MEGALODON TEETH: WHAT ITS GIANT TEETH CAN TELL US

Megalodon teeth

A megalodon tooth is a wonderful thing to hold in your hand. The broad crown, thick root and finely serrated edges give us a sense of the animal behind it, even when the rest of that animal is missing. 

Some of the largest teeth approach 18 centimetres in length. That is a substantial piece of dental equipment, especially when we consider that whales were among the animals on the menu.

But size is only the beginning. Look closely at a tooth and we can begin to separate several stories: how it functioned in a living shark, where it sat in the mouth and what happened after it settled into the sediment.

ROOT, CROWN AND CUTTING EDGE

The pointed blade is the crown. Beneath it, the heavy root anchored the tooth in the mouth. Fine serrations run along the crown’s cutting edges, although these may be worn or missing in a fossil specimen.

On the inward-facing surface, near the junction of crown and root, a band called the bourlette provides another useful feature to examine. 

A broad triangular crown, fine serrations, a substantial root and this band help specialists recognise a typical megalodon tooth. Identification depends on the combination of features, along with comparisons and geological context. A large triangular tooth alone is not enough.

Shark teeth are made of dentine with a hard outer covering called enameloid. These mineralised tissues preserve much more readily than the cartilage forming most of a shark’s skeleton. We therefore have an abundance of teeth to study, while complete megalodon skeletons remain unknown.

A SHARK THAT KEPT REPLACING ITS TEETH

Sharks produce replacement teeth throughout their lives. As teeth are lost, others move forward to take their place. Megalodon shed thousands over a lifetime, leaving many opportunities for teeth to be buried and preserved.

This changes how we read a find. A loose fossil tooth does not necessarily mark the place where a shark died. Its owner may have lost it while feeding or during normal tooth replacement, then carried on swimming. The tooth began a rather different journey, into the sediment and eventually the fossil record.

SMALL POINTS, LONG HISTORY

The familiar megalodon blade developed within a lineage of megatooth sharks whose teeth changed through time. Some earlier forms carried small side points, called lateral cusplets, beside the main crown.

In a study of 359 fossil teeth from Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs, researchers traced a gradual decline in those cusplets through millions of years. The broad, serrated cutting tooth we associate with adult megalodon emerged through a lengthy transition.

Juvenile megalodon could also have cusplets, which complicates identification. Their presence does not automatically place a tooth in an earlier species. We need to consider variation within an animal’s life as well as changes across an evolutionary lineage.

The broad blade and serrations are consistent with cutting flesh. They help us understand how the teeth worked, but a loose tooth cannot identify its owner’s last meal. For that, we turn to other evidence, including bite marks on fossil bones and chemical clues preserved in tooth tissues.

WHY ARE FOSSIL SHARK TEETH DARK?

Fossil teeth often catch our attention because of their colour. Browns, greys and blacks reflect burial conditions and minerals in the surrounding sediment, rather than the colour of the living shark’s smile.

The root and crown can respond differently during fossilisation, so one tooth may preserve contrasting colours. Fossilisation does not require every part of the original tooth to be replaced by new minerals, either. Some of its original mineralised tissue can remain.

Colour belongs to the history of preservation. On its own, it cannot establish a precise age or confirm the species.

WHEN A SCHOOL LESSON CHALLENGED THE MEASUREMENTS

One of the most appealing megalodon research stories began with a classroom exercise. Palaeontologist Victor Perez and teacher Megan Higbee Hendrickson used replicas of teeth from one megalodon to help students calculate the shark’s length. Depending on which tooth they measured, the answers varied wildly.

The students’ arithmetic was not the problem. The exercise exposed limitations in the equations being used.

Teeth vary in size and shape around a shark’s mouth, so their original positions matter when we use them to estimate body length. Perez and colleagues went on to investigate a method based on tooth width. Their work offers a useful reminder that a fossil measurement and an estimate of a whole animal are different things. The estimate depends on a model, and that model needs testing.

A small tooth does not automatically mean a baby shark, either. It could come from a smaller individual, occupy a different position in the jaw or be missing part of its original structure. Context makes the measurement useful.

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK

Choose a clear tooth photograph, ideally showing both faces and a metric scale. Find the root and crown, then examine the edges. Are the serrations intact? Is the tip complete? Can we see the bourlette? What differs between the two faces?

Make a note of what is visible before deciding how it happened. A broken tip is an observation; an encounter with a particular prey animal is a proposed explanation that needs more evidence.

That distinction is useful well beyond shark teeth. It allows us to enjoy a fossil for what it preserves while recognising how much remains to be learned. With megalodon, one tooth can bring us close enough to study the cutting edge of an animal whose full outline is still a matter of research.

We will explore that missing outline in our next instalment, How Big Was Megalodon? Measuring a Shark We’ve Never Seen Whole.

Explore the growing collection in Megalodon: A Guide to the Giant Shark, or begin with Is Megalodon Still Alive? 10 Big Questions About the Biggest Shark.

FURTHER READING

• Florida Museum of Natural History: Fossil Shark Teeth and Are shark teeth fossils true fossils?.
• Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History: Megalodon specimen and dental tissues. The catalogue retains an older scientific name.
• Perez and colleagues (2017): Late Miocene chondrichthyans from Lago Bayano, Panama.
• University of Florida (2019): Research on the evolution of megatooth shark teeth.
• Florida Museum (2021): The classroom exercise and megalodon size estimates; Perez, Leder and Badaut (2021): Estimating lamniform body size from teeth.
• Natural History Museum, London: What can shark teeth tell us?.

Lead Image: Megalodon Teeth: Image Asset ID: 2099621176

TRILOBITE EYES: THE ORIGINAL STONE-COLD STARE

The ancient oceans were full of watchful eyes. Some bulged. Some perched on stalks. And some belonged to animals that looked at the world through crystal lenses.

Meet the trilobites.

Armoured, joint-legged and occasionally extravagantly spiny, these marine arthropods had a remarkable approach to eyewear. Many built their eye lenses from calcite.

Yes, a mineral.

Long before anyone peered through a magnifying glass at a fossil, that fossil’s original owner was doing a little mineral-assisted looking of its own.

CRYSTAL CLEAR, AT LEAST IN PRINCIPLE

Calcite is a form of calcium carbonate, familiar to geologists as a common mineral in sedimentary rocks. In trilobites, it also became part of an optical system.

Transparent calcite could transmit and bend light. The arrangement and structure of the lenses helped make that material useful for vision.

Aspidonia shildtiere by Ernst Haeckel, 1904

These were biological structures grown by a living animal. The lenses did not simply become mineralised millions of years after death.

That distinction is rather delicious: part of the reason we can study these ancient eyes is that their owners built durable lenses while they were still using them.

Imagine leaving behind your spectacles for palaeontologists to examine hundreds of millions of years later.

Quite the extended warranty.

ONE EYE, MANY LITTLE WINDOWS

Most sighted trilobites had compound eyes, with numerous lenses arranged across a curved surface. The general idea will be familiar if you have ever admired—or attempted to discourage—a fly.

