NECKS FOR DAYS: THE LONG GAME OF GIRAFFE EVOLUTION

Tall, spotty, and just a little bit absurd—let’s talk about the giraffe, nature’s own high-rise browser with a flair for the dramatic.

Meet Giraffa camelopardalis, the tallest land animal striding the planet today, reaching a lofty 5–5.5 metres. 

That impossibly long neck? Not a vertebral free-for-all, but the same tidy set of seven cervical vertebrae you and I carry—each one simply stretched into elegant excess. This skyward reach lets them graze on acacia leaves beyond the reach of most herbivores, though it comes with engineering challenges. 

Their hearts—large, muscular, and working against gravity—pump blood up that long column with the help of specialized valves to keep things flowing smoothly when they dip down for a drink. No fainting on the savannah, thank you very much.

Their patchwork coats—those deliciously irregular polygons—are more than just fashion statements. Beneath each patch lies a network of blood vessels that helps regulate body temperature, a built-in cooling system for life under the African sun. 

And while they move with a languid, almost dreamy gait, don’t be fooled—giraffes can bolt at speeds approaching 60 km/h when properly motivated. All elegance, until it’s time to leg it.

Now, let’s wander into deep time, where the giraffe’s family tree gets wonderfully strange. Giraffes belong to the family Giraffidae, a once diverse clan of even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla) that includes their only living relative, the shy, forest-dwelling okapi (Okapia johnstoni). 

But their fossil kin? Oh, they were a motley crew. There’s Sivatherium, a burly, moose-like beast from the Miocene to Pleistocene of Africa and Asia, sporting hefty ossicones and a much shorter neck. Then Samotherium, a mid-Miocene form from Eurasia, showing a modest neck—an evolutionary halfway house on the road to giraffe grandeur. 

And the delightfully odd Bohlinia, from the Late Miocene of Europe and Asia, often cited as one of the closest fossil relatives to modern giraffes, already stretching skyward in anticipation of leaves yet to be munched.

Giraffid fossils pop up across Africa, Europe, and Asia, with their story unfolding from the early Miocene, roughly 20 million years ago. Over time, as climates shifted and habitats opened, longer necks and taller frames proved advantageous—natural selection quietly favouring those who could reach just a little higher than the rest. 

Modern giraffe roams sub-Saharan Africa, from savannahs to open woodlands, while their fossil remains—teeth, limb bones, and those distinctive ossicones—turn up in ancient sediments from Kenya to India, telling a tale of a lineage that once ranged far wider than its current bounds.

And then there’s the business of those necks in combat. Male giraffes engage in “necking,” swinging their heads like slow-motion wrecking balls, using their ossicones as blunt instruments in contests of dominance. It’s part duel, part dance, and entirely mesmerizing.

So here we have them—living periscopes of the savannah, equal parts elegance and evolutionary oddity. A creature that looks almost whimsical at first glance, until you realize it is the finely tuned result of millions of years of adaptation, stretching—quite literally—toward survival.

ECHOES FROM THE EOCENE: A WHALE BETWEEN WORLDS

Chrysocetus foudasil 

The impressive skull you see here belongs to Chrysocetus foudasil a member of the Basilosauridae, an ancient family of fully aquatic early whales known as archaeocetes. Though it still bore vestigial hind limbs, it no longer depended on land—a critical evolutionary step from its semi-aquatic ancestors such as Ambulocetus and Protocetus.

Basilosaurids like Chrysocetus, Dorudon, and Basilosaurus ruled the seas of the late Eocene, occupying ecological roles much like today’s dolphins and orcas. 

Basilosaurus grew into a serpent-like giant over 15 meters long, while Dorudon was smaller, sleeker, and likely faster. Chrysocetus was somewhere in between—mid-sized, streamlined, and adapted for powerful undulating swimming.

These early whales represent a pivotal stage in cetacean evolution. They bridge the gap between the land-dwelling artiodactyl ancestors (even-toed ungulates like deer and hippos) and the fully marine mysticetes (baleen whales) and odontocetes (toothed whales) that would later diversify in the Oligocene.

Looking at their remains, we are seeing a window into our world when whales were still learning to be whales—a fleeting evolutionary moment preserved in Moroccan stone, where golden bones tell the story of an ocean in transition.

THE BLUE SLIPPER: GAULT AMMONITES

This lovely duo is a personal favourite of mine. A small marvel from a vanished sea — a delightful wee ammonite measuring just 2.6 centimetres across, Anahoplites planns, from the Cretaceous Folkestone Gault Clay of Kent, in southeast England. 

Sharing this ancient stage is a 3.2 centimetre section of Hamites sp., one of those wonderfully uncoiled ammonites that seem to have ignored the usual rules of shell design. 

Together, they sit upon their original matrix, a handsome slab of Gault Clay — known locally, and rather poetically, as the Blue Slipper.

This fine muddy clay was laid down some 105 to 110 million years ago during the Lower Cretaceous, in the Upper and Middle Albian. 

At that time, a calm, fairly deep continental shelf sea spread across what is now southern England and northern France. There were no rivers muddling these waters, no estuarine murk drifting in. The absence of brackish or freshwater fossils tells us this was an open marine setting, clear of freshwater influence and comfortably offshore.

The sea itself was not abyssal, but neither was it shallow. Evidence suggests depths of around 40 to 60 metres. We know this, delightfully enough, from borings made by specialist algal-grazing gastropods, and from studies of foraminifera undertaken by Khan in 1950. 

Even the temperatures have been estimated: around 20 to 22 degrees Celsius near the surface, and a cooler 17 to 19 degrees on the seafloor. Quite balmy, really — especially for creatures wearing shells all day.

The Gault is perhaps best known for rather less peaceful behaviour. It is responsible for many of the major landslides around Ventnor and Blackgang on the Isle of Wight, where this slippery clay can transform stable slopes into geological chaos with unnerving enthusiasm.

Yet for fossil lovers, the Gault’s true fame lies in its extraordinary marine fauna, particularly from mainland localities such as Folkestone in Kent — the type locality for the Gault Clay and one of Britain’s most celebrated collecting sites. 

The clay yields ammonites in abundance. The Isle of Wight Gault is less generous, though the south-east coast of the island has produced a fine variety of ammonites, especially members of Hoplites, Paranahoplites, and Beudanticeras.

Though less fossiliferous on the island, the Gault can still reward the patient collector with treasures from these muddy mid-Cretaceous seas: ammonites such as Hoplites, Hamites, Euhoplites, Anahoplites, and Dimorphoplites; belemnites including Neohibolites; bivalves such as Birostrina and Pectinucula; gastropods, including the splendidly elegant Anchura; solitary corals; fish remains, including shark teeth; scattered crinoid fragments; and crustaceans — among them the crab Notopocorystes, a name which sounds faintly like a Roman senator.

