HOLCOPHYLLOCERAS: A JEWEL OF JURASSIC SEAS

What is most wonderful about natural science is that every fossil—every spiral, ridge, and suture—opens a window onto a vanished world. 

Take, for instance, this tremendously robust, intricately sutured ammonite: Holcophylloceras mediterraneum (Neumayr, 1871). Collected from Late Jurassic (Oxfordian) deposits near Sokoja, Madagascar, it is a marvel of paleontological sculpture, a testament to evolutionary experimentation that thrived in the tropical Tethyan seas some 160 million years ago.

Madagascar has long been recognized as a treasure trove of beautifully preserved fossils. From its Cretaceous dinosaurs to its Triassic amphibians and its extraordinary Jurassic ammonites, the island offers a richness few regions can rival. 

The spiraled shell of Holcophylloceras mediterraneum is no exception—its ornate sutures and lustrous preservation hint at a creature exquisitely adapted to the warm, shallow continental shelf of Gondwana’s eastern margin.

Like all ammonites, Holcophylloceras built its shell in a series of chambers divided by walls known as septa. These septa, when intersecting the outer shell, formed the elaborate suture patterns that make collectors swoon—tangled, fractal-like lines that resemble botanical tracings or rivers on an ancient map.

Running through each chamber was the siphuncle, a biological marvel that allowed the ammonite to adjust the gas and fluid content inside its shell. In effect, ammonites carried a set of built-in ballast tanks, enabling them to rise and sink through the water column almost effortlessly. Their final and largest chamber—the body chamber—housed the soft tissues, including the tentacles, eyes, and muscular arms.

Picture, if you will, a squid or octopus, then surround it with a coiled, beautifully ribbed shell. Now place it in a warm tropical sea filled with predators and prey, reefs and drifting plankton, and a ton upon ton of water pressing down from above. That was the world Holcophylloceras mastered.

The Oxfordian oceans surrounding Madagascar were not quiet waters. They were alive—thrumming with movement, colour, and competition. The ammonite’s elegant spiral belies the reality of its bustling neighbourhood. Some of the many animals that would have swum, crawled, hunted, or drifted around Holcophylloceras mediterraneum include:

Marine Reptiles

• Plesiosaurs – long-necked Cryptoclidus–like forms gliding between shoals of fish.
• Ichthyosaurs – such as Ophthalmosaurus, sleek torpedo-shaped hunters with dinner-plate eyes built for dim, deeper waters.
• Pliosaurs – apex predators like Liopleurodon, whose cavernous jaws could swallow a human whole.

Other Cephalopods

Belemnites – dart-shaped squid-relatives such as Hibolithes, flickering through the water column like living arrows.

Other ammonite genera sharing these seas:

• Perisphinctes
• Asaphoceras
• Physodoceras
• Aspidoceras
• Glochiceras

Each species filled its own ecological niche, from fast-swimming pursuit hunters to slow-drifting plankton feeders.

Fishes and Sharks

• Hybodont sharks – including Hybodus and Asteracanthus, equipped with crushing teeth for shelled prey and formidable dorsal spines.
• Teleost fishes – early ray-finned fishes beginning to diversify.
• Coelacanths – ancient lobe-finned holdovers patrolling calmer waters.

Invertebrates

• Bivalves – oysters, rudists, and inoceramids carpeting the shallow seafloor.
• Gastropods – from turreted turritellids to broad-shelled neritids.
• Crustaceans – shrimp, lobsters, and small crabs scraping algae from reef structures.
• Sea urchins and echinoids – spiny architects of sandy burrows.

Reefs & Drifting Life

• Sponges and corals creating pocket reefs in warm carbonate-rich environments.
• Planktonic foraminifera and radiolarians – the drifting micro-architecture of the Jurassic sea, powering food webs from below.

Ammonites like Holcophylloceras thrived in these diverse ecosystems by filling a mid-level trophic niche. They were both predator and prey—nimble enough to hunt small fish and crustaceans, yet vulnerable to larger hunters. Their greatest evolutionary advantage was their ability to regulate buoyancy, adjusting depth as easily as a modern submarine.

But their most beautiful legacy remains their shells. In death, they fell to the seafloor, where their chambers filled with sediment, minerals, and eventually time itself. 

Today, polished by erosion or revealed in limestone, they offer a perfect blend of geometry, biology, and ancient artistry.

MASSIVE ICHTHYOSAUR VERTEBRAE FROM NEVADA

The massive marine reptile vertebra you see here—broad, five-sided, drum-shaped, and heavy enough to require two hands to lift—once belonged to an ichthyosaur, one of the most impressive lineages of marine reptiles ever to patrol Earth’s oceans. 

This particular fossil hails from Berlin–Ichthyosaur State Park in central Nevada, a high desert landscape where sagebrush now whispers over ground that was once submerged beneath a warm, tropical Triassic sea.

During the Late Triassic, roughly 217 million years ago, this region lay along the western margin of the supercontinent Pangaea. 

Shallow, nutrient-rich waters supported a thriving marine ecosystem dominated by ammonites, early fish, and  ichthyosaurs.

Today, the Berlin–Ichthyosaur site is the richest concentration of large ichthyosaur fossils in North America. 

More than 37 articulated or semi-articulated skeletons have been excavated from the Luning Formation, a thick sequence of limestone and shaly carbonates that records the rise and fall of this ancient seaway. 

These rocks formed from fine carbonate mud and shell debris that settled on the sea floor, gradually entombing the bodies of these marine giants under quiet, low-oxygen conditions ideal for fossil preservation.

The site’s fossil beds preserve something even more scientifically tantalizing: multiple large individuals clustered together in a single stratigraphic horizon. 

Whether these accumulations represent mass strandings, predator trap dynamics, toxic algal events, or a natural death assemblage remains debated.