Each lens faced a slightly different direction. Together, the visual units helped the animal gather information about its surroundings.

Different trilobites invested in very different arrangements. Some had relatively modest eyes. Others sported large, bulging visual surfaces.

There was no single standard trilobite view of the world. An animal moving over the seabed faced different visual challenges from one swimming above it.

Where is the food? What moved beside me? Is that shadow something with an appetite?

Practical questions. Particularly the last one.

EYES ON STALKS: A BOLD FASHION CHOICE

Then there is Asaphus kowalewskii, an Ordovician trilobite whose eyes rose above its head on long stalks.

It looks as though someone fitted a small armoured animal with a pair of periscopes.

Raised eyes could have helped a trilobite look above the immediate surface around its body. The familiar picture of this animal watching from a partly buried position is an interpretation of its anatomy, rather than a behaviour we have directly witnessed.

Still, those stalks invite a splendid mental image: a quiet seabed, a little movement in the sediment, and two eyes maintaining a deeply suspicious watch.

Prehistoric neighbourhood surveillance.

THE TECHNICAL BIT WITH THE EXCELLENT NAME

Many trilobites had closely packed lenses in eyes called holochroal eyes.

Certain trilobites, including Phacops, had another arrangement known as schizochroal eyes. Their larger, more distinctly separated lenses have attracted particular scientific interest because of their complex construction.

You do not need to memorise the terminology to appreciate the important part: trilobite eyes were varied, specialised structures.

Researchers examine their shapes, materials and internal details to investigate how they worked. Occasionally, exceptional preservation reveals structures beneath the lenses, bringing us closer to understanding the living visual system.

Exactly what the world looked like to a trilobite remains a harder question.

A fossil can preserve a lens. It cannot hand us a recording of an Ordovician afternoon.

SOME SKIPPED EYES ALTOGETHER

For all this optical extravagance, some trilobites had no eyes.

Sight offers fewer advantages where useful light is scarce. Blind forms may have inhabited dark water or lived in ways that made other senses more valuable.

Evolution accommodates both towering eyes and no eyes at all, depending on the circumstances.

The ancient ocean had room for several approaches to getting through the day.

A LITTLE FACE-TO-FACE TIME

Next time you see a well-preserved trilobite, give its head a closer look.

Those small raised surfaces may preserve individual lenses: tiny remnants of an animal’s connection with its surroundings.

Once, light passed through them while a living creature searched, moved and responded to the sea around it.

Now we lean over the rock and look back.

Hundreds of millions of years between us, and still an opportunity for a little eye contact.

Which would you choose for your own ancient-ocean adventure: crystal compound eyes, periscope stalks, or the confidence to navigate without either?

BEFORE THE FIRST FOSSILS: THE MISSING CHAPTER OF ANIMAL LIFE

Mongolian Base Camp

Somewhere in the immense stretch of time before familiar shells, claws and skeletons, our earliest animal ancestors began their evolutionary adventures. Finding out when they appeared is another matter entirely.

How do you find the beginning of a story when its opening pages may never have been preserved?

A study published in Science Advances on 2 October 2026 brings that question into sharp focus. Led by Orin M. Lole Durbin and colleagues, the research suggests that animal origins could extend back roughly 800–700 million years—considerably earlier than their widely accepted body fossil record. 

Crucially, this is an estimate from evolutionary analyses, rather than the discovery of an 800-million-year-old animal. The distinction matters. Deep time already has enough mysteries without us accidentally issuing a birth certificate.

Consider what a fossil actually tells us. A recognisable animal preserved in dated rock establishes that its kind existed by that time. It does not necessarily reveal when the lineage first evolved. Your oldest surviving family photograph works much the same way: it records someone’s presence on a particular occasion, without marking the beginning of the family.

An empty photograph is trickier. Was nobody there, or was the camera pointing elsewhere?

For palaeontologists, that is a serious question.

In China, the approximately 590-million-year-old Weng’an Biota preserves microscopic organisms with remarkable detail, yet contains no definitive animals. Its apparent silence has been used to help limit how far back animal origins could extend. The reasoning depends on an assumption: animals living then would have been preserved and recognised in those deposits.

Enter Mongolia, carrying a rather awkward piece of evidence.

Mongolia's Lake Khövsgöl

The researchers investigated microfossils from the Kheseen Biota, an assemblage dated broadly to about 550–526 million years ago. 

The Kheseen Biota comes from northern Mongolia, where rocks of the Kheseen Formation crop out in a discontinuous belt stretching roughly 250 kilometres along the western side of Lake Khövsgöl. 

These rocks record a world very different from the lake landscape we see today: an ancient marine basin where carbonate sediments, mud and phosphate-rich deposits accumulated. 

Within those phosphatic rocks, microscopic organisms were preserved in extraordinary detail, leaving a tiny window into an ocean that vanished more than half a billion years ago. It is a wonderfully humbling contrast—a vast geological landscape holding some of its most revealing secrets at a scale smaller than a grain of sand.

Its preservation and microscopic inhabitants resemble those of Weng’an. It, too, lacks definitive animals.

But here is the delicious complication: animals unquestionably existed somewhere in the world during that younger interval. Their absence from Kheseen cannot mean that the entire animal kingdom had yet to evolve.

It is rather like inspecting a beautifully preserved guest list from a gathering of botanists and concluding that nobody on Earth was a dentist.

The record may be excellent. The sample may still be selective.

Kheseen’s missing animals could reflect the environments represented, the conditions of preservation, or a combination of factors. Whatever the explanation, the comparison weakens the argument that Weng’an’s missing animals provide a dependable limit on animal origins.

This is where living animals enter our fossil detective story.

Researchers can compare genetic differences among species and use evolutionary models, anchored by fossil evidence, to estimate when their ancestral lineages separated. This approach is called a molecular clock.

Think of it as a clock that requires careful setting. Fossils supply reference points; assumptions about the oldest plausible ages also influence the answer.

The team tested older geological constraints in these analyses. Their results supported an origin for animals approximately 800–700 million years ago, demonstrating how strongly the estimated timing depends on the maximum ages supplied to the models.

That possibility takes us towards an extraordinary chapter of Earth history. The interval overlaps the approach to, and beginning of, the Cryogenian Period, associated with the immense glaciations popularly called Snowball Earth. Animal beginnings might therefore belong to a world entering some exceptionally dramatic climatic upheavals.

Imagine the challenge of finding such an ancient beginning. We are asking rocks to preserve something recognisable, survive geological upheaval, become exposed where someone can investigate them, and then yield a clue we know how to read.

A demanding filing system, geology.

The next step is to keep searching across different ancient environments and kinds of preservation, bringing body fossils, traces of activity and chemical evidence into the conversation. The precise age of animal origins remains unresolved.

For me, that uncertainty is part of the wonder.

Every fossil is a surviving fragment of a much larger world. Sometimes the most compelling discovery is realising how much of that world could still be missing.

The opening pages of our animal story may be out there.

We are learning where—and how—to look.