Occasional fragments of fossil wood may also be found, drifted from ancient shores and entombed in marine mud. The lovely ammonite before us comes from the Gault Clays of Folkestone. 

Not all workers would split the genus Euhoplites so finely, and there is a respectable argument for viewing this beauty as a particularly robust form of E. loricatus, with Proeuhoplites regarded as a synonym of Euhoplites. Taxonomy, as ever, remains one of science’s more genteel battlegrounds.

Much of the fine knowledge surrounding these beds has been shared by collectors such as Jack Wonfor, whose collections contain many beautiful Gault ammonites. 

For those wishing to delve deeper, the Palaeontological Association publication Fossils of the Gault Clay by Andrew S. Gale is available in Dinosaur Isle’s gift shop.

And there is also an excellent website maintained by Fred Clouter, filled with references, resources, and links to some of the finest books on the Gault Clay and Folkestone Fossil Beds. You can explore it here: http://www.gaultammonite.co.uk/

A tiny shell, a scrap of clay, and suddenly an ancient sea returns to life. Not bad for 2.6 centimetres of swagger.

DEVONIAN SEAS: THE AGE OF FISHES

Slip beneath the surface of a Devonian sea—some 419 to 359 million years ago—and you enter a world rightly dubbed the Age of Fishes. 

Life here is abundant, experimental, and just a little bit savage. This is a time when ecosystems are finding their rhythm, and the balance between predator and prey is being written in real time.

The waters teem with armoured placoderms, including the formidable Dunkleosteus—a one-ton, bone-plated apex predator with jaws powerful enough to shear through flesh and armour alike. Early sharks glide through the gloom, sleek and efficient, while lobe-finned and ray-finned fishes diversify into an astonishing array of forms, each carving out its niche in this crowded, competitive sea.

Down below, the seafloor is anything but quiet. Brachiopods carpet the substrate, while crinoids sway like living chandeliers in gentle currents. Coral reefs—built by tabulate and rugose corals—form bustling underwater cities, sheltering trilobites, early ammonoids, and a host of other invertebrates that thrive in these warm, shallow waters. It’s a feast… and everything is on the menu.

But something even more remarkable is unfolding at the edges of this watery world. In the shallows, a bold evolutionary experiment is underway. 

The first tetrapods—our distant, four-limbed ancestors—begin their tentative push onto land. Alongside them, early terrestrial arthropods—wingless insects and the earliest arachnids—skitter across the damp margins, claiming new ground.

This episode dives into a pivotal chapter in Earth’s history—a time of innovation, adaptation, and relentless survival. From reef to open ocean to the very first footsteps on land, the Devonian is where the story of modern life truly begins.

If you'd like to listen to a podcast on our Devonian seas, check out the Fossil Huntress Podcast on your favourite stream or link to it at: https://open.spotify.com/show/1hH1wpDFFIlYC9ZW5uTYVL?si=9c3daa4c86cb4fda

FOSSIL HUNTRESS PALEONTOLOGY PODCAST

Step into deep time with The Fossil Huntress Podcast—a journey through the ancient heartbeat of our planet.

Close your eyes and imagine the world as it once was: strange seas teeming with ammonites and trilobites, ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs, fern-filled forests echoing with the footsteps of dinosaurs, and sun-warmed badlands whispering secrets from ages long past.

Together, we’ll explore Earth’s great fossil treasures—places where time slows and stone remembers. From sacred landscapes to world-famous dig sites, each episode unearths the science and stories that connect us to all who have ever lived, swum, or flown across this incredible planet.

This is a podcast about discovery, deep history, and the wonder of life itself. I'll share what you want to bring with you to enjoy your time in the field and adventure stories from my time there. 

From the tiniest single-celled ancestors to the mighty creatures that once ruled the Earth, you’ll hear how fossils tell the tale of change, resilience, and renewal—the discoveries that had me whoop with joy and the crushing defeat of a poorly split piece of shale.

So grab your curiosity, favourite the show, and come fossil-hunting through time with me—one ancient adventure at a time for some family-friendly fun. 

Head on over to the Fossil Huntress Podcast on Spotify, Apple or your favourite streaming service. The latest episode answers the question, "What Killed the Dinosaurs?" Currently streaming in 116 countries. 

ANEMONE: DESCENDANTS FROM THE CAMBRIAN

Anemones—those soft, petaled hunters swaying with the rhythm of the sea, looking more like flowers than animals until you notice the lightning-fast snap of a tentacle.

Sea anemones belong to the class Anthozoa, close kin to corals and jellyfish, and they’ve been holding their ground—quite literally—for a very long time. 

Unlike their free-swimming cousins, anemones anchor themselves to rock, reef, or seafloor, letting the ocean bring dinner to them. Each delicate arm is lined with nematocysts—tiny harpoons loaded with venom—perfect for stunning passing prey.

But here’s where things get tricky for us fossil hunters…

Soft-bodied creatures like anemones don’t fossilize easily. No hard shell, no bones—just tissue and tide. So their story in the fossil record is a rare and precious one.

We find glimpses of them as far back as the Cambrian, over 500 million years ago, often preserved in exceptional deposits like the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, where soft-bodied life was captured in fine-grained sediments under just the right conditions. 

There, strange and beautiful anemone-like creatures hint at early anthozoan life, sharing space with the wonderfully weird cast of Cambrian seas.

Trace fossils—subtle impressions in ancient sea beds—also whisper of their presence. Circular resting marks and burrow-like structures suggest where anemones once anchored themselves, long after their bodies slipped away.

APEX HUNTER OF ITS TIME: ANKYLORHIZA

Back in the 1880s, from fragments of bone weathered by time and tide, a most curious creature emerged into scientific view — an ancient toothed dolphin later named Ankylorhiza tiedemani. 

Its name, drawn from the Greek ankylo — bound or fused — and rhiza — root — hints at one of its more unusual traits: teeth with mostly single, fused roots. 

A formidable grin, and not at all what we might expect from the dolphins we know today.

We often think of dolphins as gentle, clever denizens of the sea. 

But cast your mind back to the Oligocene, and a rather different picture takes shape. Here was a hunter — swift, powerful, and armed with a mouthful of sharp teeth. Ankylorhiza tiedemani stood as the largest member of the Odontoceti — the great lineage of toothed whales that includes dolphins, porpoises, sperm whales, beaked whales, river dolphins, pilot whales, and their kin — all hunters of prey larger than plankton, all bearing teeth instead of baleen.