Photo Credit: The talented hand model supporting this magnificent beast is Betty Franklin. 

What you don’t see in the photo are the enormous grins we’re both wearing as we marvel over this beauty—hers because she gets to hold it, and mine because I get to capture the moment. 

Thank you, Berlin-Ichthyosaur!

WHEN GORGONS REIGNED SUPREME

Step back into the deep Paleozoic—an era that began some 540 million years ago with oceans bustling with trilobites, early fish, and soft-bodied wonders, while the continents themselves hosted little more than humble mats of mosses and fungi. Life’s great drama was still mostly underwater.

Fast-forward 240 million years, and the evolutionary landscape had transformed dramatically. 

Vertebrates had conquered the land, ecosystems had diversified, and Earth’s surface teemed with reptilian innovators, amphibians the size of crocodiles, and the early ancestors of mammals. Among these emerging terrestrial titans strode the Gorgonopsians, or “Gorgons”—ferocious sabre-toothed therapsids that dominated the Middle to Late Permian, from about 265 to 252 million years ago.

These were no sluggish proto-reptiles. Gorgons were highly specialized predators, boasting elongated canine teeth worthy of any future saber-toothed cat, powerful jaws, and sleek, muscular bodies built for pursuit. Their anatomy blended the primitive and the prophetic: reptile-like postures paired with early mammalian traits such as differentiated teeth and strong jaw musculature. 

Their clawed limbs, keen forward-facing eyes, and cutting-edge predatory adaptations placed them firmly at the top of the Permian food chain. In a world long before dinosaurs, they were the undisputed apex hunters.

My own fascination with these remarkable creatures was ignited by Gorgons, Peter Ward’s wonderfully wry and insightful dive into the ancient landscapes of South Africa. Ward’s vivid tales of fieldwork in the blistering, bone-dry vastness of the Karoo Basin—ancestral home of the Gorgons—captured both the hardships and the sheer exhilaration of unearthing deep time. 

His descriptions of sunburn and scientific revelations in that arid world made me laugh more than once. It is a highly enjoyable read.

The Great Karoo itself is a geological and paleontological marvel. This enormous, semi-arid expanse formed within a vast inland basin roughly 320 million years ago, at a time when the part of Gondwana destined to become Africa lay draped across the South Pole. 

Layer upon layer of sedimentary rock accumulated as glaciers advanced and retreated, rivers meandered, lakes dried, and ecosystems rose and fell. Today, those layers read like a grand evolutionary chronicle, preserving a world populated by beaked herbivores, hulking amphibians, and the charismatic, toothy Gorgonopsians.

This was a pivotal chapter in Earth’s history—just before the catastrophic Permian-Triassic extinction swept away nearly 90% of life. Yet in the twilight of the Permian, before that great dying, the Karoo thrived with innovation and ecological complexity. It was a world where the early steps toward warm-bloodedness were being taken, where synapsids (our own deep ancestors) were experimenting with new forms, and where the Gorgons reigned supreme.

SEMENOVITES OF THE CASPIAN RIM: CRETACEOUS AMMONITES OF KAZAKHSTAN

This tasty block of Semenovites (Anahoplites) cf. michalskii hails from Cretaceous, Albian deposits that outcrop on the Tupqaraghan — Mangyshlak Peninsula, a stark and beautiful finger of land jutting into the eastern Caspian Sea in western Kazakhstan. 

The ammonites you see here are housed in the collection of the deeply awesome Emil Black. 

Their ancient provenance lies in rocks laid down some 105–110 million years ago, a time when warm epeiric seas flooded much of Central Asia and the ancestors of these coiled cephalopods thrived in shelf environments rich in plankton and marine life.

Present-day Kazakhstan is itself a geological palimpsest, a place made from multiple micro-continental blocks that were rifted apart during the Cambrian, later sutured back together, then pressed against the southern margin of Siberia before drifting to where we find them today. 

The Mangyshlak block preserves a record of these shifting tectonic identities, its plateaus and scarps reading like the torn edges of continents long departed.

The Mangyshlak (Mangghyshlaq) Peninsula is a land of structure and emptiness—high, wind-planed plateaus abruptly broken by escarpments, dry valleys, and shallow basins bleached white with salt. 

To the west lies the Caspian Sea; to the northeast the marshy Buzachi Peninsula, its wet depressions feeding migratory birds and a surprising profusion of reeds. Just north, the Tyuleniy Archipelago—a scattering of low islands—hints at the shallow bathymetry and shifting sediment loads that dominate this coastline.

Field workers on Mangyshlak often describe the region by its broad horizontality. The sky feels enormous, unbroken, a pale arch stretching over the tawny plateaus. The ground underfoot is firm but dusty, composed of compacted sandy limestones and weathered marl that break into familiar, fossil-bearing blocks. The climate is dry, the winds persistent, and visibility often perfect—ideal for spotting promising outcrops from a great distance.

Kazakhstan as a whole is a nation shaped by contrasts. Lowlands form fully one-third of its landmass. Hilly plateaus and plains account for nearly half. Low mountainous regions rise across the eastern and southern margins, making up roughly one-fifth of the terrain.

This spacious geography culminates at Mount Khan-Tengri (22,949 ft / 6,995 m) in the Tien Shan range, a crystalline sentinel marking the border between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and China. These far-off mountains are invisible from Mangyshlak, but their presence is felt in the broad regional tectonic architecture.

 
The Western Lowlands and the Caspian Depression

The Tupqaraghan Peninsula lies within the influence of the Caspian Depression, one of the lowest terrestrial points on Earth. At its deepest, the Depression reaches 95 feet below modern sea level, a phenomenon caused by both tectonic subsidence and the unusual hydrology of the endorheic Caspian Basin.