Image: Mongolia's Lake Khövsgöl by sayursaying.com

RED-LIPPED BATFISH: THE FISH THAT WALKED INTO A BEAUTY SALON

Somewhere in the waters around the Galápagos Islands lives a fish that appears to have applied an enthusiastic coat of bright red lipstick, put on its grumpiest expression and decided that swimming is entirely overrated.

Meet the red-lipped batfish, Ogcocephalus darwini.

With its spectacular scarlet pout, flattened body and decidedly unconventional approach to getting around, this little marine oddity looks rather like a pancake that has made some questionable fashion choices.

And I absolutely adore it.

A FISH WITH LEGS? WELL, SORT OF.

Unlike most fish, which propel themselves gracefully through the water, the red-lipped batfish spends much of its time moving about the seafloor using modified pectoral and pelvic fins.

It doesn't have actual legs, of course, but those sturdy, limb-like fins allow it to shuffle, crawl and occasionally perform what can only be described as a rather awkward underwater stroll.

Imagine a tiny, disgruntled gentleman in a red-lipped disguise making his way across the ocean floor.

That is essentially our batfish.

Red-lipped batfish are generally found around the Galápagos Islands and nearby waters off the Pacific coast of South America. They are bottom-dwelling marine fish, often encountered on sandy or rocky seafloors.

They grow to roughly 20 centimetres in length, so despite their rather dramatic appearance, they are not particularly large.

What they lack in size, they more than make up for in personality. Or at least the appearance of personality. Scientists have yet to establish whether batfish are actually judging us.

THE LIPSTICK QUESTION

Why those extraordinary red lips?

The short answer is that we don't know for certain.

One suggestion is that their bright lips may play a role in recognising other members of their species or communicating during courtship. But this remains a hypothesis rather than an established scientific fact.

Perhaps they are advertising their availability to other batfish.

Perhaps they simply enjoy looking fabulous.

Either way, nature has produced a creature that looks permanently ready for a night out while simultaneously appearing deeply disappointed by everyone at the party.

A FISH THAT GOES FISHING

Now things get even stranger.

Our red-lipped friend belongs to the anglerfish order, Lophiiformes, a remarkable group of fishes famous for their unusual methods of catching prey.

Like other anglerfish, batfish possess a modified dorsal-fin spine called an illicium, which functions rather like a miniature fishing rod.

In batfishes, this apparatus is tucked into a cavity near the snout and bears a fleshy lure called an esca. Rather than relying on the glowing lure made famous by some deep-sea anglerfish, batfish use a non-luminous lure associated with chemical attraction.

This helps bring curious prey within striking distance.

Their menu includes small fishes and marine invertebrates, including crustaceans and worms.

Imagine spending your day wandering around the seafloor wearing bright lipstick, occasionally producing a fishing rod from your face.

Evolution really does have a marvellous sense of humour.

WHO ARE THEIR RELATIVES?

The red-lipped batfish belongs to the family Ogcocephalidae, commonly known as the batfishes.

Its relatives include other wonderfully peculiar bottom-dwelling species with flattened bodies, arm-like fins and extraordinary faces.

But the wider family reunion is even more entertaining.

As members of the anglerfish order Lophiiformes, batfishes are related to frogfishes, monkfishes and the famous deep-sea anglerfishes.

Frogfishes are particularly entertaining cousins. Many are masters of camouflage, resembling sponges, corals or algae, and some also use their fins to walk along the seafloor.

Monkfishes, meanwhile, possess enormous mouths and an impressive ability to swallow prey.

And then there are the deep-sea anglerfishes, some of which dangle glowing lures in the darkness to attract unsuspecting dinner guests.

It's quite the family gathering.

One cousin walks, another glows in the dark, and our Galápagos beauty turns up wearing lipstick.

WHERE DO BATFISH APPEAR IN THE FOSSIL RECORD?

This is where our journey takes us into deep time.

Although the red-lipped batfish is a living species, we do not currently have a well-established fossil record specifically documenting Ogcocephalus darwini.

And that distinction matters.

The fossil record of its broader anglerfish relatives, however, reaches back tens of millions of years.

Some of the earliest well-known fossil anglerfishes come from the Eocene Epoch, approximately 50 million years ago.

Among these ancient relatives is Histionotophorus bassani, an extinct anglerfish known from the famous Eocene fossil deposits of Monte Bolca in northern Italy.

These extraordinary deposits preserve an ancient marine ecosystem filled with beautifully detailed fossil fishes.

Another fossil anglerfish, Caruso brachysomus, is known from the Eocene of Monte Bolca and provides another fascinating glimpse into the early evolutionary history of this unusual group.

These fossils are not red-lipped batfish, nor are they necessarily their direct ancestors. Instead, they help document the early history of the broader anglerfish lineage.

The batfish family itself has a much patchier fossil record, making the precise history of its distinctive walking adaptations difficult to reconstruct.

This is one of the challenges palaeontologists face when studying animals that live in marine environments where fossil preservation can be rare or incomplete.

An absence of fossils does not mean an animal's ancestors were absent. It means we have not yet found the evidence to tell their complete story.

And somewhere in the rocks, there may still be an extraordinary fossil batfish waiting to be discovered.

Preferably with its lipstick intact.

FIVE MORE REASONS TO LOVE THIS PECULIAR FISH

1. It is named for Darwin. Its scientific name, Ogcocephalus darwini, honours Charles Darwin, whose observations in the Galápagos helped shape our understanding of evolution. Darwin did not, however, personally name this fish.

2. Its walking fins are still fins. Those remarkable appendages are modified versions of the paired fins found in other fishes, not the same kind of limbs that allow mammals and reptiles to walk on land.

3. It has a built-in fishing apparatus. Its lure is part of a modified dorsal fin, a wonderful example of how evolution can repurpose existing anatomical structures.

4. It is not the only batfish with a memorable face. Other members of the batfish family have flattened, angular bodies and expressions that range from mildly surprised to thoroughly unimpressed.

5. It reminds us that evolution doesn't work towards a single ideal body shape. Natural selection favours traits that help organisms survive and reproduce in their environments. Sometimes that produces a swift, streamlined swimmer. Sometimes it produces a bottom-dwelling fish with a fishing rod on its head and bright red lips.

A FINAL KISS FROM DEEP TIME

The red-lipped batfish reminds us that the natural world is infinitely more inventive than we could ever imagine.

Here is a fish that has traded elegant swimming for an awkward stroll, developed its own fishing equipment and acquired a face that looks ready for the red carpet.

Its broader evolutionary family stretches back at least to the Eocene fossil record, connecting this extraordinary modern animal with ancient marine ecosystems and millions of years of evolutionary experimentation.

And while we have yet to uncover a convincing fossil record of the red-lipped batfish itself, its living relatives and ancient cousins offer tantalising clues to a much older story.

For me, that is one of the great joys of palaeontology.

Every living creature carries an evolutionary history, whether we can see that history in the rocks or not.

Some of those stories involve mighty dinosaurs, enormous marine reptiles and towering prehistoric forests.

And some involve a little fish wandering around the Pacific seafloor looking as though it has just been stood up on a first date.