More clues surfaced in the decades that followed. Fragments in the 1970s and 1990s, and then something far more revealing — a nearly complete skeleton, now resting at the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History. A beautifully preserved skull, ribcage, much of the vertebral column, and even a solitary flipper. 

Rare treasures, these, for creatures of the sea. 

Together, they whisper a clearer story: a 4.8-metre predator, tracing its lineage back some 35–36 million years, diverging from baleen whales yet evolving strikingly similar features through convergence.

This was no languid swimmer. Some 24 million years ago, Ankylorhiza coursed through ancient seas with speed and purpose. 

Its body tells the tale — a narrow tailstock, additional tail vertebrae, and a shortened humerus in its flippers. Like modern dolphins, it likely powered itself with strong, rhythmic thrusts of its flukes, adjusting its course with hydrofoil-like flippers. 

Beneath the skin, robust muscles anchored to a relatively rigid torso — a design honed for movement, for pursuit, for the hunt.

The fossil record, however, does not always give up its secrets easily. Eocene whale skeletons show us the early transition from land to sea — limbs shrinking, bodies streamlining. 

But Oligocene specimens are rare, and with them, much of the story of how whales mastered fluke-powered swimming has remained elusive. 

Did these early dolphins possess the same refinements for speed? For a long time, we could only speculate.

Then came the work of Robert Boessenecker and colleagues. Their study of this remarkable skeleton reveals an animal poised between worlds — its forelimb structure bridging stem cetaceans and modern whales, its spine showing the beginnings of rigidity at the tail while retaining flexibility through the lower back. 

A body in transition, yet already capable.

And what a role it played. Its skull, teeth, vertebrae, and size all point to a macrophagous predator — one that hunted large prey and moved with relative speed. 

In life, Ankylorhiza may well have filled a niche much like that of today’s killer whales — an apex hunter of its time, commanding the ancient seas with quiet authority.

A fossil, yes — but also a story. One of innovation, convergence, and the relentless shaping of life in motion.

CAMBRIAN SUBMARINES: OPABINIA REGALIS

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. 

WHERE CARNIAN MEETS NORIAN: THE UPPER TRIASSIC LUNING FORMATION

Step into the sunbaked folds of West Union Canyon, just beyond Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada, and you are quite literally walking along one of North America’s most important geological fault lines in time—the elusive boundary between the Carnian and Norian stages of the Late Triassic.

Here, the Upper Triassic Luning Formation—specifically the Early Norian Kerri Zone—reveals itself in a series of beautifully exposed beds, each one a page in a story written some 220 million years ago. 

This outcrop is a reference point, a kind of stratigraphic Rosetta Stone for understanding the Carnian–Norian boundary (CNB) on this side of the ancient world.

Back in 1959, the formidable J.W. Silberling carefully documented the rich ammonoid faunas preserved here, establishing the Schucherti and Macrolobatus zones of the latest Carnian. 

These are then overlain—rather obligingly—by the earliest Norian faunas of the Kerri Zone. A neat geological handshake across deep time… and then, curiously, silence. For half a century, no one returned to press the story further.

Enter a trio of sharp-eyed Vancouverites—Jim Haggart, Mike Orchard, and Paul Smith—who, in 2010, decided it was high time to dust off this remarkable section and ask a few new questions. Armed with rock hammers, hand lenses, and a healthy obsession with the microscopic and the coiled, they conducted a meticulous bed-by-bed sampling of ammonoids and conodonts through the canyon walls.

On the eastern flank, the Macrolobatus Zone struts its stuff—ammonoids of the Tropites group and Anatropites making regular appearances. Meanwhile, the conodonts—those tiny, tooth-like fossils that palaeontologists adore—are dominated by ornate metapolygnathids. 

These were once all lumped together under Metapolygnathus primitius, a species famous for straddling the CNB like a geological fence-sitter. Here, they show closer affinities to M. mersinensis, with a cameo from forms akin to Epigondolella orchardi and even a new Orchardella species joining the party.

And here’s where it gets rather delightful—this assemblage ties beautifully back to the latest Carnian faunas of British Columbia. A transcontinental whisper between Nevada’s desert stones and Canada’s coastal mountains.

Climb a little higher in the section and—ah!—the plot thickens. The ammonoid cast shifts dramatically, now dominated by Tropithisbites. Not far above, just shy of the first true Norian ammonoids—Guembelites jandianus and Stikinoceras—two brand-new conodont species appear. 

These same forms are known from British Columbia, right at the favoured CNB. It’s correlation at its finest—like matching fingerprints across an ancient ocean basin.

Over on the western side of the canyon, the Kerri Zone is displayed in full flourish. Ammonoids abound—Guembelites, Stikinoceras, and friends—stacked through multiple fossiliferous layers. The conodonts echo those of the eastern section, reinforcing the story. 

Interestingly, while these faunas align well with Silberling’s original descriptions, they show subtle differences from coeval assemblages in the Tethys and even from those in Canada. Notably absent is Gonionotites, a genus common elsewhere but conspicuously missing in Nevada’s lineup. Here, the Tropitidae reign supreme, while the Juvavitidae sit this one out.

And then—because science is always best when paired with a good pair of boots—I had the absolute pleasure of walking these very beds in October 2019 with members of the Vancouver Paleontological Society and the Vancouver Island Paleontological Society. The same spirited crew I’ve roamed the Canadian Rockies with since the early 2000s, when many of these correlations were first being teased into focus.

There’s something quietly magical about tracing those connections in person—linking Nevada’s desert ridges to British Columbia’s coastal outcrops through ammonites no bigger than your palm and conodonts you can barely see without a microscope.

NUNAVUT: LAND OF ICE AND SNOW

A lone polar bear moves with quiet power across the snow and sea ice of Nunavut, its massive paws spreading its weight to keep it light atop the frozen surface. 

These apex predators have roamed the Arctic for hundreds of thousands of years, evolving from brown bear ancestors to master the shifting icescapes of the Pleistocene. 

Their range once spread wider during colder glacial ages, but Nunavut remains a stronghold of their territory, a place where bears still hunt seals, den in snowdrifts, and continue an ancient lineage intertwined with the rhythms of ice, ocean, and sky.

Nunavut, Canada’s northernmost territory, is a land that wears deep time on its sleeve. Its stark landscapes—wind-scoured ridges, icy fjords, and tundra plains—may appear empty at first glance, but beneath this silence lies one of Earth’s richest archives of geological and paleontological history. 

Stretching across nearly two million square kilometers of Arctic terrain, Nunavut preserves rocks that span more than three billion years, recording the birth of continents, the rise of early life, and the survival of animals through ancient seas and ice ages.

