MISTY SHORES AND DAPPLED LIGHT: HAIDA GWAII

Misty shores, moss-covered forests, dappled light, and the smell of salt air—these are my memories of Haida Gwaii, a land where ancient stories are written in stone.

Formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, the archipelago of Haida Gwaii lies at the far western edge of Canada, where the Pacific Ocean meets the continental shelf. 

These islands—steeped in the rich culture of the Haida Nation—are not only a cultural treasure but a geologic and paleontological wonderland.

Geologically, Haida Gwaii is part of Wrangellia, an exotic tectonostratigraphic terrane that also includes parts of Vancouver Island, western British Columbia, and Alaska. The region's complex geological history spans hundreds of millions of years and includes volcanic arcs, seafloor spreading, and the accretion of entire landmasses.

The Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) has long been fascinated with these remote islands. 

Their geologists and paleontologists have led numerous expeditions over the past century, documenting the diverse sedimentary formations and fossiliferous beds. 

Much of the foundation for this work was laid by Joseph Frederick Whiteaves, the GSC’s chief paleontologist in Ottawa during the late 19th century.

In 1876, Whiteaves published a pioneering paper on the Jurassic and Cretaceous faunas of Skidegate Inlet. This work firmly established the paleontological significance of the archipelago and cemented Whiteaves’ reputation as a global authority in the field. His paper, "On the Fossils of the Cretaceous Rocks of British Columbia" (GSC Report of Progress for 1876–77), remains a key early reference for West Coast palaeontology.

Later, Whiteaves would go on to describe Anomalocaris canadensis from the Burgess Shale—an “unlike other shrimp” fossil that would later be recognized as one of the most extraordinary creatures of the Cambrian explosion.

Whiteaves' early work on the fossil faunas of Haida Gwaii, particularly in the Haida Formation, created a foundation for generations of researchers to follow.

One of our most memorable fossil field trips was to the Cretaceous exposures of Lina Island, part of the Haida Formation. We considered it one of our “trips of a lifetime.” 

With great sandstone beach exposures and fossil-rich outcrops dating from the Albian to Cenomanian, Lina Island offered both scientific riches and stunning natural beauty.

Haida Fossil Fauna

Our expedition was supported and organized by John Fam, Vice Chair of the Vancouver Paleontological Society, and Dan Bowen, Chair of the British Columbia Paleontological Alliance and the Vancouver Island Paleontological Society. 

Their dedication to fostering collaborative research and building relationships with local Haida communities was key. 

We were warmly welcomed, and field trips to fossil sites were arranged in partnership with community members and cultural stewards.

The Haida Formation yielded beautifully preserved specimens embedded both in bedding planes and in concretions—hard, rounded nodules that often house exceptionally preserved fossils. 

Collecting in the mists along the foreshore, our finds included:

• Douvilleiceras spiniferum
• Brewericeras hulenense
• Cleoniceras perezianum
• Fossil cycads, evidence of rich Cretaceous plant life

These fossils offered a rare glimpse into an ancient marine ecosystem that once teemed with life. Douvilleiceras, a spiny ammonite, is particularly striking. 

Douvilleiceras spiniferum, Haida Gwaii

This genus, first identified by Whiteaves from Haida Gwaii, ranges from the Middle to Late Cretaceous and has been found across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.  

The Haida specimens, from the early to mid-Albian, to my eye are the most beautiful—and beautifully preserved.

  Douvilleiceras is one of my favourite ammonites of all time and I was blessed to find several good examples of that species from our expeditions to these fossil-rich outcrops.

All of the fossils I collected from Haida Gwaii have been skillfully prepped and donated to the Haida Gwaii Museum in Skidegate, British Columbia. 

It is a privilege to contribute in a small way to the scientific and cultural understanding of these extraordinary islands.

References and Further Reading:

Whiteaves, J.F. (1876). On the Fossils of the Cretaceous Rocks of British Columbia. Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress.

Jeletzky, J.A. (1970). Paleontology of the Cretaceous rocks of Haida Gwaii. Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 175.