To the south, the land rises gradually into the Ustyurt Plateau, an immense chalk and limestone table marked by wind-sculpted buttes and long, eroded escarpments. The Tupqaraghan Peninsula itself is cut from these same sedimentary sequences—Miocene, Paleogene, and Mesozoic strata cropping out in irregular terraces that lure geologists and paleontologists alike.

This is a region where erosional processes are laid bare. Minimal vegetation allows exposures to remain clean and highly visible; many slopes are studded with ammonites, inoceramid bivalves, belemnite rostra, and the fragmentary remains of marine reptiles and pterosaurs. Expeditions here frequently report layers rich in small, well-preserved invertebrate fossils, their delicate sutures and ornamentation astonishingly intact.

 
Deserts, Uplands, and Salt-Lake Basins

Much of Kazakhstan is dominated by arid and semi-arid environments, and the Mangyshlak Peninsula is no exception. To the east and southeast of the region lie the great sand deserts that define Central Asia:

• Greater Barsuki Desert
• Aral Karakum Desert
• Betpaqdala Desert
• Muyunkum and Kyzylkum Deserts

These swaths of wind-polished grains advance and retreat across broad flats and shallow depressions. The vegetation here—shrubs, saxaul, and salt-tolerant herbs—is sparse, drawing life from subterranean groundwater or ephemeral spring melt.

In central Kazakhstan, salt-lake depressions punctuate the uplands. These basins often shimmer under the sun, their surfaces coated in chalky halite crusts that record cycles of evaporation stretching back millennia.

To the north and east the land lifts again, rising into ridges and massifs: the Ulutau Mountains, the Chingiz-Tau Range, and the Altai complex, which sends three great ridges reaching into Kazakhstan. Farther south, the Tarbagatay Range and the Dzungarian Alatau introduce still more rugged topography before the landscape resolves again into plains around Lake Balkhash.
Paleontological Richness of the Region

Kazakhstan is famed for more than its ammonites. Dinosaurian bones, trackways, and scattered pterosaur remains punctuate Mesozoic and Paleogene localities across the nation. The Mangyshlak region in particular has yielded:

• Albian ammonites
• Cretaceous bivalves
• Marine reptile fragments
• Occasional vertebrate traces

These Semenovites come from a fossiliferous belt once submerged under a warm, shallow sea—a world unfurled in silt and light where these cephalopods thrived.

Paleo-coordinates: 44° 35′ 46″ N, 51° 52′ 53″ E.

FOSSILS, FISH AND FLAMING VOLCANOES: INTERIOR BC'S HISTORIC PAST

A Bird's Eye View of BC's Interior

Once upon a geologic time—about 52 million years ago—British Columbia wasn’t the mountain-studded landscape we know today. 

Instead, imagine a steaming chain of tropical islands floating in a warm inland sea, alive with crocodiles, palm trees, and enough volcanic activity to make any self-respecting geologist swoon.

Welcome to Eocene British Columbia—where the rocks are hot, the fossils are cool, and the story of our province’s ancient past stretches like a spine from north to south, stitched together by layers of lakebed shales and volcanic ash.

Let’s start at the McAbee Fossil Beds, just outside of Kamloops. This UNESCO-designated site is a world-class window into the Eocene Epoch. 

The rocks here formed at the bottom of an ancient lake, gently collecting the remains of leaves, insects, and fish that fluttered or flopped in at inconvenient moments. The preservation is exquisite—delicate leaf veins, dragonfly wings, even the odd fish fin are preserved in glorious, paper-thin shale. It’s like nature’s own scrapbook from the dawn of modern ecosystems.

McAbee Fossil Beds with Dr. Lawrence Yang's Crew

These fossils tell us that McAbee was once warm and lush, home to dawn redwoods, ginkgo trees, and the ancestors of modern maples. 

You can see the wonderfully distinct hoodoos up above the fossil site and in this photo, you can see Dr. Lawrence Yang and crew from a field trip we did there a few years ago.

But McAbee didn't look at all like this when the fossils were laid down. 

Picture tropical rainforests thriving where today you find sagebrush and rattlesnakes. 

Yes—Kamloops was once the Kamloops Rainforest. Try putting that on a postcard.

And McAbee isn’t alone. It’s just one stop on an ancient island arc that spanned the province. 

Head north to Driftwood Canyon near Smithers, where paper-thin fossils of fish and insects record a similar story of subtropical serenity. 

A Tasty Selection of Eocene Fossils from BC

Go south to Quilchena, where you’ll find the same lacustrine (lake-formed) layers yielding fossilized leaves and fish that look like they could still dart away if you poked them. The preservation is outstanding. 

Keep going across the border to Republic, Washington, and you’re still following the same Eocene lake chain—like geological breadcrumbs leading back to a time when the west coast was a simmering stew of volcanoes and freshwater basins.

Two of my favourite Eocene fish fossils from the region are Eohiodon, a genus related to the modern mooneye, found at McAbee and Princeton. And Amyzon aggregatum, a type of sucker fish found in the varved lake sediments near Horsefly.

British Columbia has never been shy about rearranging itself. Back in the Eocene, the region was being pulled, pushed, and smushed by tectonic forces. Volcanic eruptions blanketed lakes with fine ash—excellent for fossil-making but less great for anyone hoping for a sunny day at the beach. 

Over time, these lakes filled with sediment, entombing plants, fish, and insects beneath fine-grained layers that later hardened into shale.

The result: a geological photo album spanning millions of years, now tilted and lifted into the dry hills around Kamloops.

I have only visited once since the Bonaparte First Nation took over management of the McAbee Fossil Beds. I brought them some fossils, scientific papers and shared stories of the history of the site from a paleo perspective. I shared about the folks who first leased the land and worked to expand the site, Dave Langevin and John Leahy. The many field trips there by members of the Vancouver Paleontological Society and other groups. The site has a rich fossil history deep in time but also in the last 30 years.  