Nunavut’s remarkable geology and paleontology, from the planet’s earliest beginnings to Ice Age megafauna, tracing how this northern land has shaped and preserved Earth’s story.

Nunavut’s rocks are among the oldest on Earth. Much of its bedrock belongs to the Canadian Shield, a vast geological core of North America composed of Archean and Proterozoic rocks more than 2.5 to 3.9 billion years old. 

In regions such as the Acasta Gneiss Complex, which straddles the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, scientists have found rocks dated to around 4.0 billion years—nearly as old as the Earth itself.

These rocks tell the story of Earth’s early crustal formation, long before the emergence of complex life. They preserve the remnants of volcanic arcs, ancient oceans, and the slow suturing of microcontinents into larger continental plates. 

The geology of Nunavut is not uniform but instead a patchwork quilt of greenstone belts, granitic intrusions, and sedimentary basins, each marking different chapters in the planet’s tectonic evolution.

During the Paleozoic Era (541–252 million years ago), much of Nunavut lay beneath shallow tropical seas. Thick accumulations of limestone and shale from this time preserve fossils that record the explosion of marine biodiversity—from trilobites and brachiopods to early corals and cephalopods. Later, in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras, tectonic shifts, rifting, and glaciation sculpted the modern Arctic landscape. 

Glacial scouring during the Pleistocene left behind U-shaped valleys, moraines, and eskers, reshaping the terrain and influencing how fossils are exposed today.

Cambrian Seas and the Rise of Early Life — Some of Nunavut’s most important paleontological treasures come from the Cambrian Period (541–485 million years ago). At sites such as Northwest Ellesmere Island, researchers have uncovered trilobites, archaeocyathids (reef-building sponges), and early echinoderms that once thrived in warm equatorial seas. These fossils highlight Nunavut’s role in documenting the Cambrian Explosion, the evolutionary burst when most major animal groups first appeared in the fossil record.

Devonian Coral Reefs — During the Devonian Period (419–359 million years ago), the region hosted extensive reef systems, comparable to modern-day Great Barrier Reef environments. Fossil corals, stromatoporoids (sponge-like reef builders), and early fishes—including the armored placoderms—have been found in the limestone deposits of Nunavut’s Arctic islands. These fossils provide insights into marine biodiversity during the so-called “Age of Fishes,” when vertebrates began diversifying rapidly.

Qikiqtania, a remarkable fossil fish discovered on southern Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, closely related to Tiktaalik, the famous “fishapod” that represents a key step in the transition from water to land is one of Nunavut's most significant Devonian fossils. Dating to about 375 million years ago in the Late Devonian, Qikiqtania wakei had a streamlined body and fins built for swimming, but unlike Tiktaalik, it lacked the robust limb bones that could have supported it on land. 

This begs the question of what those early vertebrates were up to and it seems their evolutionary path was experimenting with shallow-water or terrestrial habitats, while Qikiqtania remained fully aquatic, showing the diversity of evolutionary pathways at this pivotal moment in vertebrate history. Its name honors both the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, where it was found, and the late evolutionary biologist David Wake, linking local geography with global science.

Jurassic and Cretaceous Dinosaurs of the Arctic — One of the most striking aspects of Nunavut’s fossil record is the presence of dinosaurs at high latitudes. On Bylot Island and Axel Heiberg Island, paleontologists have discovered hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur) remains dating to the Late Cretaceous, about 75 million years ago. These finds demonstrate that large herbivorous dinosaurs lived well within the Arctic Circle, enduring months of seasonal darkness and cooler climates than their relatives farther south.

Tracks preserved in sandstone also reveal the presence of theropods (predatory dinosaurs) that stalked these northern landscapes. The question of how dinosaurs adapted to Arctic conditions—whether through migration or physiological adaptations such as warm-bloodedness—remains an active field of study.

Fossil Forests of the High Arctic — Perhaps Nunavut’s most evocative paleontological record comes not from bones but from trees. On Axel Heiberg Island, paleontologists have uncovered the remains of Eocene-aged fossil forests dating to about 50 million years ago. These forests, preserved in remarkable detail, include upright stumps, leaf litter, and even mummified wood that still retains organic compounds.

At that time, the Arctic was much warmer, with a greenhouse climate that supported redwoods, dawn sequoias, and ginkgo trees. The fossil forests demonstrate that the Arctic once hosted lush ecosystems, challenging our assumptions about polar environments and providing crucial analogues for studying climate change today.

Marine Reptiles and Ancient Whales — The Cretaceous and early Cenozoic deposits of Nunavut also preserve marine reptiles such as plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, apex predators of the inland seas. Moving into the Cenozoic, fossils of early whales, including basilosaurids, have been recovered, highlighting the transition of mammals from land back to the ocean. These finds place Nunavut within the global story of marine evolution during a time when the Arctic Ocean was ice-free and biologically rich.

Fast forward to the Pleistocene (2.6 million–11,700 years ago), and Nunavut was home to a range of Ice Age megafauna. Fossils and subfossil remains of muskoxen, mammoths, caribou, and giant beavers have been found across the territory. These animals grazed tundra and steppe ecosystems during glacial cycles, coexisting with early human populations that migrated into the Arctic.

Human History and Fossil Knowledge — Nunavut’s paleontological heritage is intertwined with Indigenous knowledge. Inuit communities have long encountered fossils while traveling across the land, recognizing bones and shells as part of the natural history of their environment. Some fossils, like petrified wood or unusual stone shapes, carry cultural meanings and have been used in tools, carvings, or storytelling.

Nunavut’s population are Inuit, whose traditional language is Inuktut, which includes several dialects such as Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun, still widely spoken across communities alongside English and French. Inuit knowledge of the land, sea, ice, and animals is profound, extending to fossils and unusual stones encountered on the tundra, which are often recognized and woven into oral traditions. 

Visitors interested in seeing fossils and learning more about Nunavut’s natural and cultural history can explore the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum in Iqaluit, which preserves Inuit art and heritage alongside natural history exhibits, or the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, which holds important fossil collections from Nunavut that are not always displayed locally due to preservation and accessibility challenges.

A wave of scientific exploration of Nunavut’s fossils began in earnest in the 19th and 20th centuries with expeditions by geologists and paleontologists. Today, fossil research in Nunavut requires collaboration with Inuit communities, recognizing their stewardship of the land and the cultural importance of these discoveries.

Climate Change and the Future of Arctic Paleontology — As the Arctic warms, melting permafrost and retreating glaciers are exposing fossils at an unprecedented rate. While this accelerates discoveries—such as well-preserved Ice Age bones—it also threatens the long-term preservation of delicate specimens. Increased accessibility has also raised ethical and legal questions about fossil collection, ownership, and conservation.