Haggart, J.W. (1991). New Albian (Early Cretaceous) ammonites from Haida Gwaii. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 28(1), 45–56.

Haggart, J.W. & Smith, P.L. (1993). Paleontology and stratigraphy of the Cretaceous Queen Charlotte Group. Geological Survey of Canada Paper 93-1A.

Carter, E.S., Haggart, J.W., & Mustard, P.S. (1988). Early Cretaceous radiolarians from Haida Gwaii and implications for tectonic setting. Micropaleontology, 34(1), 1–14.

ANCIENT ELEGANCE: UINTACRINUS OF KANSAS

There is a particular kind of quiet magic in the world, the sort that sends a small shiver of awe through you when all the elements of deep time align. 

Every so often, nature grants us a perfect moment: minerals seep gently into ancient flesh, sediments cradle a creature’s delicate form, and the slow choreography of preservation captures a life in astonishing detail. 

For me, nothing embodies that magic quite like crinoids. These elegant echinoderms—equal parts flower and animal—feel like whispers from an ancient sea, caught forever in stone.

The specimen before us is no exception. If you lean in close and let your eyes wander across its intricate geometry, you will find yourself face to face with a stunning representative of Uintacrinus socialis. 

This Upper Cretaceous beauty, hailing from the Santonian roughly 85 million years ago, was first named nearly a century and a half ago by O.C. Marsh in honour of the Uinta Mountains of Utah. 

This specimen hail from the soft chalky layers of the Smoky Hills Niobrara Formation in central Kansas—a region that once lay beneath the warm, shallow waters of the Western Interior Seaway. Here, entire colonies of Uintacrinus drifted like living chandeliers, their feathery arms extended into the sun-dappled currents.

Crinoids are the quiet dancers of the animal kingdom. Although they appear plant-like—an underwater blossom swaying gracefully in the tide—they are very much animals, part of the illustrious echinoderm clan that includes sea stars, brittle stars, and urchins. 

Imagine a lily turned sentient: a cup-shaped central body holding a mouth on its upper surface, surrounded by delicate, branching arms that sweep food particles from the water. 

And, in true echinoderm fashion, add an anus inconveniently positioned right beside the mouth. Evolution, it seems, has a sense of humour.

The anchored species, traditionally called sea lilies, rise from the seafloor on slender stalks composed of stacked calcite rings—columnals—that resemble beads fallen from some ancient necklace. In shallower waters, the stalks can be short and sturdy, but in deeper seas they may stretch a metre or more, holding the crinoid aloft like the mast of a living ship, swaying gently with each passing current.

Yet most crinoids in today’s oceans are not anchored at all. The feather stars, or comatulids, break free from their juvenile stalks and spend their adulthood drifting, crawling, or even swimming with slow, balletic strokes of their arms. 

They cling to rocks and coral with tiny curved structures called cirri—delicate as eyelashes yet strong enough to grip firmly in swirling water. These cirri also allowed many fossil crinoids to hold fast to the Cretaceous seafloor, weathering tides and storms in the vast expanse of the Western Interior Seaway.

Like all echinoderms, crinoids exhibit pentaradial symmetry: a five-fold architecture expressed in their plates, arms, and feeding grooves. The aboral, or underside, of the calyx is encased in a mosaic of calcium carbonate plates that form their internal skeleton—robust enough to fossilize beautifully. 

The top surface, the oral area, is mostly soft tissue in life, opening into five deep ambulacral grooves where tube feet once reached outward like tiny graceful fingers. Between these lie the interambulacral zones, together forming the elegant star-like pattern that both living and fossil crinoids display.

Their fossil record is ancient and abundant. Crinoids first appear in the Ordovician over 450 million years ago—unless one counts Echmatocrinus, that strange and controversial form from the Burgess Shale whose affinities still spark debate among paleontologists. 

Through the Paleozoic, crinoids flourished in such numbers that their disarticulated columnals often blanket limestone beds. In some places, these columnals form the very fabric of the rock itself, creating entire cliffs built from the remnants of ancient underwater meadows. To run your fingers along such a rock is to touch a community that lived hundreds of millions of years before humans ever drew breath.