Eocene Fossil Fish from McAbee

They graciously allowed me to bring some folk up to explore and shared their desire to create a visitor and research center, enhancing public programming with Indigenous cultural activities. 

The Nation aims to highlight the scientific and cultural significance of the area, with a long-term goal of making it a premier Indigenous destination. 

Kneeling in that parched, golden landscape, it’s hard to imagine it once echoed with the croaks of ancient frogs and the buzz of tropical insects. 

But each fossil leaf, precious fossilized feather, March Fly and dragonfly wing at McAbee whispers the same improbable truth: British Columbia was once a lush archipelago of volcanic islands in a balmy world, a far cry from today’s ski slopes and spruce forests.

These sites hold a special place in my heart as they are some of the few that I visited as a teen with my mother and sister. I made repeated trips over the years as the Chair of the Vancouver Paleontological Society, but those early memories are especially dear to me.

As I drive through the Thompson Plateau and see those striped outcrops of shale, I give them a thoughtful nod. They’re the leftovers of a long-vanished paradise that remains a fossil treasure trove today. 

TRACKING DIATRYMA: FOSSIL FOOTPRINTS IN THE CHUCKANUT FORMATION

Diatryma Restoration & Size Comparison

Long before glaciers sculpted the familiar ridges and waterways of western Washington, a vast subtropical delta sprawled across the region that would one day become Bellingham Bay. 

Arriving today, you see evidence of this in the many fossils to be found in the region. 

Beneath today’s scenic Chuckanut Drive lies a story written in stone — layer upon layer of siltstone, sandstone, mudstone, and conglomerate that make up the Chuckanut Formation, a fossil-rich archive of ancient swamps and floodplains.

Imagine stepping into that Eocene world. The air is heavy with humidity, thick with the scent of wet earth and resin. Towering dawn redwoods (Metasequoia) rise above a dense understorey of ferns, laurels, and figs. 

Glyptostrobus, the Chinese swamp cypress, forms stands along the riverbanks, its knees jutting from the warm, tea-colored water. 

Palms sway beside oxbow lakes where turtles and crocodilians bask on fallen logs. The landscape would look more at home in modern-day Louisiana or Belize than in the shadow of the North Cascades.

Diatryma Tracks, Washington State

The geology that preserves this lush world was born of fire, flood, and shifting plates. 

During the Eocene, the Pacific Northwest lay near the edge of the North American Plate, where fragments of volcanic island arcs — the terranes that make up much of western Washington — were accreting, colliding, and buckling under tectonic pressure. 

Rivers carried eroded sediments from the rising ancestral Cascades into broad, lowland deltas, where they built up thick beds of sand and mud. Over millions of years, those sediments hardened into rock, entombing the life that once flourished there.

Among the most remarkable of the Chuckanut fossils are footprints — delicate, fleeting impressions that speak to the creatures that wandered through this swampy paradise. One of these was Diatryma, Gastornis, a colossal flightless bird that could reach nearly nine feet tall. 

With massive legs and a deep, powerful beak, Diatryma was a relic of an ancient avian lineage that arose soon after the age of dinosaurs. They would have been most impressive to see, though they would likely chase you down for a wee taste! 

Gastornis giganteus

Descended from earlier ground-dwelling birds of the Paleocene, Diatryma and its kin once roamed both North America and Europe, their fossils turning up from Wyoming to France. 

Though once imagined as fearsome predators, new evidence suggests they were likely omnivores or even herbivores, using their beaks to crack seeds, fruits, or tough vegetation.

Diatryma shared the Eocene floodplains with a cast of strange and wonderful mammals. There were Pantodonts and Dinoceratans — heavy-bodied, blunt-footed herbivores with a primitive charm, precursors to later hoofed mammals. 

Small early horses trotted through the marshy margins, while shorebirds and amphibians left fleeting traces in the soft mud. Above it all, ancient dragonflies and early bats flitted through the dense canopy.

The Chuckanut Formation preserves this bygone world in exquisite detail — not as bones and teeth, but as fossil leaves, tracks, and impressions, the whispers of a time when Washington was a tropical delta at the edge of a newborn continent. 

Today, when you drive along Chuckanut’s winding road or hike its rocky bluffs, you are traveling through the ghost of an Eocene bayou — a landscape alive with the echoes of towering trees, swamp-dwelling beasts, and the thunderous stride of the mighty Diatryma.

Image Credit: Lead Image By Tim Bertelink - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49203812 edited by Fossil Huntress

Image Credit: Diatryma Restoration and Size Comparison: Gastornis giganteus: By Vince Smith from London, United Kingdom - Diatryma, a large flightless bird from the Eocene of WyomingUploaded by FunkMonk, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28298676

ECHOES IN STONE: WASHINGTON GEOLOGY

Washington State Forest

Two hundred million years ago, what we now call Washington wasn’t Washington at all. 

It was two drifting islands — fragments of a wandering continent slowly inching their way west across the ancient ocean. 

They were vagabonds, carried on tectonic currents until, at last, they collided with the North American continent and made themselves at home.

That restless motion has never stopped. The land still breathes — slow, tectonic breaths that subtly reshape the surface of the Pacific Northwest. Every so often, that breath shudders. 

We feel it in an earthquake, a reminder that the forces that built the land are still at work, deep below our feet. The great plates grind and twist, pushing mountains skyward and sliding California ever so slightly toward the North Pole. Hello, Baja-BC.

It’s this long, dynamic dance — the great continental waltz — that sculpted the ridges, folded valleys, and mountain walls we see today. And it’s also what preserved an ancient world beneath our boots: the subtropical swamps and deltas of the Chuckanut Formation, a geological tapestry stretching some 3,000 metres thick along Chuckanut Drive near Bellingham.