Keep exploring, fossil friends.

The ancient world — and its wonderfully strange living descendants — never cease to surprise us.

CRINOIDS: ANCIENT SEA LILIES

Picture a meadow beneath an ancient sea. Slender stalks rise from the bottom, each carrying a delicate crown of branching arms. The current moves through them, bringing a steady supply of drifting food.

At first glance, you might mistake them for flowers.

These beautiful creatures are crinoids, often called sea lilies. Despite their botanical appearance, they are animals—marine relatives of sea stars, brittle stars, sea urchins and sea cucumbers.

Their fossils preserve something wonderful: the remains of an underwater garden whose “flowers” were feeding.

A FLOWER WITH FEEDING ARMS

A typical stalked crinoid has a surprisingly elegant body plan.

At its base, an attachment structure anchors the animal. Above it rises a flexible column supporting a small, plated cup called the calyx. Branching arms spread from the top, forming the feeding crown.

The stalk lifts those arms into passing currents. Different species grow to different heights, allowing neighbouring animals to gather food at different levels above the seabed.

In dense communities, their crowns create a layered underwater landscape, with smaller creatures living among and beneath them.

This is a garden sustained by moving water.

HOW DOES A SEA LILY EAT?

A crinoid’s feathery arms are food collectors.

Tiny tube feet along the arms capture suspended particles. These morsels pass into food grooves and travel towards the mouth, which faces upwards within the crown.

The current delivers dinner.

Branching arms and their smaller side branches increase the collecting area, creating an intricate living filter. What looks like a delicate ornament is a remarkably effective feeding system.

LITTLE STONE BEADS

You are much more likely to encounter a piece of crinoid stem than a complete animal.

The skeleton consists of many calcite plates. In the stalk, these plates are stacked together like a column of tiny discs. Each stem segment is called a columnal.

After death, the tissues holding the skeleton together decay. Arms scatter, stems separate and the animal comes apart into a multitude of pieces.

Look closely at fossil-bearing limestone and you may notice small circles, rings or stars. Some resemble miniature washers. Others remain joined in short stacks.

These are fragments of animals that once stood above the seafloor.

Their abundance can be extraordinary. In some deposits, crinoid debris forms a substantial part of the limestone itself.

A complete fossil, with its crown and stem still connected, records a much rarer event: burial before that delicate skeleton could fall apart.

VANCOUVER ISLAND’S ANCIENT UNDERWATER MEADOWS

One of the loveliest places to imagine this vanished world is high in the mountains of Vancouver Island.

At Marble Meadows in Strathcona Provincial Park, limestone of the Buttle Lake Group preserves evidence of ancient marine communities.

During the Permian Period, long before these rocks became part of a mountain landscape, carbonate sediments accumulated on a shallow submarine platform. Crinoids lived alongside brachiopods, bryozoans and corals.

Their broken skeletons contributed to the limestone we see today.

The contrast is delicious: alpine meadows above, the remains of marine meadows below.

What is now rock beneath mountain air once lay beneath seawater. Subsequent geological movement and uplift, followed by erosion, brought that ancient seabed into view.

The fossils belong to the park’s natural heritage. Photograph them, enjoy their details and leave them in place for the next curious visitor.

SEA LILIES ARE STILL WITH US

Crinoids survived far beyond the ancient seas preserved in limestone.

Living members include stalked sea lilies and feather stars, whose adults lack a long stalk. Some feather stars can crawl or swim using their arms.

Watching one move is a lovely way to undo the illusion that these creatures are plants.

Modern crinoids also help palaeontologists interpret their fossil relatives. Their feeding, movement and anatomy offer clues to lives recorded only in stone.

ANTLERS, ANCESTORS AND A CERTAIN MUSKY MAJESTY: ELK

The elk you see here, Cervus canadensis, belongs to a lineage stretching deep into the Pleistocene—a time when ice sheets advanced and retreated across much of North America, reshaping landscapes and every living thing within them.

Elk are members of the family Cervidae, a group that first appeared in the fossil record during the Early Miocene, roughly 20 million years ago. 

These early deer were generally small, forest-dwelling creatures whose simple antlers bore little resemblance to the magnificent branching crowns carried by their modern kin.

By the Late Miocene and into the Pliocene, cervids had begun to diversify in both form and habitat. 

As forests shifted and grasslands expanded, deer evolved longer limbs, new feeding strategies and increasingly elaborate antlers—those extraordinary seasonal crowns of bone used for display, intimidation and, when diplomacy fails, combat.

The genus Cervus, which includes modern elk, appeared later in Eurasia. Its descendants eventually spread into North America through Beringia, the land bridge that connected Siberia and Alaska during periods of lower sea level in the Pleistocene.

Once here, elk flourished.

Roosevelt elk, Cervus canadensis roosevelti

Pleistocene deposits across North America—from the tar seeps of Rancho La Brea in California (so worth a visit) to river gravels, caves and northern permafrost—preserve elk bones alongside an astonishing Ice Age cast: mammoths, mastodons, ancient bison, dire wolves, sabre-toothed cats and short-faced bears.

It was a formidable neighbourhood, yet elk held their own. 

As adaptable grazers and browsers, they could feed on grasses, sedges, leaves, twigs, bark and shrubs, allowing them to navigate shifting climates and rapidly changing ecosystems.

Here on Vancouver Island, the elk we encounter are Roosevelt elk, Cervus canadensis roosevelti—the largest-bodied of North America’s living elk subspecies.

And they are magnificent.

Big, breathtaking and completely at home in the rainforest, they emerge from the trees to browse in clearings, drink along the shores of Cowichan Lake and, with alarming regularity, appear beside island roadways looking as though they have somewhere important to be.

Elk Enjoying Nature's Salad Bar

Older scientific literature may list them as Cervus elaphus roosevelti, reflecting the long-running debate over whether North American elk should be classified with Eurasian red deer. 

Today, they are generally recognized as a subspecies of the distinct North American elk, Cervus canadensis.

Roosevelt elk are native to the wet coastal forests extending from northern California through Oregon and Washington into southwestern British Columbia. 

In Canada, their great natural stronghold is Vancouver Island, with smaller populations now living along portions of the southwest mainland coast. 

Several of those mainland herds descend from animals moved from Vancouver Island as part of successful restoration efforts.

Their ancestors reached Vancouver Island following the last glaciation, entering newly available landscapes as the ice retreated and forests, river valleys, wetlands and coastal meadows developed. Over time, they became superbly adapted to life in the temperate rainforest.

Elk near Cowichan Lake. PM Photography

Unlike elk associated with the open grasslands and mountain valleys of the continental interior, Roosevelt elk often live beneath towering western redcedar, Douglas-fir, Sitka spruce and western hemlock. 

They favour low-elevation river valleys, estuaries, wetlands, forest openings and avalanche tracks where grasses, sedges, shrubs and tender young vegetation are plentiful.

Many herds move into higher country during summer, then descend into sheltered valleys as autumn storms and winter snow return. 

