution hands out teeth and the oceans become a much rowdier pub on a Saturday night.

Ceratiocaris belongs to an extinct group of Paleozoic phyllocarid crustaceans found in marine rocks from the Upper Ordovician through the Silurian. They were tidy little armoured swimmers with eight short thoracic segments, seven longer abdominal somites, and an elongated pretelson that gave them a sleek, shrimpy silhouette. 

Their carapace was gently oval-shaped with elegant ridges running along the ventral margin, plus a jaunty horn projecting from the front — because apparently even Silurian arthropods appreciated a bit of flair.

This handsome specimen comes from the dark laminated silty mudstones of the Kip Burn Formation, famous amongst fossil folk for its richly fossiliferous “Ceratiocaris beds.” These layers are packed with extraordinary arthropods including Ceratiocaris, Dictyocaris, Pterygotus, and Slimonia, alongside early fishes such as Birkenia and Thelodus. 

Higher in the formation, the so-called “Pterygotus beds” preserve great hulking sea scorpions — eurypterids large enough to give you pause before dangling your toes in a Silurian estuary — together with brachiopods like Lingula and more Ceratiocaris.

The Kip Burn Formation captures a fascinating ecological shift as Scotland’s ancient environments moved from fully marine settings toward brackish and near non-marine conditions. 

It is a world caught mid-change — tides shifting, habitats evolving, and strange creatures experimenting with new ways to survive. Scotland was positively heaving with wonderfully odd life at the time, and the Midland Valley preserves it all beautifully beneath those dark ancient mudstones.

And while Ceratiocaris is proudly Scottish royalty in the fossil world, these crustaceans also turn up across the pond in the Silurian Eramosa Formation of Ontario, Canada — another legendary locality famous for gorgeous eurypterids and exquisitely preserved Paleozoic life.

Photo credit / collection of: York Yuxi Wang and Tianyi Zhang

Joseph H. Collette; David M. Rudkin (2010). "Phyllocarid crustaceans from the Silurian Eramosa Lagerstätte (Ontario, Canada): taxonomy and functional morphology". Journal of Paleontology. 84 (1): 118–127. doi:10.1666/08-174.1.

M. Copeland; T. E. Bolton (1985). Fossils of Ontario part 3: the eurypterids and phyllocarids. Volume 48 of Life Sciences Miscellaneous Publications. Royal Ontario Museum. ISBN 0-88854-314-X.

MUD, MONSTERS AND AMMONITES: FOSSIL HUNTING AT KIMMERIDGE BAY

There’s a particular kind of madness that takes hold when you arrive at Kimmeridge Bay on the Jurassic Coast of Dorset. 

You tell yourself you’re just going for a “nice seaside walk,” but five minutes later you’re crouched in the mud like an enthusiastic raccoon, pockets bulging with ammonites and your knees soaked through by 150 million years of ancient ooze.

Welcome to fossil hunting on England’s Jurassic Coast — where the cliffs leak time.

Kimmeridge Bay is part of the famed Jurassic Coast UNESCO World Heritage Site, and what a glorious bit of deep-time drama it is. These dark shales and limestones belong to the Kimmeridge Clay Formation, laid down during the Late Jurassic, roughly 157–152 million years ago, when Dorset sat beneath a warm, shallow sea teeming with life. 

No cream teas. No tourists in sensible rain jackets. Just marine reptiles, squidgy cephalopods, fish, crustaceans and enough mud to preserve a kingdom.

The cliffs here are famously rich in organic material — so rich, in fact, that the Kimmeridge Clay became one of the major source rocks for North Sea oil. Every step you take is over the compressed remains of ancient plankton, algae and marine life. Delightful, really. Ancient death soup under your hiking boots.

And the fossils! Oh, the fossils.

Ammonites are the stars of the show, spiralled little beauties weathering out of the shale after winter storms and heavy tides. Some are tiny enough to fit on your fingertip; others are dinner-plate-sized beasts that make you briefly consider whether you can casually carry 40 pounds of rock back to the car without injuring yourself or your dignity.

You’ll also find belemnites — the bullet-shaped internal guards of extinct squid-like cephalopods — scattered about like Jurassic cigars tossed aside by some enormous marine gangster. Bivalves, marine snails, crustaceans and fossil wood turn up regularly, and if the fossil gods are smiling upon you, you may glimpse bones from ichthyosaurs or plesiosaurs weathering from the cliffs. Proper sea dragons.

These waters once swam with predators. Ichthyosaurs sliced through the sea with tuna-shaped precision while long-necked plesiosaurs lurked below like nightmare swans with teeth. Above them drifted ammonites in absurd abundance, jetting through the water column while trying very hard not to become lunch.