Islands Riding Tectonic Plates

Layer upon layer of sandstone, siltstone, mudstone, and conglomerate record the rhythms of rivers that once coursed through a lush, steaming delta. The lower strata date back roughly 56 million years, at the very end of the Paleocene. 

The upper layers push into the early Eocene, a time when Earth was warmer and wetter than it has been since. Imagine, if you can, not the misty evergreens and glacial peaks of today, but a subtropical floodplain, dense with palms, ferns, and broad-leaved trees. 

Picture the bayou country of the Lower Mississippi, but stretching across what is now the Pacific Northwest.

This was a land of life. Ancient trees towered overhead. Vines tangled in the swamp air. The Chuckanut flora tells us of a greenhouse Earth — plants whose modern cousins thrive in Central America and southern Mexico flourished here, under the same sun that today glints off Mount Baker’s glaciers. 

Every fallen branch, every leaf buried in fine silt became part of the rock record, sealing in the whispers of an ancient climate: its humidity, rainfall, and heat.

But the plants are only part of the story. In rare and beautiful moments, the Chuckanut Formation captures motion — the fleeting steps of animals caught forever in stone. These are the Sumas Eocene trackways, discovered after landslides near Sumas in 2009. 

The Ancient Bayou of Washington State 

Among them are footprints from small shorebirds, the imprints of early equids, and tracks of curious, blunt-footed herbivores belonging to the now-extinct Orders Pantodonta and Dinocerata. 

Together, they sketch a portrait of life 50 million years ago: herds and flocks wandering the muddy margins of rivers, where soft sediment briefly held their weight before drying, hardening, and turning to stone.

One of the most striking finds is that of a delicate shorebird trackway, each print barely larger than a thumbprint, pressed into what was once the bank of a lazy river. 

It’s joined by faint impressions from an early horse-like mammal and, in other sites such as Racehorse Creek, the formidable three-toed stamp of Diatryma — a flightless bird taller than a man, and every bit as formidable as its dinosaurian cousins.

These fossil trackways are precious not just for their rarity but for what they reveal: a moment of life, caught mid-step. Unlike bones, which tell us who lived here, tracks tell us how they lived — where they walked, how they moved, even how they interacted. They are the fossilized choreography of an ancient ecosystem, preserved in mud and time.

Mt. Baker, Washington

These traces are studied and safeguarded by researchers such as George Mustoe and his colleagues, who carefully collected the Sumas trackways and brought them to the Burke Museum in Seattle. 

There, under controlled light and the quiet reverence of display cases, visitors can stand face-to-face with the footprints of creatures that trod the Pacific Northwest long before the Cascades rose above the horizon.

The landscape along Chuckanut Drive may look serene now — the sandstone cliffs honeycombed by ferns, the sea glittering beyond. 

But beneath every weathered ledge and outcrop lies a record of turbulence and transformation: continents colliding, mountains rising, rivers changing course, and life adapting in the wake.

This is land that is now forests and tides, but was once swamps and subtropical rain. The fossils remind us that the ground beneath us has always been moving, always changing, and always keeping its secrets — until the rock, split open by time or by curiosity, whispers them back into the light.

WADI AL-HITAN: VALLEY OF THE WHALES

Fossil Whale Skeleton, Wadi Al-Hitan

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

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

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

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

Fossil Whale from Wadi Al-Hitan

The work reveals a stunning environmental transformation. 

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

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

Wadi Al-Hitan — The Valley of the Whales

Wadi Al-Hitan — The Valley of the Whales

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wadi Al-Hitan — The Valley of the Whales

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

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

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

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

Fossil Whale from Wadi Al-Hitan

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

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

Photo Credits: Wadi al-Hitan | Wikimedia Commons

FOSSILS BENEATH THE SANDS: ANCIENT LIFE IN THE GIZA PLATEAU

Fossil Sand Dollar in Limestone

Long before the Nile carved its fertile valley, and before the pyramids rose from the desert sands, Egypt was home to warm tropical seas and lush river deltas teeming with life. 

The rocks surrounding the Giza Plateau preserve fragments of that distant world, offering a window into the deep past beneath one of humanity’s most iconic landscapes.

The limestone used to build the pyramids—particularly the Eocene formations around Giza, Cairo, and Fayum—is packed with marine fossils. 

Most abundant are Nummulites, the large disc-shaped foraminifera that make up much of the Tura limestone. But they are not alone. 

These fossil beds also contain echinoids (sea urchins), gastropods (snails), bivalves (clams), and coral fragments,  showing us the ecosystems that thrived in the shallow, sunlit seas that once lapped across northern Africa some 50 million years ago. 

Just southwest of Giza, the Fayum Depression preserves one of the world’s most remarkable fossil records of Eocene and Oligocene life. 

Eocene Whale, Basilosaurus isis

Here, paleontologists have unearthed the remarkable remains of early whales such as Basilosaurus isis and Dorudon atrox — ancient giants that once ruled the warm, tropical waters of the Tethys Ocean some 40 million years ago. 

These were not the whales we know today, but their distant ancestors, caught in a fascinating stage of evolution as land-dwelling mammals made the final leap to a fully aquatic life.

Basilosaurus, whose name means “king lizard” (a misnomer given before its true identity as a mammal was known), stretched over 18 meters long. 

Its serpentine body, lined with powerful vertebrae, suggests it swam with sinuous, eel-like motions, prowling the ancient seas for prey. Alongside it swam Dorudon, smaller but no less important — a sleek, dolphin-sized whale with sharp conical teeth, thought to have been a juvenile form of Basilosaurus until later discoveries revealed it was a species in its own right.

Both species had vestigial hind limbs — tiny, fully formed legs complete with toes — a beautiful anatomical echo of their terrestrial past. They are some of the clearest fossil evidence of the evolutionary transition from land mammals to marine cetaceans.