They are also regulars along Vancouver Island’s highways, where lush roadside vegetation apparently offers an irresistible salad bar. Unfortunately, their fondness for roadside dining sometimes ends very poorly—for elk and motorists alike. 

If you find yourself driving along Highway 18 (also known as the Cowichan Valley Highway) slow right down at any sign of movement along the roadside. 

April through June, look for wee fawns and the rest of the year, be prepared for a herd of Elk to emerge—especially within the vicinity of Youbou, British Columbia. Tis a favourite haunt of our Cervus locals.

Their dark coats seem almost made for the island’s rain-soaked forests. A mature bull can appear suddenly between the trees, his body blending into the shadows while his pale rump patch flashes through the undergrowth. He is massive, deep-chested and thick-necked, particularly during the autumn rut.

His antlers rise above the sword ferns like the branches of some highly mobile and faintly irritated tree.

To encounter one in the wild is unforgettable. The elk here have most definitely been enjoying the salad bar and look remarkably well nourished. They also appear wonderfully unconcerned by the human standing nearby, staring open-mouthed into the forest.

The woods may be dripping after rain, rich with the scents of cedar, wet earth and decaying leaves. Then comes the soft crack of a branch. A dark shape moves between the trunks, followed by another, until an entire herd materializes from the forest.

For a few moments, you simply stand and stare.

They are so perfectly at home they seem less like animals passing through the landscape than living pieces of the landscape itself. Their breath hangs in the cool air. Hooves press deeply into the saturated soil. Cows murmur softly to their calves while bulls watch from the edge of the herd, carrying an astonishing architecture of bone upon their heads.

And then the breeze turns.

Roosevelt elk possess the same earthy, musky scent as their continental relatives, enhanced during the rut by wallowing, urine-soaked vegetation and the general romantic conviction that smelling respectable is wildly overrated. The result is a potent mixture of wet hide, mud, fermented vegetation and eau de amorous ungulate.

It is not exactly Chanel No. 5, but the cows appear to approve.

On Vancouver Island, Roosevelt elk share the landscape with Columbian black-tailed deer, black bears, cougars and wolves that are more than capable of hunting them. Elk also help shape the ecosystems around them. Their grazing and browsing influence plant communities, while their movements open pathways, disperse seeds and carry nutrients through forests, wetlands and river valleys.

They are residents of these ecosystems and active participants in them.

Although elk survived the great wave of extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene, Roosevelt elk have faced more recent pressures from intensive hunting, expanding settlement, road traffic and the loss and fragmentation of low-elevation habitat.

Their Vancouver Island populations are therefore particularly important. They represent both a distinctive coastal form of elk and a living continuation of the great cervid migrations that followed the retreating Ice Age.

When a Roosevelt bull bugles through a misty Vancouver Island valley, the sound seems to belong to another time. It rises through the rain and cedar branches—wild, strange and resonant—carrying with it an echo of the Pleistocene.

Magnificent, ancient and, dare I say, magnificently smelly.

BARNACLES: CUVIER TO DARWIN

Barnacles All Closed Up

One of the most interesting and enigmatic little critters we find at the seashore are barnacles. 

They cling to rocks at the waters' edge, closed to our curiosity, their domed mounds like little closed beaks shut to the water and the world.

They choose their permanent homes as larvae, sticking to hard substrates that will become their permanent homes for the rest of their lives. 

It has taken us a long time to find how they actually stick or what kind of "glue" they were using.

A clever fellow from Duke University's Marine Laboratory in Durhan, North Carolina finally cracked that puzzle. Instead of chopping up barnacles to see what makes them stick, he observed and collected the oozing glue from some Amphibalanus amphitrite as they secreted it.

Remarkably, the barnacle glue sticks to rocks in a similar way to how red cells bind together. Red blood cells bind and clot with a little help from some enzymes. 

These work to create long protein fibres that first blind, clot then form a scab. The mechanism barnacles use, right down to the enzyme, is very similar. That's especially interesting as about a billion years separate our evolutionary path from theirs.

So, with the help of their clever enzymes, they can affix to most anything – ship hulls, rocks, and even the skin of whales. If you find them in tidepools, you begin to see their true nature as they open up, their delicate feathery finger-like projections flowing back and forth in the surf.

Barnacle Cirri Seeking Tasty Plankton

Those wee feather-like bits you see are called cirri. Eight pairs of these thoracic limbs help barnacles to filter tasty bits of plankton from the surrounding water into their mouths.

Barnacles are cirripedes, a kind of crustacean that is covered with hard plates of calcium carbonate. Named for their cirri, they live stuck to hard surfaces in and around our world's oceans. 

While they do not look like crustaceans, they are definitely part of this taxonomic grouping that includes crab, lobster, crayfish, prawn, krill, and woodlice.

BARNACLES IN KWAK'WALA

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, barnacles are known as k̕wit̕a̱'a and broken barnacle shells are known as t̕sut̕su'ma.

BARNACLES IN THE FOSSIL RECORD

They have an old history. Their ancestors can be traced back to animals such as Priscansermarinus that lived during the Middle Cambrian – some 510 to 500 million years ago. I found my first barnacle fossil at a fossil site called Muir Creek on the south end of Vancouver Island. 

The wonderfully accessible foreshore fossil exposures at Muir are Oligocene, 20-25 million years old. This is about the time that barnacles can be found more readily as skeletal remains.

One of the reasons for the limited number of barnacle remains in the fossil record is their preferred habitat – high energy, shallow ocean environments. These tend to see a lot of tidal action that leads to erosion and barnacles being broken apart, slowly eroded down to bits too small to recognize for what they are.

One of the fossil remains we do find are not the barnacles themselves, but trace fossils of acrothoracican barnacle borings from Rogerella. These are commonly found in the fossil record beginning in the Devonian right up to today. Rogerella is a small pouch-shaped boring (a type of trace fossil) with a slit-like aperture currently produced by acrothoracican barnacles. 

These crustaceans extrude their legs upwards through the opening for filter-feeding (Seilacher, 1969; Lambers and Boekschoten, 1986). They are known in the fossil record as borings in carbonate substrates (shells and hardgrounds) from the Devonian to the Recent (Taylor and Wilson, 2003).

Barnacle Ancestry Goes Back to the Middle Cambrian

FROM MOLLUSCA TO ARTICULATA

For those of you who enjoy leaning into the geeky history of how we came to understand barnacles, I shall indulge you.

Barnacles were originally classified by Linnaeus and Cuvier as Mollusca, but in 1830 John Vaughan Thompson published observations showing the metamorphosis of the nauplius and cypris larvae into adult barnacles. He noted how these larvae were similar to those of crustaceans.

In 1834 Hermann Burmeister published further information, reinterpreting these findings. The effect was to move barnacles from the phylum of Mollusca to Articulata, showing naturalists that detailed study was needed to reevaluate their taxonomy.

Charles Darwin took up this challenge in 1846 and developed his initial interest in a major study published as a series of monographs in 1851 and 1854. Darwin undertook this study, at the suggestion of his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, to thoroughly understand at least one species before making the generalizations needed for his theory of evolution by natural selection.