The real joy of Kimmeridge is that the geology is laid out like pages in a very muddy storybook. Broad wave-cut platforms stretch out at low tide, exposing bedding planes packed with fossils. You can literally walk across ancient seabeds while gulls scream overhead and the English Channel hurls itself dramatically against the shore in proper British fashion.

Now — and this bit matters — Kimmeridge Bay is not a free-for-all fossil freebie buffet. The bay is privately owned and protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), which means loose fossils may be collected responsibly, but hammering into the shale ledges or cliffs and extracting fossils from the rock is strictly forbidden. The cliffs are unstable enough without enthusiastic humans attacking them with geology hammers like caffeinated dwarves.

Kimmeridge is also not quite the fossil bonanza you’ll find at Lyme Regis or Charmouth. Folk sometimes arrive expecting ammonites rolling at their feet like Jurassic tennis balls, but much of what you see here remains embedded in the ledges, often beautifully preserved but heavily compressed by millions of years of pressure. 

This is less grabbing a fossil every five seconds and more patiently scan the rocks while questioning your tide timing.

And speaking of tides — always check them. The sea at Kimmeridge comes in with alarming enthusiasm and absolutely no regard for your collecting plans. More than one eager fossil hunter has found themselves stranded while trying to “just check one more rock.” The ledges are notoriously slippery with seaweed as well, and the coastguard regularly ends up rescuing visitors who underestimate both the tides and their own balance. Jurassic mud wrestling with the English Channel is rarely a winning strategy.

The second rule? Never trust a shale slab. The moment you pick one up, it will either crumble beautifully to reveal a perfect ammonite — or explode directly into your face like a Jurassic cream cracker.

Honestly, both outcomes are part of the experience.

And that is the magic of Kimmeridge Bay. It is messy, windswept, ancient and utterly alive with stories. Every fossil you hold was once part of a thriving Jurassic ecosystem long before humans arrived to invent car parks, sandwiches and waterproof trousers.

Before heading down to the shore, it is always worth stopping into The Etches Collection Museum of Jurassic Marine Life in Kimmeridge Village. 

The museum houses one of the finest collections of Jurassic marine fossils in Britain, and the staff are wonderfully generous with advice on safe and responsible collecting. If you want to understand the strange and beautiful creatures hidden in those black shales, this is the place.

You arrive looking for fossils, but somewhere between the ammonites, the sea spray and the black shale under your boots, you begin to feel something else entirely — the dizzying wonder of deep time.

Also, lower back pain from carrying too many rocks. Fossil hunting is a glamorous business.

PETALS FROZEN IN TIME: THE PRINCETON CHERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many of these plants have close relatives today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting There from Vancouver

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

MASSIVE EXTINCT CERVID: THE IRISH ELK

Irish Elk, Megaloceros giganteus

Imagine cresting a windswept hillside in the fading amber of a Pleistocene sunset. 

The tall grass parts in slow ripples, stirred by a warm evening breeze—then by something far larger. An Irish Elk steps into view, a towering ghost from deep time, its silhouette edged with gold.

This magnificent deer—Megaloceros giganteus—was not, in fact, strictly Irish, nor truly an elk. 

It was a giant among cervids, a member of a lineage that roamed from Ireland to Siberia across vast Ice Age steppes. But Ireland’s bogs preserved their remains so exquisitely that the name stuck, and so did the awe.

Irish Elk fossils appear in abundance in the peatlands of Ireland, the loess plains of Eastern Europe, and far into Central Asia. Their lineage traces back to the genus Megaloceros, a group of large deer that emerged around two million years ago. 

What made M. giganteus the superstar of its clan? Two words: monumental antlers.

Irish Elk, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris

Spanning up to 3.7 metres (twelve feet) from tip to tip, the antlers were not simply oversized decoration—they were evolutionary billboards, broadcasting strength, health, and genetic prowess. They also had a hand in their fossil fame. 

When these massive antlers were unearthed centuries ago, early naturalists were convinced they belonged to mythical beasts or antediluvian monsters. 

The truth turned out to be even better: a deer so grand it nearly defied imagination.

Despite their size and majesty, Irish Elk were true deer, closely related to fallow deer and part of an ancient and diverse cervid family. Their bodies were robust, their legs strong and built for open ground, where visibility mattered and where their spectacular antlers could be displayed in their full glory.

But evolution is a dance with the environment, and as the Pleistocene climate fluctuated, the lush grasslands they depended on began to shrink. Their decline wasn’t sudden but drawn out, a slow waltz toward extinction.

The last of these giants fell only a short time ago. We do not know the exact date but the fossils share their stories as more and more are found. The youngest known fossils come from Siberia and date to about 7,700 years ago—well after most Ice Age megafauna had disappeared. 

Irish Elk, Natural History Museum London

By then, humans were spreading across Eurasia, climates were shifting, and dense forests were overtaking open plains. 