The bones of these ancient whales have been found in exquisite detail at Wadi Al-Hitan, the Valley of the Whales, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Egypt’s Western Desert. There, under the scorching desert sun, hundreds of skeletons lie preserved in golden sandstone, exactly where these animals once swam and died. 

The surrounding sediments also hold fossils of early elephants, crocodiles, turtles, and primitive primates, painting a vivid picture of Egypt as a subtropical shoreline rich with mangroves and marine life.

Even closer to Cairo, smaller outcrops of Eocene limestone reveal the same story on a smaller scale—an abundance of microfossils and shell fragments that speak of warm, nutrient-rich waters. These deposits connect the geological dots between Egypt’s marine past and the materials used to build its ancient monuments.

In a poetic sense, the very stones of Giza are part of Egypt’s fossil heritage. The blocks that form Khufu’s pyramid are the lithified remains of ancient organisms that once thrived in the Tethys Sea.

The desert that now seems so still was once a shallow sea teeming with life — a sea whose memory remains written in stone. Every block is a fossil bed in miniature, a silent record of a vanished ocean that endures now as the foundation of one of the greatest wonders of the world.

THE LOST SEA BENEATH THE PYRAMIDS: THE TETHYS OCEAN

Tethys Ocean

Long before the first pharaohs ruled the Nile, Egypt lay beneath the warm, shallow waters of the Tethys Ocean—a vanished sea that once divided the ancient supercontinents of Gondwana and Laurasia. 

Stretching from what is now the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, the Tethys existed from the late Paleozoic through the early Cenozoic, roughly 250 to 50 million years ago.

The concept of this long-lost ocean was first proposed in 1893 by Austrian geologist Eduard Suess, one of the founders of modern geology. While studying the distribution of marine fossils in rocks found high in mountain ranges such as the Alps and Himalayas, Suess realized that these fossils—corals, ammonites, and foraminifera—must once have lived in a vast tropical sea. 

His revolutionary conclusion: the mountains had been uplifted from the floor of an ancient ocean that no longer existed. He named this vanished sea the Tethys, after the Greek sea goddess and wife of Oceanus.

Evidence for the Tethys Ocean comes from both geology and fossil assemblages. Layers of marine limestone rich in Nummulites, ammonites, and other marine fossils are found across Europe, North Africa, and southern Asia—often thousands of meters above current sea level. 

These rocks record an ocean teeming with life during the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic, later compressed and folded as the African, Indian, and Eurasian plates collided to form the Alps, the Himalayas, and the Zagros Mountains.

Its tropical lagoons once hosted coral reefs, sea urchins, mollusks, and the foraminifera that would later become Nummulites. As these tiny organisms lived, died, and settled onto the seafloor, their calcium carbonate shells accumulated in thick beds of lime mud. Over millions of years, these sediments hardened into the fossil-rich Eocene limestones that now form much of Egypt’s geology—including the very stone quarried for the pyramids of Giza.

Today, the remnants of the Tethys survive as the Mediterranean, Black, Caspian, and Aral Seas, but its story lives on in every fossil-bearing limestone block of the Great Pyramid—a geological time capsule of an ocean that vanished long before humankind emerged.

LIMESTONE AND LIGHT: EGYPT BEFORE THE PHARAOHS

Much of Egypt’s history is carved in her rock. We think of Egypt as ancient—a land of pharaohs, pyramids, and hieroglyphs etched in stone—but the land itself tells a far older story. 

Long before kings rose and dynasties fell, before the Nile carved its fertile ribbon through desert sands, the foundations of Egypt were being forged deep within the Earth.

Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, occupies the northeastern corner of Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula extending beyond the continental boundary into Asia. 

It is bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba and Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. To the north, the Mediterranean Sea opens toward Europe—Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey—while across the Red Sea lies Saudi Arabia and, beyond the Gulf of Aqaba, Jordan.

To understand Egypt’s true antiquity, one must look not to its monuments, but to its bedrock. 

Five hundred kilometres southwest of Cairo, the flat sabkha plains stretch toward the horizon, scattered with wind-polished pebbles and eerie limestone pillars—natural monuments of a different kind. 

This striking karst landscape, weathered by time and the desert’s relentless breath, tells of ancient seas, tectonic upheaval, and long-vanished ecosystems.

Once the breadbasket of the Pharaohs and now scarred by oil pipelines and rusted trucks, this land has seen empires rise and vanish. Beneath the sand and relics of human ambition lies a deeper record—a geological archive of oceans, volcanoes, and shifting continents.

The story begins deep in time, during the Archaean Eon, when the Earth’s crust was first beginning to cool, between 4 and 2.5 billion years ago. The rocks from this period, preserved as ancient inliers in Egypt’s Western Desert, are among the oldest on the African continent. Later, during the Proterozoic, when oxygen was only just beginning to fill the planet’s atmosphere, new rocks were laid down in the Eastern Desert—igneous and metamorphic foundations formed when bacteria and marine algae were the dominant life on Earth.

These ancient crystalline roots form the basement complex upon which Egypt’s later history—both geological and human—would unfold. 

Over this foundation lie younger Palaeozoic sedimentary rocks, followed by widespread Cretaceous outcrops that speak of warm inland seas and lush river deltas. 

Still younger Cenozoic sediments record the rhythmic rise and fall of global sea levels—cycles of transgression and regression that alternately drowned and exposed the land. 

Each layer marks a new chapter in the story of water, time, and transformation. It is from these Cenozoic limestones, formed some 50 million years ago in the shallow seas of the Eocene epoch, that the stones of the Great Pyramids were quarried. Composed largely of the fossilized remains of ancient marine organisms—especially the large, coin-like foraminifera known as Nummulites—these rocks are both geological and biological archives. 