BARNACLES IN A NUT SHELL

Barnacles live life with unwavering commitment. Once they find the perfect spot on a rock, pier, whale, ship's hull, or unsuspecting sea turtle, they glue themselves down with one of the strongest natural cements known and settle in for good. There are no second thoughts, no moving to a nicer neighbourhood with a better view. Home is home.

These remarkable little crustaceans are suspension feeders, rhythmically sweeping tiny morsels of plankton and organic debris into their mouths using feathery, jointed legs called cirri. Those waving "feet" you see flicking through the water are actually highly specialized feeding appendages, tirelessly combing the sea for dinner. When the tide retreats, they pull those cirri safely inside and clamp their tough calcareous plates shut, waiting patiently for the ocean to return.

Now, about romance... barnacles have perhaps the most awkward dating life in the animal kingdom. 

Being permanently glued to a rock makes meeting new partners something of a logistical challenge. 

Evolution solved this problem in spectacular fashion: barnacles possess the longest penis relative to body size of any animal on Earth—sometimes extending eight times their own body length. It is an extraordinary adaptation that allows them to reach neighbouring barnacles without anyone having to leave home. 

If your love life depended on never moving from your favourite rock, you'd probably evolve some creative solutions too. I was speaking with friend and colleague, Adrienne Schmidt about this just today. 

After mating, fertilized eggs develop into tiny free-swimming nauplius larvae that drift through the plankton. As they grow, they transform into the cypris stage—a curious little explorer whose sole mission is to find the perfect place to settle. 

Once it chooses its forever home, it secretes its remarkable natural cement, attaches for life, builds its protective shell, and begins the whole wonderfully peculiar cycle again.

For creatures that spend their adult lives going absolutely nowhere, barnacles have evolved one of the most fascinating lifestyles in the sea.

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.

ANCIENT ARAGONITE: FOSSIL PEARLS

One of my favourite pairs of earrings are a simple set of pearls. I have worn them pretty much every day since 2016, when I received them as a gift. 

What is it about pearls that makes them so appealing? I am certainly not alone in this. 

A simple search will show you a vast array of pearls being used for their ornamental value in cultures from all over the world. I suppose the best answer to why they are appealing is just that they are. 

If you make your way to Paris, France and happen to visit the Louvre's Persian Gallery, do take a boo at one of the oldest pearl necklaces in existence — the Susa necklace. It hails from a 2,400-year-old tomb of long lost Syrian Queen. It is a showy piece with three rows of 72 pearls per strand strung upon a bronze wire. 

A queen who truly knew how to accessorize. 

I imagine her putting the final touches of her outfit together, donning the pearls and making an entrance to wow the elite of ancient Damascus. The workmanship is superb, intermixing pure gold to offset the lustre of the pearls. 

It is precious and ancient, crafted one to two hundred years before Christ. Perhaps a gift from an Egyptian Pharaoh or from one of the Sumerians, Eblaites, Akkadians, Assyrians, Hittites, Hurrians, Mitanni, Amorites or Babylonian dignitaries who sued for peace but brought war instead. 

Questions, good questions, but questions without answers. So, what can we say of pearls? We do know what they are and it is not glamorous. Pearls form in shelled molluscs when a wee bit of sand or some other irritant gets trapped inside the shell, injuring the flesh. As a defensive and self-healing tactic, the mollusc wraps it in layer upon layer of mother-of-pearl — that glorious shiny nacre that forms pearls. 

They come in all shapes and sizes from minute to a massive 32 kilograms or 70 pounds. While a wide variety of our mollusc friends respond to injury or irritation by coating the offending intruder with nacre, there are only a few who make the truly gem-y pearls. 

These are the marine pearl oysters, Pteriidae and a few freshwater mussels. 

Aside from Pteriidae and freshwater mussels, we sometimes find less gem-y pearls inside conchs, scallops, clams, abalone, giant clams and large marine gastropods.

Pearls are made up mostly of the carbonate mineral aragonite, a polymorphous mineral — the same chemical formula but different crystal structure — to calcite and vaterite, sometimes called mu-calcium carbonate. These polymorphous carbonates are a bit like Mexican food where it is the same ingredients mixed in different ways. Visually, they are easy to tell apart — vaterite has a hexagonal crystal system, calcite is trigonal and aragonite is orthorhombic.

As pearls fossilize, the aragonite usually gets replaced by calcite, though sometimes by vaterite or another mineral. When we are very lucky, that aragonite is preserved with its nacreous lustre — that shimmery mother-of-pearl we know and love.  

Molluscs have likely been making pearls since they first evolved 530 million years ago. The oldest known fossil pearls found to date, however, are 230-210 million years old. 

This was the time when our world's landmass was concentrated into the C-shaped supercontinent of Pangaea and the first dinosaurs were calling it home. 

In the ancient ocean of Panthalassa, ecosystems were recovering from the high carbon dioxide levels that fueled the Permian extinction. Death begets life. With 95% of marine life wiped out, new species evolved to fill each niche.  

While this is where we found the oldest pearl on record, I suspect we will one day find one much older and hopefully with its lovely great-great grandmother-of-pearl intact. 

CLALLAM BAY FOSSIL FAUNA

Panopea abrupt (Conrad, 1894)

This lovely large fossil bivalve is Panopea abrupta (Conrad, 1849) an extinct species of marine mollusc in the family Hiatellidae, subclass Heterodonta.

This fossil specimen was collected from lower Miocene deposits in the Clallam Formation on the foreshore bordering the Strait of Juan de Fuca near Clallam Bay, Olympic Peninsula, northwestern Washington. 

The oldest recorded specimen of one of their modern relatives lived not too far from here in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. That lovely was an impressive 168 years old.

A geoduck sucks water containing plankton down through its long siphon, filters this for food and ejects its refuse out through a separate hole in the siphon. Adult geoducks have few natural predators, which may also contribute to their longevity.

In Alaska, sea otters and dogfish have proved capable of dislodging geoducks; starfish also attack and feed on the exposed geoduck siphon.

Clallam Bay is a sleepy little town on the northwestern edge of the Olympic Peninsula. It was founded back in the 1880s as a steamboat stop and later served as a Mill town. If you are planning to visit the fossil exposures, head to the edge of town where it meets the sea.

Once at the water's edge, head east along the shore until you can go no further. You'll find marine fossils in the sandstone on the shore and cliffs. Mind the tide as access to the fossil site is only possible at low or mid-tide. You'll have to swim for it if you time it poorly. Clallam Bay: 48°15′17″N 124°15′30″W.

Near this site, there are many additional fossil localities to explore. 

In Sequim Bay, you can find Pleistocene vertebrates as well as Miocene cetacean bones near Slip Point. Near the Twin Post Office, you can find Oligocene nautiloids and bivalves (2.5km west in the bluff); You can find crabs including, Branchioplax in the Eocene limestone concretions from Neah Bay.

References: Addicott, Warren. Molluscan paleontology of the lower Miocene Clallam Formation, northwestern Washington, Geological Survey Paper 976.