Nunavut stands at the forefront of these challenges. Its fossils not only record the history of life but also offer lessons for the present: how species adapt (or fail to adapt) to climate shifts, how ecosystems respond to warming, and how biodiversity rebounds after mass extinctions. Protecting this paleontological heritage is essential for both science and culture. It is a remote part of the world that I would love to explore more of and see its rugged, natural beauty in all its splendor.

A MASSIVE AMMONITE THE SIZE OF A CAR: THE FERNIE AMMONITE

Titanites occidentalis, Fernie Ammonite

The Fernie ammonite—long known as Titanites occidentalis—has officially been given a new name: Corbinites occidentalis, a fresh genus erected after a meticulous re-evaluation of this Western Giant’s anatomy and lineage. 

What hasn’t changed is its breathtaking presence high on Coal Mountain near Fernie, British Columbia, where this colossal cephalopod has rested for roughly 150 million years.

This extraordinary fossil belongs to the family Lithacoceratinae within the ataxioceratid ammonites. 

Once thought to be a close cousin of the great Titanites of Dorset, new material—including two additional large specimens discovered at nearby mine sites—reveals ribbing patterns and growth-stage features that simply didn’t match Titanites. 

With these multiple overlapping growth stages finally available, paleontologists had the missing pieces needed to correct its identity.

So, Titanites occidentalis no more—meet Corbinites occidentalis, a giant ammonite likely endemic to the relatively isolated early Alberta foreland basin of the Late Jurassic.

Fernie, British Columbia, Canada

The Fernie ammonite is a carnivorous cephalopod from the latest Jurassic (Tithonian). 

The spectacular individual on Coal Mountain measures 1.4 metres across—about the size of a small car tire and absolutely staggering when you first see it hugged by the mountainside.

The first specimen, discovered in 1947 by a British Columbia Geophysical Society mapping team at Coal Creek, was initially mistaken for a “fossil truck tire.” 

Fair enough—if a truck tire had been forged in the Jurassic and left on a mountaintop. It was later described by GSC paleontologist Hans Frebold, who gave it the name Titanites occidentalis, inspired by the giant ammonites of Dorset. 

For decades, that name stuck, even though paleontologists suspected the attribution was shaky due to poor preservation of the holotype’s inner whorls.

Recent discoveries of two additional specimens at Teck Resources’ Coal Mountain Mine finally provided the evidence needed for reassessment. 

With intact inner whorls and beautifully preserved ribbing—including hallmark variocostate and ataxioceratoid ornamentation—researchers Terence P. Poulton and colleagues demonstrated that the Canadian ammonite does not belong in Titanites. 

Their work (Volumina Jurassica, 2023) established Corbinites as a brand-new genus, with C. occidentalis as its type and only known species.

These specimens—one exceeding a metre, another about 64 cm—confirm a resident ammonite population within this basin. And as of now, these giants are unique to Western Canada.

A Journey Up Coal Mountain

If you’re keen to meet Corbinites occidentalis in the wild, you’ll want to head to Fernie, in southeastern British Columbia, close to the Alberta border. 

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

Active logging in the area since 2021 means that older directions are now unreliable—trailheads have shifted, and a fair bit of bushwhacking is the price of admission. Though clear-cutting reshaped the slope, loggers at CanWel showed admirable restraint: they worked around the fossil, leaving it untouched.

The non-profit Wildsight has been championing efforts to protect the ammonite, hoping to establish an educational trail with provincial support and possible inclusion under the Heritage Conservation Act—where the fossil’s stewardship could be formally recognised.

HIKING TO THE FERNIE AMMONITE (IMPORTANT UPDATE: TRAIL CLOSED)

From the town of Fernie, British Columbia, you would traditionally head east along Coal Creek Road toward Coal Creek, with the ammonite site sitting 3.81 km from the road’s base as the crow flies. 

The classic approach begins at a roadside exposure of dark grey to black Cretaceous plant fossils, followed by a creek crossing and a steep, bushwhacking ascent.

However — and this is critical — the trail is currently closed.

The entire access route runs straight through an area of active logging, and conditions on the slope are extremely dangerous. Between heavy equipment, unstable cutblocks, and altered drainages, this is not a safe place for hikers right now.

Conservation groups, including Wildsight, continue working toward restoring safe public access and formalising the site under the Heritage Conservation Act. 

Their long-term goal is to reopen the trail as a designated educational hike with proper signage, but at present, the route should not be attempted. 

Once logging operations move out of the area and safety assessments are done, the possibility of reopening may return.

For now, the safest—and strongly recommended—way to view this iconic fossil is via the excellent cast on display at the Courtenay & District Museum on Vancouver Island, or at the Visitor Information Centre in Sparwood.

Photo credit: Vince Mo Media. Vince is an awesome photographer and drone operator based in Fernie, BC. Check out his work (and hire him!) by visiting his website at vmmedia.ca.

SHAGGY TITANS OF THE GRASSLANDS: BISON

Bison move across the prairie like living storms, vast and steady, with the weight of centuries in their stride. 

Their dark eyes hold a quiet, unwavering depth—as if they’ve looked into the heart of time itself and carry its secrets in silence. Look into the eyes of this fellow and tell me you do not see his deep intelligence as he gives the camera a knowing look.

Shaggy fur ripples in the wind, rich and earthy, brushed by sun and shadow, a cloak woven from wilderness. When they breathe, clouds rise in the cold air, soft and ephemeral, like whispered promises that vanish but leave warmth behind.

There is something profoundly romantic in their presence: strength wrapped in gentleness, endurance softened by grace.  To watch them is to feel the wild itself lean closer, reminding us of a love as vast as the horizon, as eternal as the ground beneath our feet.

When we think of bison today, images of great herds roaming the North American plains come to mind—dark, shaggy shapes against sweeping prairies. But the story of bison goes back far deeper in time. 

These massive grazers are part of a lineage that stretches millions of years into the past, their fossil record preserving the tale of their rise, spread, and survival.

Bison belong to the genus Bison, within the cattle family (Bovidae). Their story begins in Eurasia during the late Pliocene, around 2.6 million years ago, when the first true bison evolved from earlier wild cattle (Bos-like ancestors). 

Fossils suggest they descended from large bovids that roamed open grasslands of Eurasia as forests retreated and cooler, drier climates expanded.

The earliest known species, Bison priscus, or the Steppe Bison, was a giant compared to modern bison, sporting long horns that could span over six feet tip to tip. These animals thrived across Europe, Asia, and eventually crossed into North America via the Bering Land Bridge during the Pleistocene Ice Age.