Every pyramid block is built from the remains of an ancient ocean, each fossilized shell a fragment of life that once thrived beneath the waters of the long-vanished Tethys Sea.

The pyramids of Giza, with their luminous exteriors of fine-grained white limestone from the quarries of Tura, stand as enduring testaments to human ingenuity and Earth’s deep-time creativity. They are monuments raised from the bones of microscopic life, shaped by hands that would have been surprised to know they were building with the remnants of a vanished world.

From the glittering deserts of Giza to the fossil beds of the Fayum, Egypt’s landscapes tell stories written in stone—of ancient oceans, shifting continents, and the eternal dialogue between life, death, and time. The Great Pyramid may have been built for eternity, but its foundations were set in motion eons before humanity’s first spark.

Beneath the gaze of the Sphinx and the shadow of Khufu’s towering pyramid, the story of Egypt’s limestone deepens. Those pale, gleaming blocks that once caught the desert sun are more than architectural marvels—they are the fossilized remains of an ancient sea, built from the microscopic shells of creatures that lived and died millions of years before the first pharaoh dreamed of eternity.

It is here, in the very stone of the Great Pyramid, that Egypt’s human history meets Earth’s geological past.

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.

SAILS OF THE PERMIAN: REIGN OF DIMETRODON

Dimetrodon by Daniel Eskridge

In the steamy forests of the early Permian, some 295 million years ago, a Dimetrodon prowls through a world that feels both alien and oddly familiar. 

The forest hums with insect life, and the air hangs heavy with the scent of wet soil and decaying vegetation. 

Towering above are stands of lycopsids, early relatives of modern clubmosses, their scaly trunks reaching for the pale sun. 

Ferns carpet the forest floor, interwoven with the roots of primitive conifers. Between them flow sluggish streams, their surfaces shimmering with pollen and the movements of darting amphibians.

Through this primeval landscape moves Dimetrodon—muscular, deliberate, and unmistakable. Its back is crowned with a tall, elegant neural sail, formed by elongated vertebral spines connected by stretched skin. As dawn light breaks through the canopy, the sail glows amber and crimson, absorbing warmth to jumpstart its cold-blooded metabolism. 

Dimetrodon by Daniel Eskridge

In a world of fluctuating temperatures, such thermoregulation was a powerful evolutionary advantage. By mid-morning, the great predator is alert, its metabolism primed for the hunt.

A rustle in the underbrush betrays the movement of smaller synapsids—perhaps an Edaphosaurus, a plant-eater with its own sail, though broader and dotted with crossbars. Dimetrodon lowers its head and advances silently, each step careful, practiced. Its jaws, lined with serrated, ziphodont teeth, were perfectly adapted for slicing through flesh. 

Unlike the simple cone-shaped teeth of earlier reptiles, Dimetrodon’s dentition reveals its lineage as a synapsid—a group that would, through deep evolutionary time, give rise to mammals, including us.

Despite its reptilian appearance, Dimetrodon was not a dinosaur. It lived more than 40 million years before the first dinosaurs appeared. Its lineage represents an earlier, distinct branch on the tree of life: the pelycosaurs, the dominant land vertebrates of the Permian. 

These creatures were part of the great synapsid radiation, experimenting with new body plans and ecological roles in a rapidly changing world. Dimetrodon’s sail, once thought to serve purely for display, likely functioned as a thermal regulator, allowing it to warm up quickly in the morning and cool down in the heat of the day. 

Some also propose that the sail could have been a signal structure—flashing color patterns to warn rivals or attract mates among the ferns and cycads.

In the murky shallows nearby, lungfish burrow into the mud, preparing for the dry season. Amphibians the size of crocodiles lounge in the shallows, their nostrils barely above water. 

Dimetrodon may have been primarily a terrestrial hunter, but it was never far from the wetlands where prey was abundant. A sudden splash draws its attention—a large amphibian, perhaps a Diplocaulus, with its strange boomerang-shaped head, breaking the surface. Dimetrodon’s muscles tense; the predator lunges, jaws snapping shut with a crack that echoes through the forest. The water churns, then stills. A moment later, the sail-backed hunter emerges, victorious, dragging its meal to the shore.

The Permian ecosystem was one of transition—between the lush coal swamps of the Carboniferous and the arid supercontinent of Pangaea to come. Forests gave way to open plains and deserts, forcing animals to adapt or perish. Dimetrodon thrived in this environment for millions of years before disappearing in the changing climates of the late Permian, replaced by more advanced therapsids, the true precursors to mammals.

We find the fossils of Dimetrodon across North America, particularly in the Texas Red Beds and parts of Oklahoma, their bones preserved in ancient floodplain sediments. These remains—skulls, vertebrae, and the distinctive spines of its sail—offer us a window into deep time, to an age before dinosaurs, when the world was still finding its balance between reptile and mammal, swamp and desert, day and night.

Beneath the humid canopy of the Permian, Dimetrodon was master of its realm—a creature of sunlight and shadow, its sail gleaming like a living flame against the green gloom of the world’s first great forests.

MEET WEYLA: NEVADA'S ANCIENT WINGED BIVALVE

If you’ve ever wandered the fossil-rich hills of Nevada and come across a delicate, winged shell embedded in ancient limestone, you may have found Weyla — one of the more elegant bivalves of the Early Jurassic seas. 

With its distinct, elongated “wings” extending from the hinge line, Weyla looks more like a piece of sculpted jewelry than a clam. 

Their ridging is pleasing to the eye as you can see from the big rust and grey fossilized chunky monkey here in my hand.

190 million years ago, these bivalves were a common sight on the seafloor, filtering food from the nutrient-rich waters of the shallow marine basins that once covered what’s now the Nevada desert. 