THE MAGISTY OF IRISH ELK

Irish Elk, Megaloceros giganteus

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

The tall grass parts in slow ripples, stirred by a warm evening breeze—then by something far larger. 

An Irish Elk steps into view, a towering ghost from deep time, its silhouette edged with gold. It is a view some of our ancestors were lucky to behold!

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

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

Irish Elk fossils appear in abundance in the peatlands of Ireland, the loess plains of Eastern Europe, and far into Central Asia. 

Their lineage traces back to the genus Megaloceros, a group of large deer that emerged around two million years ago. 

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

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris

Spanning up to 3.7 metres (twelve feet) from tip to tip, the antlers were not simply oversized decoration—they were evolutionary billboards, broadcasting strength, health, and genetic prowess. 

They also had a hand in their fossil fame. 

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

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

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

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

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

Irish Elk, Natural History Museum London

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KU'MIS: WARRIOR CRAB

Look how epic this little guy is! 

He is a crab — and if you asked him, the fiercest warrior that ever lived. 

While that may not be strictly true, crabs do have the heart of a warrior and will raise their claws, sometimes only millimetres into the air, to assert dominance over their world. 

Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the Phylum Arthropoda. 

In Kwak'wala, the language of the Kwakwaka'wakw of the Pacific Northwest, this brave fellow is ḵ̓u'mis — both a tasty snack and familiar to the supernatural deity Tuxw'id, a female warrior spirit. Given their natural armour and clear bravery, it is a fitting role.

They inhabit all the world's oceans, sandy beaches, many of our freshwater lakes and streams. Some few prefer to live in forests.

Crabs build their shells from highly mineralized chitin — and chitin gets around. It is the main structural component of the exoskeletons of many of our crustacean and insect friends. Shrimp, crab, and lobster all use it to build their exoskeletons.

Chitin is a polysaccharide — a large molecule made of many smaller monosaccharides or simple sugars, like glucose. 

It is handy stuff, forming crystalline nanofibrils or whiskers. Chitin is actually the second most abundant polysaccharide after cellulose. It is interesting as we usually think of these molecules in the context of their sugary context but they build many other very useful things in nature — not the least of these are the hard shells or exoskeletons of our crustacean friends.

Crabs in the Fossil Record

The earliest unambiguous crab fossils date from the Early Jurassic, with the oldest being Eocarcinus from the early Pliensbachian of Britain, which likely represents a stem-group lineage, as it lacks several key morphological features that define modern crabs. 

Most Jurassic crabs are only known from dorsal — or top half of the body — carapaces, making it difficult to determine their relationships. Crabs radiated in the Late Jurassic, corresponding with an increase in reef habitats, though they would decline at the end of the Jurassic as the result of the decline of reef ecosystems. Crabs increased in diversity through the Cretaceous and represented the dominant group of decapods by the end.

We find wonderful fossil crab specimens on Vancouver Island. The first I ever collected was at Shelter Point, then again on Hornby Island, down on the Olympic Peninsula and along Vancouver Island's west coast near Nootka Sound. 

They are, of course, found globally and are one of the most pleasing fossils to find and aggravating to prep of all the specimens you will ever have in your collection. Bless them.

STELLER’S SEA COW: A GENTLE GIANT LOST TO HISTORY

Steller’s sea cow, Hydrodamalis gigas

The Steller’s sea cow, Hydrodamalis gigas, was an enormous marine mammal that once grazed the kelp forests of the North Pacific. 

Closely related to the modern dugong—and more distantly to manatees—it belonged to the order Sirenia, an ancient group of plant-eating mammals whose evolutionary history reaches back more than 50 million years.

Growing to approximately 7.5–9 metres long and weighing several tonnes, Steller’s sea cow was considerably larger than any living sirenian. It possessed a small head, paddle-like forelimbs and a broad, forked tail. Unlike dugongs and manatees, it had no functional teeth. Instead, thick, ridged pads inside its mouth helped it crush and grind kelp.

Its dark, deeply wrinkled hide was reportedly so thick that naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller compared it to the bark of an old oak tree. This was a sensible bit of armour for an animal feeding among sharp rocks, ice and pounding northern surf—but sadly, it offered no protection from hungry sailors carrying harpoons.

The ancestors of Steller’s sea cow evolved in warmer waters. Fossils belonging to its wider hydrodamaline lineage appear in North Pacific rocks dating back to the Miocene Epoch. Over millions of years, these sea cows became increasingly adapted to cooler environments, larger bodies and a diet dominated by kelp.

Fossils of Hydrodamalis and closely related forms have been discovered along the Pacific coasts of Japan, Russia, Alaska, California and Baja California. 

One of its better-known relatives, Hydrodamalis cuestae, lived along the western coast of North America during the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene. These giant sea cows once occupied a much broader area than the tiny refuge in which Europeans eventually encountered them.

Late Pleistocene remains of Hydrodamalis gigas have been recovered from Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The species survived into the Holocene, but its geographic range contracted as sea levels, ocean temperatures and coastal kelp habitats changed following the last Ice Age. 

Fossil remains suggest that scattered populations may have persisted around parts of the Bering Sea long after they disappeared farther south.

Genomic research tells us that the species had experienced a long decline in population size before its final encounter with European hunters. 

By the eighteenth century, its surviving population was already small, isolated and genetically vulnerable. Natural environmental changes may therefore have placed Steller’s sea cow on increasingly thin ecological ice—but humans delivered the final blow.

Western science first learned of the animal in 1741, when Georg Wilhelm Steller observed it around Bering Island in the Commander Islands. Steller was stranded there with survivors of the ill-fated expedition led by Vitus Bering. He carefully documented the enormous animals as they floated close to shore, feeding on kelp in shallow water.

Unfortunately, the sea cows were large, slow, approachable and apparently unable to dive deeply. They also yielded tremendous quantities of meat and fat. Their hides could be fashioned into boats or coverings, while their fat was valued for food and lamp oil. Once Russian fur-hunting crews began visiting the Commander Islands, the animals became convenient floating supply depots.

Hunters harpooned them from small boats and attempted to drag the wounded animals ashore. Many struck sea cows escaped carrying embedded weapons, only to die later. The slaughter was therefore even more wasteful than the number of recovered carcasses suggests.

Their biology offered little chance of recovery. Steller’s sea cows probably matured slowly, produced one calf at a time and depended upon shallow coastal kelp beds. Extinction models indicate that hunters were killing them at many times the population’s sustainable rate. 

Only 27 years after Steller described them, the last reliably recorded individual was killed in 1768.

The commercial hunting of sea otters may also have hastened their disappearance. With fewer otters eating sea urchins, urchin populations could expand and consume more kelp—the very food upon which the sea cows depended. Researchers have modelled this proposed ecological chain reaction, although direct hunting remains the clearest and most immediate cause of extinction.

Steller’s sea cow survived millions of years of climatic change, shifting coastlines and evolving marine ecosystems. It survived the Ice Ages—but it could not survive three decades of industrial-scale human appetite.

CLALLAM BAY FOSSIL HEIST

Vertipecten fucanus (Dall, 1900)

Some water-worn samples of the bivalve Verdipectin fucanus, Clallam Formation, Clallam Bay, Washington State. Miocene.