The fossil record of bison stretches back about 2 million years in Eurasia and at least 200,000 years in North America, where they became one of the most successful large herbivores of the Ice Age. Fossil evidence shows that at least seven different species of bison once lived in North America, including the iconic Bison latifrons with its massive horns, and Bison antiquus, which is considered the direct ancestor of the modern American bison (Bison bison).

Some of the richest fossil bison deposits come from Siberia and Eastern Europe – home to abundant Bison priscus fossils, often preserved in permafrost with soft tissues intact. They are also found in Alaska, USA and in Canada's Yukon region – where Ice Age bison fossils are found alongside mammoth, horse, and muskox remains.

The Great Plains of the United States and Canada are rich in Bison antiquus and later species, often in mass bone beds where entire herds perished. We also find their remains in California and the American Southwest at sites like the La Brea Tar Pits. La Brea preserves bison remains from the Late Pleistocene and their museum of the same name has a truly wonderful display of Pleistocene wolves. Definitely worthy of a trip!

One particularly famous fossil site is the Hudson-Meng Bison Kill Site in Nebraska, where remains of over 600 Bison antiquus dating to about 10,000 years ago provide a window into Ice Age hunting practices and herd behavior.

By the end of the Ice Age, many megafauna species disappeared, but bison endured. Bison antiquus gradually gave rise to the modern American bison (Bison bison), which still carries echoes of its Ice Age ancestors. Though smaller than their Pleistocene relatives, today’s bison remain the largest land mammals in North America.

SPIRALING BEAUTY: AMMONITES AS INDEX FOSSILS

Argonauticeras besairei, Collection of José Juárez Ruiz.

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

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

Like other cephalopods, ammonites had sharp, beak-like jaws inside a ring of squid-like tentacles that extended from their shells. 

They used these tentacles to snare prey, — plankton, vegetation, fish and crustaceans — similar to the way a squid or octopus hunt today.

Catching a fish with your hands is no easy feat, as I'm sure you know. But the Ammonites were skilled and successful hunters. 

They caught their prey while swimming and floating in the water column. Within their shells, they had a number of chambers, called septa, filled with gas or fluid that were interconnected by a wee air tube. By pushing air in or out, they were able to control their buoyancy in the water column.

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

They were a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. 

These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids — octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish) than they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species.

The Ammonoidea can be divided into six orders:

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

Ammonites have intricate and complex patterns on their shells called sutures. The suture patterns differ across species and tell us what time period the ammonite is from. 

If they are geometric with numerous undivided lobes and saddles and eight lobes around the conch, we refer to their pattern as goniatitic, a characteristic of Paleozoic ammonites.

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

Hoplites bennettiana (Sowby, 1826).

If they have lobes and saddles that are fluted, with rounded subdivisions instead of saw-toothed, they are likely Jurassic or Cretaceous. 

If you'd like to see a particularly beautiful Lower Jurassic ammonite, take a peek at Apodoceras. Wonderful ridging in that species.

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

At the time that this fellow was swimming in our oceans, ankylosaurs were strolling about Mongolia and stomping through the foliage in Utah, Kansas and Texas. 

Bony fish were swimming over what would become the strata making up Canada, the Czech Republic and Australia. Cartilaginous fish were prowling the western interior seaway of North America and a strange extinct herbivorous mammal, Eobaatar, was snuffling through Mongolia, Spain and England.

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

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

They were prolific breeders that evolved rapidly. If you could cast a fishing line into our ancient seas, it is likely that you would hook an ammonite, not a fish. 

They were prolific back in the day, living (and sometimes dying) in schools in oceans around the globe. We find ammonite fossils (and plenty of them) in sedimentary rock from all over the world.

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

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

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

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

BACK IN THE USSR: KEPPLERITES

This glorious chocolate block contains the creamy grey ammonite Kepplerites gowerianus (Sowerby 1827) with a few invertebrate friends, including two brachiopods: Ivanoviella sp., Zeilleria sp. and the deep brown gastropod Bathrotomaria sp. 

There is also a wee bit of petrified wood on the backside.

These beauties hail from Jurassic, Lower Callovian outcrops in the Quarry of Kursk Magnetic Anomaly (51.25361,37.66944), Kursk region, Russia. Diameter ammonite 70мм. 

In the mid-1980s, during the expansion and development of one of the quarries, an unusual geological formation was found. This area had been part of the seafloor around an ancient island surrounded by Jurassic Seas. 

The outcrops of this geological formation turned out to be very rich in marine fossil fauna. This ammonite block was found there years ago by the deeply awesome Emil Black. 

In more recent years, the site has been closed to fossil collecting and is in use solely for the processing and extraction of iron ore deposits. Kursk Oblast is one of Russia's major producers of iron ore. The area of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly has one of the richest iron-ore deposits in the world. Rare Earth minerals and base metals also occur in commercial quantities in several locations. Refractory loam, mineral sands, and chalk are quarried and processed in the region. 

The Kursk Magnetic Anomaly Quarry is not far from the Sekmenevsk Formation or Sekmenevska Svita in Russian, a Cretaceous (Albian to Cenomanian) terrestrial geologic formation where Pterosaur fossils have been found in the sandstones. 

OIL IN WATER BEAUTY: FOSSILS OF FOLKSTONE

Sheer beauty — a beautiful Euhoplites ammonite from Folkstone, UK. I've been really enjoying looking at all oil-in-water colouring and chunkiness of these ammonites.

Euhoplites is an extinct ammonoid cephalopod from the Lower Cretaceous, characterized by strongly ribbed, more or less evolute, compressed to inflated shells with flat or concave ribs, typically with a deep narrow groove running down the middle.

In some, ribs seem to zigzag between umbilical tubercles and parallel ventrolateral clavi. In others, the ribs are flexious and curve forward from the umbilical shoulder and lap onto either side of the venter.

Its shell is covered in the lovely lumps and bumps we associate with the genus. The function of these adornments are unknown. I wonder if they gave them greater strength to go deeper into the ocean to hunt for food. 

They look to have been a source of hydrodynamic drag, likely preventing Euhoplites from swimming at speed. Studying them may give some insight into the lifestyle of this ancient marine predator. Euhoplites had shells ranging in size up to a 5-6cm. 

We find them in Lower Cretaceous, middle to upper Albian age strata. Euhoplites has been found in Middle and Upper Albian beds in France where it is associated respectively with Hoplites and Anahoplites, and Pleurohoplites, Puzosia, and Desmoceras; in the Middle Albian of Brazil with Anahoplites and Turrilites; and in the Cenomanian of Texas.

This species is the most common ammonite from the Folkstone Fossil Beds in southeastern England where a variety of species are found, including this 37mm beauty from the collections of José Juárez Ruiz.