October is my favourite time to explore these sediments. The temperature is just right, not too hot and not too cold. But, be warned. It is also tarantula breeding season so step lively! 

Weyla belongs to the family Bakevelliidae, a group of extinct saltwater bivalves that thrived during the Triassic and Jurassic. In Nevada, Weyla fossils are often found in the Sunrise and Gabbs Formations, layers of marine sediment that capture the recovery of life after the great end-Triassic extinction. These ancient beds also yield ammonites, belemnites, crinoids, and early marine reptiles—remnants of a world slowly rebuilding itself into the vibrant Mesozoic ocean ecosystem.

One of the fun things about Weyla is that it’s a bit of a globetrotter. Fossils have been found across Europe, South America, and Asia, making it a useful “index fossil” for correlating Jurassic rocks around the world. Paleontologists use its presence to date marine layers to the Pliensbachian stage, roughly 190 to 185 million years ago.

And here’s a curious twist — Weyla’s flared shape may have helped it stabilize on soft sea floors or even catch gentle currents to reposition itself — a clever adaptation for a sedentary creature. These elegant fossils remind us that even humble clams can leave behind a story of global recovery, resilience, and beauty etched in stone. They are easily recognizable in the field and once you do see a specimen, it is a great indicator that you will find many more fossils in the area.

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. 

WINGS OVER SOLNHOFEN: GRACEFUL PTERODACTYLUS SPECTABILIS

Pterodactylus antiquus 

Imagine the warm, shallow lagoons of what is now southern Germany during the Late Jurassic, some 150 million years ago. 

The air hums with the buzz of ancient insects, and along the silty shores of the Solnhofen archipelago—an island paradise trapped in time—a delicate shadow flits overhead. 

It’s Pterodactylus spectabilis, one of the earliest and most iconic of the pterosaurs.

Unlike the later, giant azhdarchids that would dominate the skies of the Cretaceous, Pterodactylus was petite and elegant. With a wingspan of about 1.5 metres, it would have weighed less than a modern crow. Its long, narrow jaws bristled with fine, conical teeth—perfect for snapping up fish and small invertebrates from the shallows or even catching insects mid-flight.

The fossils of Pterodactylus spectabilis are beautifully preserved in the fine-grained limestone of Solnhofen, Bavaria—the same deposits that yielded Archaeopteryx. 

Pterodactylus by Jean Hermann, 1800

These ancient lagoon sediments captured everything from the membranes of its wings to delicate impressions of skin and muscle. 

The exquisite preservation has allowed us to study details of its anatomy rarely seen in other pterosaurs, including evidence of pycnofibers—fine, hair-like filaments that may have helped insulate its small, warm-blooded body.

As a member of the order Pterosauria, Pterodactylus represents one of the earliest experiments in vertebrate flight. Its elongated fourth finger supported a broad membrane that stretched to its hind limbs, forming a living kite of bone and skin. 

The genus was first described in 1784 by the Italian naturalist Cosimo Alessandro Collini, later named by Georges Cuvier, who recognized it as a flying reptile—a revelation that forever changed how scientists imagined prehistoric life.

Pterodactylus spectabilis remains tell us of early flight and exceptional preservation and beauty—a window into a lagoon world where reptiles ruled the air long before birds had truly taken wing.

Image One: Holotype specimen of Pterodactylus antiquus, BSP AS I 739. Original photograph by Steven U. Vidovic, David M. Martill in http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0110646 Modified by Matthew Martyniuk: Cropped, color adjusted. Top central portion of non-fossil-bearing slab digitally altered to remove portion of ruler.

Image Two: Jean Hermann - Taquet, P., and Padian, K. (2004). "The earliest known restoration of a pterosaur and the philosophical origins of Cuvier’s Ossemens Fossiles." Comptes Rendus Palevol, 3(2): 157-175.

First of two life restorations of Pterodactylus antiquus by Jean Hermann of Strasbourg, sent to George Cuvier in 1800.

WILD EQUINE BEAUTY: ICELANDIC HORSES

Icelandic Horses

These beauties are Icelandic horses who graced me with their energy and spirit for a series of feel-good photoshoots along the southern coast of Iceland earlier this month. 

The Icelandic horse is a living link to an ancient lineage—compact, sure-footed, and enduring as the land it calls home. 

Though today’s Icelandic horses are domesticated, their story begins millions of years earlier, deep in the fossil record of the horse family, Equidae.

Horses first evolved in North America around 55 million years ago during the Eocene epoch. The earliest known ancestor, Eohippus (also called Hyracotherium), was a small, forest-dwelling animal no larger than a fox. 

Over tens of millions of years, its descendants—Mesohippus, Merychippus, Pliohippus—grew larger and adapted to open grasslands, developing longer legs and single-toed hooves suited for running. 

Icelandic Horses

Fossils of these transitional species are found in abundance across the Great Plains of the United States and in the Miocene deposits of Nebraska and Wyoming.

By the late Pliocene, around three million years ago, horses crossed the Bering land bridge into Eurasia. The genus Equus—to which all modern horses, donkeys, and zebras belong—emerged and spread rapidly. 

Fossils of Equus ferus, the wild ancestor of the domestic horse, are found across Europe and Asia. Horses later vanished from North America during the Late Pleistocene extinctions about 10,000 years ago, only to return with humans during the Age of Exploration.

The Icelandic horse descends directly from the hardy Scandinavian ponies brought to Iceland by Norse settlers in the 9th and 10th centuries CE. Protected by the island’s isolation and a millennium of careful breeding, it retains many primitive features—thick coats, strong bones, and an extra gait known as the tölt. 

While the fossil record of Equus does not include fossils from Iceland itself—its geologic strata are too young for that—the genetic and morphological heritage of these small but mighty horses is a living testament to a 55-million-year evolutionary journey.