It all began one gloriously sunny summer weekend when the planets aligned, the calendar gods smiled, and my mother and I were simultaneously free. 

Naturally, this meant one thing: we were going fossil hunting. I still get out collecting regularly but back in the day it was every weekend of the year with the bigger trips planned a few years in advance. 

Many of those were "reckie trips" scouting out new localities. The Olympic Peninsula was duly scouted and now it was back to the regular haunts. 

We rattled down through Port Angeles and set up camp at the Lyre River—mosquitoes, campfire smoke, and all the rustic feels. 

I took Mom on a grand tour of my favourite haunts: Majestic Beach (where we found some amazing fossil whale verts), a private-land site with ghost shrimp claws and urchins (with permission), and finally down to Clallam Bay and its dreamy beach exposures.

The Clallam Formation stretches along the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula, tracing the rugged edge of the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Slip Point at the eastern end of Clallam Bay to the headland of Pillar Point. Here, sandstone beds push the coastline outward in a subtle bulge, their weathered flanks dropping abruptly to a broad, wave-washed bedrock platform.

Pillar Point, Clallam Bay

Imagine standing on that foreshore: waves crash rhythmically against the stone, sending up bursts of cool spray. The surf’s deep, steady thunder pulses underfoot, while the sharper cries of gulls wheel above, carried on the wind. 

The air is rich with the briny scent of kelp and cold saltwater, a sharp, clean smell that settles in the back of the throat. Each retreating wave leaves a gleaming sheen on the rock, swirling with foam before sliding back to the sea.

Its cliffs and tidal benches have long drawn geologists—and especially paleontologists—who were captivated by the formation’s abundance of beautifully preserved fossils. 

William Healey Dall, a pioneering American geologist and paleontologist whose career spanned more than six decades. Dall loved to explore this rugged bit of coastline, studying and describing many of the mollusks now known from the Clallam Formation, adding his work to the early scientific tapestry woven from these windswept rocks.

He became one of the most prolific describers of North Pacific mollusks, naming hundreds of new species—from marine snails and clams to chitons—many of which still bear the names he assigned or honour him through genera such as Dallina and Dallididae. His work laid much of the early scientific foundation for the paleontology of the Pacific Coast.

Retracing his footsteps and to catch the tides just right, we collected in the early afternoon, blissfully unaware that we were setting up the perfect comedy plot twist. 

After a full day of hauling home the ocean’s Miocene leftovers, we decided to stash some of our fossil booty under a log—just until morning. A little paleo treasure cache. Perfectly safe. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

The next morning, we strolled back down the beach, coffees in hand, ready to retrieve our hoard like triumphant pirates.

Enter: A very enthusiastic gaggle of high school students.

There they were, marching toward us, each clutching a fossil like they’d just won the geological lottery. “Look what we found!” they cried, beaming, displaying our carefully cached treasures.

Yes. Our stash. Our carefully curated, lovingly positioned, absolutely-not-meant-for-public-consumption stash.

But honestly? They were so thrilled, we couldn’t help but be charmed. Besides, most of what I collect ends up in museums or teaching collections anyway. These young fossil hunters had simply… expedited the process. Efficient, really.

We gathered the Verdipectin together for one glamorous group photo, wished the kids well, and sent them off with pockets full of deep time. 

And our grand prize for the weekend? Some very fetching water-worn whale vertebrae—one of which was briefly enscripted into service as the crown of the King of the Lemon People, while my mother created elaborate beach sculptures to our shared amusement.. All in all, a perfect weekend.

Image: Vertipecten fucanus (Dall, 1900) is the most characteristic mollusk in assemblages from the Clallam Formation.

ELASMOSAURID PLESIOSAUR FROM MOROCCO

Libonectes atlasense / Andy Chua Collection

A beautifully preserved mandible of Libonectes atlasense, an elasmosaurid plesiosaur from early Turonian, Upper Cretaceous,  deposits of the Akrabou Formation near Asfla Village, Goulmima, Errachidia Province in eastern central Morocco.

The collecting area is in the region of Drâa-Tafilalet. You may know Errachidia as Ksar Souk. It was renamed My Rachid, in honour of the Moroccan royal family. Libonectes is a genus of sauropterygian reptile belonging to the plesiosaurs. Specimens have been found in the Britton Formation of Texas and the Akrabou Formation of Morocco.

Sauropterygian reptiles were a diverse taxon of extinct aquatic reptiles that arose from terrestrial ancestors just after the Permian extinction event. They flourished during the Triassic then all but the plesiosaurs became extinct at the end of the Triassic — with the plesiosaurs dying out at the end of the Cretaceous.

The holotype of Libonectes atlasense is an almost complete skeleton from Upper Cretaceous (mid-Turonian) rocks of the Goulmima area in eastern Morocco. Sven Sachs from the Naturkunde-Museum Bielefeld and Benjamin P. Kear from Uppsala University co-authored a paper redescribing the elasmosaurid plesiosaurian Libonectes atlasense from the Upper Cretaceous of Morocco. They did an initial assessment of the specimen in 2005, proposing a generic referral based on stratigraphical contemporaneity with Libonectes morgani from the CenomanianeTuronian of Texas, U.S.A.

Relative differences in the profile of the premaxillary-maxillary tooth row, position of the external bony nasal opening, number of teeth and rostrad inclination of the mandibular symphysis, proportions of the axial neural arch, and number of cervical and pectoral vertebrae were used to distinguish between these species.

Libonectes Scale Drawing / Hyrotrioskjan

As part of an on-going comparative appraisal of elasmosaurid plesiosaurian osteo-anatomy, they re-examined the type and formally referred material of both L. atlasense and L. morgani in order to establish species validity, as well as compile a comparative atlas for use in future works.

Their work revealed that these reportedly distinct species-level fossils are in fact virtually indistinguishable in gross morphology.

Indeed, the only substantial difference occurs in relative prominence of the midline keel along the mandibular symphysis, which might be explained by intraspecific variation. Their observations permit an amendment to the published generic diagnosis of Libonectes with the confirmation of important states such as the likely presence of a pectoral bar, distocaudad expansion of the humerus, and an epipodial foramen.

And we see some entirely new features. Novel features include a prominent ‘prong-like’ ventral midline process on the coracoids and the development of a median pelvic bar that encloses a central fenestration. Their work shows that the composite remains of L. morgani thus constitute one of the most complete elasmosaurid skeletal hypodigms documented worldwide, and evidence a trans-Atlantic distribution for this apparently dispersive species during the early Late Cretaceous. The impressive mandible you see here is in the collection of Andy Chua.

Sachs, Sven and Kear, Benjamin. (2017). Redescription of the elasmosaurid plesiosaurian Libonectes atlasense from the Upper Cretaceous of Morocco. Cretaceous Research. 74. 205-222. 10.1016/j.cretres.2017.02.017.

Photo: Libonectes atlasense specimen, Andy Chua

Drawing By Hyrotrioskjan - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57716018