A giant deer with enormous antlers was increasingly out of place in a world thick with trees and rife with hunters.

Climate change, habitat loss, and possibly selective hunting all nudged the Irish Elk toward its final chapter. 

They are one of these species that have been talked about as contenders for using DNA to bring them back. 

Today the Irish Elk lives on in museum halls, in bog-darkened bones, and in our imaginations—a giant stepping through grass, pausing on a Pleistocene hillside as if it might turn its head toward us at any moment. There are several Irish Elk in collections and on display at museums around the world where you can view them at your leisure. 

A particularly impressive specimen is on view at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. The museum is a personal favourite of mine and worthy of a visit for its rich history and marvelous fossils, including the Irish Elk you see in the photo above. There are also wonderful examples in the British Museum in London, also worthy of a visit. 

The sheer grandeur of their size is sure to impress you! These beauties are a reminder that the world once held creatures both familiar and impossibly grand.

Illustration Credit: The lead image above was created by the supremely talented Daniel Eskridge, Paleo Illustrator from Atlanta, Georgia, USA. I share it here with permission as I have licensed the use of many of his images over the years, including this one. 

To enjoy his works (and purchase them!) to adorn your walls, visit his website at www.danieleskridge.com

SVALBARD: A WINDOW TO 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. Paleontologists 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

CORDOBA: FOSSILS, ROMANS AND SWEET SECRETS BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

In the sun-warmed hills and river valleys around Córdoba, the rocks are doing what they do best—keeping secrets for half a billion years, then spilling them to anyone curious enough to listen. 

This corner of southern Spain sits tucked into the Baetic Cordillera, a place where continents once nudged, collided, and reshaped the map with slow, relentless determination. Beneath your feet, ancient limestones, marls, and sandstones whisper of vanished seas. 

Wander back into the Paleozoic and you’ll find Córdoba submerged beneath warm, equatorial waters, alive with trilobites scuttling along the seafloor, brachiopods filtering the currents, and crinoids swaying like elegant underwater chandeliers. 

Shift forward into the Mesozoic and Cenozoic and the cast evolves—ammonites coil through ancient oceans, bivalves cluster in quiet seabeds, and microscopic foraminifera quietly log the passing of time in the Guadalquivir Basin. 

It’s a story of rising mountains, retreating seas, and ecosystems endlessly reinventing themselves—layer by lovely layer.

Now, while it is the fossils and geology that drew me here (as they so often do), Córdoba has a way of charming you sideways. Between ancient stones and sunlit streets, you’ll spot something wholly unexpected—old world nuns slipping quietly along the cobbled lanes. 

At the Convento de Santa Isabel, these cloistered women carry on a delicious tradition, crafting sweets from recipes passed down through Roman and Moorish hands. 

You won’t see them when you visit—only a humble room, a price list, and a delightfully mysterious lazy Susan built into the wall. Ring the bell, place your order, spin your coins, and—like magic—confections appear. It’s equal parts ritual and theatre, and entirely delightful.

Beyond the sweets (though truly, do not skip the sweets), Córdoba is a feast in every sense. Try the salmorejo—thick, garlicky, tomato-rich and gloriously simple—an echo of Moorish culinary roots with a modern Andalusian flourish. 

Then wander, because this is a city made for wandering. Roman bridges still stride confidently across the Guadalquivir, defying time with elegant engineering. Convents like Santa Cruz layer centuries of architectural styles—Roman, Muslim, Moorish, Baroque—into something that feels less like a building and more like a conversation across time. 

Everywhere you look, Córdoba reveals itself in pieces: a fossil sea beneath your feet, a Roman arch overhead, and somewhere nearby, a hidden kitchen quietly spinning sugar and history into something sweet.

Roman Bridge on Guadalquivir River, Córdoba

The entire city is walkable and a picture postcard from every view. It is also a lovely testament to Roman engineering and building structures that last. Most of the bridges in Spain and certainly those in Córdoba all hail from Roman times.

The Convento de Santa Cruz, a convent n the historic centre, barrio de San Pedro, Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain, is well worth a visit. It was founded in 1435, by Pedro de los Ríos y Gutiérrez de Aguayo and his wife, Teresa Zurita. 

The building has maintained close ties to the Ríos family who have worked to maintain it. They have added to the complex to interesting effect. It is notable for its originality, its architecture, and the artistic setting. 

These include the cloister, convent, church, house of the novices of the eighteenth century, and courtyard. In the main structure, there are architectural elements in Roman, Muslim, Moorish and Baroque styles, which witness the historic and artistic development of Córdoba. The retablos which decorate the church interior, tiling, and paintings are of note. It was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural site in 2011.

Photos: Nuns taking a stroll & the Roman Bridge on the Guadalquivir River and The Great Mosque — Mezquita Cathedral — at twilight in the city of Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain by the Fossil Huntress.