ZENASPIS: DEVONIAN FISH MORTALITY PLATE

A Devonian fish mortality plate showing all lower shields of Zenaspis podolica (Lankester, 1869) and Stensiopelta pustulata (or Victoraspis longicornualis) from Lower Devonian deposits of Podolia, Ukraine.

Zenaspis is an extinct genus of jawless fish which existed during the early Devonian period. Due to it being jawless, Zenaspis was probably a bottom feeder.

The lovely 420 million-year-old plate you see here is from Podolia or Podilia, a historic region in Eastern Europe, located in the west-central and south-western parts of Ukraine, in northeastern Moldova. 

Podolia is the only region in Ukraine where Lower Devonian remains of ichthyofauna can be found near the surface.

For the past 150 years, vertebrate fossils have been found in more than 90 localities situated in outcrops along banks of the Dniester River and its northern tributaries, and in sandstone quarries. 

At present faunal list of Early Devonian agnathans and fishes from Podolia number 72 species, including 8 Thelodonti, 39 Heterostraci, 19 Osteostraci, 4 Placodermi, 1 Acanthodii, and 1 Holocephali (Voichyshyn 2001a, modified).

In Podolia, Lower Devonian redbeds strata (the Old Red Formation or Dniester Series) can be found up to 1800 m thick and range from Lochkovian to Eifelian in age (Narbutas 1984; Drygant 2000, 2003). 

In the lower part (Ustechko and Khmeleva members of the Dniester Series) they consist of multicoloured, mainly red, fine-grained cross-bedded massive quartz sandstones and siltstones with seams of argillites (Drygant 2000).

We see fossils beds of Zenaspis in the early Devonian of Western Europe. Both Zenaspis pagei and Zenaspis poweri can be found up to 25 centimetres long in Devonian outcrops of Scotland.

Reference: Voichyshyn, V. 2006. New osteostracans from the Lower Devonian terrigenous deposits of Podolia, Ukraine. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 51 (1): 131–142. Photo care of Fossilero Fisherman.

TRACKING DINOSAURS: FOOTPRINTS IN STONE

Dinosaur Track, Tumbler Ridge

Imagine kneeling beside a three-toed depression in a slab of sandstone, your fingers tracing the edges of a print left by a creature that thundered across the Earth over 100 million years ago. 

Dinosaur tracks—known scientifically as ichnites—are time capsules, snapshots of behavior frozen in stone. 

Unlike bones, which tell us what dinosaurs looked like, footprints reveal how they moved, how fast they walked, whether they traveled alone or in herds, and even how they interacted with their environment.

Footprints are classified by shape rather than by exact species, since tracks are trace fossils—evidence of activity, not anatomy. Paleontologists group them into “ichnogenera,” names based on their form.

• Theropods, the meat-eating dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus, left narrow, three-toed prints (tridactyl) with claw marks. Their tracks often show long, slender toes and a V-shaped outline.
• Ornithopods, the plant-eaters like Iguanodon, also made three-toed prints, but theirs are broader with blunt toes—built for walking on both two and four legs.
• Sauropods, the long-necked giants, left large round or oval footprints—massive impressions of their column-like feet, often paired with crescent-shaped handprints nearby.
• Ankylosaurs and stegosaurs left shorter, wider tracks, with toe impressions that resemble stubby, armored stumps.

Theropod Track

You can see spectacular dinosaur tracks across the world and close to home in western Canada. 

The Peace Region of British Columbia boasts the Tumbler Ridge Global Geopark, where hundreds of Cretaceous-era footprints adorn ancient riverbeds. 

In Alberta, the Dinosaur Provincial Park and the Willow Creek tracksites near Lethbridge preserve both sauropod and theropod prints. 

Farther south, classic trackways appear in Utah’s St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site and Colorado’s Picketwire Canyonlands, where sauropods once waded through ancient mudflats.

If you spot a fossil track, look closely at its size, toe count, and depth. 

Is it long and narrow, hinting at a swift predator, or broad and round, evidence of a lumbering herbivore? 

These shapes tell stories—of migration, of pursuit, of entire ecosystems now long vanished—each print a footprint not just in rock, but in time itself.

Definitely take a photo if you are able and if within cell range, drop a GPS pin to mark the spot to share with local experts when you get home.

Sometimes, you can find something amazing but it takes a while for others to believe you. This happened up in Tumbler Ridge when the first dino tracks were found.

Flatbed Creek Dino Tracks

In the summer of 2000, two curious boys exploring a creek bed near Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, made a discovery that would put their small northern town on the paleontological map. 

While splashing along Flatbed Creek, Mark Turner and Daniel Helm noticed a series of large, three-toed impressions pressed deep into the sandstone—too regular to be random. 

They had stumbled upon the fossilized footprints of dinosaurs that had walked there some 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous. 

Their find sparked scientific interest that led to the establishment of the Tumbler Ridge Museum and later the Tumbler Ridge Global Geopark. 

Since then, paleontologists have uncovered thousands of tracks in the area—from nimble theropods to massive sauropods—etched into the ancient riverbeds and preserving a vivid record of dinosaurs on the move in what was once a lush coastal plain. 

FOSSIL BEES, FIRST NATION HISTORY

Welcome to the world of bees. This fuzzy yellow and black striped fellow is a bumblebee in the genus Bombus sp., family Apidae. 

We know him from our gardens where we see them busily lapping up nectar and pollen from flowers with their long hairy tongues.

My Norwegian cousins on my mother's side call them humle. Norway is a wonderful place to be something wild as the wild places have not been disturbed by our hands. 

Head out for a walk in the wild flowers and the sounds you will hear are the wind and the bees en masse amongst the flowers.   

There are an impressive thirty-five species of bumblebee species that call Norway hjem (home), and one, Bombus consobrinus, boasts the longest tongue that they use to feast solely on Monkshood, genus Aconitum, you may know by the name Wolf's-bane.

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, and my family on my father's side in the Pacific Northwest, bumblebees are known as ha̱mdzalat̕si — though I wonder if this is actually the word for a honey bee, Apis mellifera, as ha̱mdzat̕si is the word for a beehive.

I have a special fondness for all bees and look for them both in the garden and in First Nation art.

Bumblebees' habit of rolling around in flowers gives us a sense that these industrious insects are also playful. In First Nation art they provide levity — comic relief along with their cousins the mosquitoes and wasps — as First Nation dancers wear masks made to mimic their round faces, big round eyes and pointy stingers. 

A bit of artistic license is taken with their forms as each mask may have up to six stingers. The dancers weave amongst the watchful audience and swoop down to playfully give many of the guests a good, albeit gentle, poke. 

Honey bees actually do a little dance when they get back to the nest with news of an exciting new place to forage — truly they do. Bumblebees do not do a wee bee dance when they come home pleased with themselves from a successful foraging mission, but they do rush around excitedly, running to and fro to share their excitement. They are social learners, so this behaviour can signal those heading out to join them as they return to the perfect patch of wildflowers. 

Bumblebees are quite passive and usually sting in defense of their nest or if they feel threatened. Female bumblebees can sting several times and live on afterwards — unlike honeybees who hold back on their single sting as its barbs hook in once used and their exit shears it off, marking their demise.

They are important buzz pollinators both for our food crops and our wildflowers. Their wings beat at 130 times or more per second, literally shaking the pollen off the flowers with their vibration. 

And they truly are busy bees, spending their days fully focused on their work. Bumblebees collect and carry pollen and nectar back to the nest which may be as much as 25% to 75% of their body weight. 

And they are courteous — as they harvest each flower, they mark them with a particular scent to help others in their group know that the nectar is gone. 

The food they bring back to the nest is eaten to keep the hive healthy but is not used to make honey as each new season's queen bees hibernate over the winter and emerge reinvigorated to seek a new hive each Spring. She will choose a new site, primarily underground depending on the bumblebee species, and then set to work building wax cells for each of her fertilized eggs. 

Bumblebees are quite hardy. The plentiful hairs on their bodies are coated in oils that provide them with natural waterproofing. They can also generate more heat than their smaller, slender honey bee cousins, so they remain productive workers in cooler weather.    

We see the first bumblebees arise in the fossil record 100 million years ago and diversify alongside the earliest flowering plants. 

Their evolution is an entangled dance with the pollen and varied array of flowers that colour our world. 

We have found many wonderful examples within the fossil record, including a rather famous Eocene fossil bee found by a dear friend and naturalist who has left this Earth, Rene Savenye.

His namesake, H. Savenyei, is a lovely fossil halictine bee from Early Eocene deposits near Quilchena, British Columbia — and the first bee body-fossil known from the Okanagan Highlands — and indeed from Canada. 

It is a fitting homage, as bees symbolize honesty, playfulness and willingness to serve the community in our local First Nation lore and around the world — something Rene did his whole life.

FOSSIL FISHAPODS FROM THE CANADIAN ARCTIC

Qikiqtania wakei, a fishapod & relative to tetrapods

You will likely recall the amazing tetrapodomorpha fossil found on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic in 2004, Tiktaalik roseae. 

These were advanced forms transitional between fish and the early labyrinthodonts playfully referred to as fishapods — half-fish, half-tetrapod in appearance and limb morphology. 

Up to that point, the relationship of limbed vertebrates (tetrapods) to lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygians) was well known, but the origin of significant tetrapod features remained obscure for the lack of fossils that document the sequence of evolutionary changes — until Tiktaalik. 

While Tiktaalik is technically a fish, this fellow is as far from fish-like as you can be and still be a card-carrying member of the group. 

Interestingly, while Neil Shubin and crew were combing the icy tundra for Tiktaalik, another group was trying their luck just a few kilometres away. 

A week before the eureka moment of Tiktaalik's discovery, Tom Stewart and Justin Lemberg unearthed material that we now know to be a relative of Tiktaalik's. 

Meet Qikiqtania wakei, a fishapod and close relative to our dear tetrapods — and cousin to Tiktaalik — who shares features in the flattened triangular skull, shoulders and elbows in the fin. 

Qikiqtania (pronounced kick-kick-TAN-ee-ya)

But, and here’s the amazing part, its upper arm bone (humerus) is specialised for open water swimming, not walking. 

The story gets wilder when we look at Qikiqtania’s position on the evolutionary tree— all the features for this type of swimming are newly evolved, not primitive. 

This means that Qikiqtania secondarily reentered open water habitats from ancestors that had already had some aspect of walking behaviour. 

And, this whole story was playing out 365 million years ago — the transition from water to land was going both ways in the Devonian.

Why is this exciting? You and I descend from those early tetrapods. We share the legacy of their water-to-land transition and the wee bony bits in their wrists and paddles that evolved to become our hands. I know, mindblowing!

Thomas Stewart and Justin Lemberg put in thousands of hours bringing Qikiqtania to life. 

The analysis consisted of a long path of wild events— from a haphazard moment when it was first spotted, a random collection of a block that ended up containing an articulated fin, to a serendipitous discovery three days before Covid lockdowns in March 2020.

Both teams acknowledge the profound debt owed to the individuals, organizations and indigenous communities where they had the privilege to work — Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay— Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, the largest and northernmost territory of Canada. 

Part of that debt is honoured in the name chosen for this new miraculous species. 

Aerial View of Ellesmere Island

The generic name, Qikiqtania (pronounced kick-kick-TAN-ee-ya), is derived from the Inuktitut words Qikiqtaaluk and Qikiqtani which are the traditional place name of the region where the fossil was discovered. 

The specific name, wakei, is in memory of the evolutionary biologist David Wake — colleague, mentor and friend. 

He was a professor of integrative biology and Director and curator of herpetology at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley who passed away in April 2021. 

Wake is known for his work on the biology and evolution of salamanders and vertebrate evolutionary biology. 

If you look at the photo on the left you can imagine visiting these fossil localities in Canada's far north.

Qikiqtania was found on Inuit land and belongs to the community. Thomas Stewart and his colleagues were able to conduct this research because of the generosity and support of individuals in the hamlets of Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord, the Iviq Hunters and Trappers of Grise Fiord, and the Department of Heritage and Culture, Nunavut.

To them, on behalf of the larger scientific community — Nakurmiik. Thank you! 

Here is the link to Tom Stewart's article in The Conversation & paper in Nature:

• Stewart, Thomas A.; Lemberg, Justin B.; Daly, Ailis; Daeschler, Edward B.; Shubin, Neil H. (2022-07-20). "A new elpistostegalian from the Late Devonian of the Canadian Arctic". Nature. doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04990-w. ISSN 0028-0836.
• Stewart, Thomas. "Meet Qikiqtania, a fossil fish with the good sense to stay in the water while others ventured onto land" The Conversation. Retrieved 2022-07-20.

Image One: An artist’s vision of Qikiqtania enjoying its fully aquatic, free-swimming lifestyle. Alex Boersma, CC BY-ND

Image Two: A new elpistostegalian from the Late Devonian of the Canadian Arctic, T. A. Stewart, J. B. Lemberg, A. Daly, E. B. Daeschler, & N. H. Shubin.

A huge shout out to the deeply awesome Neil Shubin who shared that the paper had been published and offered his insights on what played out behind the scenes!