And yet, crinoids endure. They survive today in tropical reefs, deep ocean slopes, and soft-bottomed basins, their lineage stretching unbroken from those early Paleozoic seas to the modern oceans. 

Some cling to the seafloor in twilight depths; others drift like feathered ghosts, arms unfurling in silent, rhythmic pulses. 

When a fossil like Uintacrinus socialis emerges from the chalk of Kansas or the limestone of Utah, we are granted a rare window into that vanished age. 

And for those of us who spend our days searching riverbeds, quarries, and sea cliffs for such wonders, as I am sure you do, it is for the thrill of having a satisfying split and letting the past shine through.

That, to me, is pure magic.

DIGS, DISCOS AND DINOSAURS: FOSSIL PREP IN MIAMI

Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum PaleoLab

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh no. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . . . 

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

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

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

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

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

DINOSAUR RIDGE: DENVER, COLORADO

Tucked along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, just outside Denver, Colorado, lies one of the world’s most famous fossil localities: Dinosaur Ridge. 

This epic landscape is a place where deep time is etched into stone, where dinosaurs left their mark 150 million years ago, and where modern visitors can step directly into prehistory. It is a little like heaven!

The ridge is part of the Morrison Formation, a Late Jurassic rock unit renowned for its abundance of dinosaur fossils. Many of the first specimens that shaped our understanding of North American dinosaurs—including Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, and Allosaurus—were discovered here in the late 1800s during the feverish days of the Bone Wars — the famous fossil hunting fighting days of Cope and Marsh. 

Today, Dinosaur Ridge serves as both an outdoor museum and a natural classroom, where geology and paleontology meet fresh mountain air.

The main attraction is the Dinosaur Ridge Trail, a 1.5-mile paved walk (shuttle service is also available). Along the way, interpretive signs and viewing points highlight the ridge’s fossil treasures:

• Dinosaur tracks: Hundreds of fossilized footprints line the sandstone, most famously those of Iguanodon-like ornithopods and fearsome carnivorous theropods. Standing where a dinosaur once strode is both humbling and exhilarating.
• Ripple marks and mud cracks: These ancient impressions show that the area was once a shallow shoreline, where dinosaurs waded and water receded, leaving behind patterns still visible millions of years later.
• Bone quarries: Exposed rock layers reveal the same fossil-rich beds where early paleontologists extracted bones of long-necked sauropods and armored Stegosaurus.

The site also features striking geology, with tilted rock layers rising dramatically at an angle, giving visitors a clear glimpse into Earth’s shifting crust.

The Visitor Center Experience

Before or after the trail, the Dinosaur Ridge Visitor Center is worth a stop. Inside, you’ll find fossil replicas, hands-on activities for kids, and exhibits that tell the story of the dinosaurs and the scientists who first uncovered them. The staff and volunteers—many of them seasoned interpreters—bring the ridge’s history to life with enthusiasm.

What It Feels Like to Be There

Visiting Dinosaur Ridge gives all the "feels" you could ever ask for in a paleo field trip. The air is filled with the mingled scent of sagebrush and sun-warmed stone, while meadowlarks call from the surrounding grasslands. Standing beside a line of fossilized tracks, you can almost hear the splash of giant feet in mud, the rustle of prehistoric vegetation, and the low rumble of sauropods moving in herds. 

The contrast between Denver’s skyline in the distance and the Jurassic world beneath your feet makes for a surreal and unforgettable moment.

Planning Your Visit

• Location: Just off C-470 near Morrison, Colorado, about 25 minutes from downtown Denver.
• Best time to go: Spring and fall for cooler weather, though summer mornings can be pleasant.
• Accessibility: The paved trail is walkable, with shuttles available for those who prefer not to hike.
• Events: Check the Dinosaur Ridge website for guided tours, fossil festivals, and kids’ programs.

To stand on those rocks is to place yourself in a continuum of discovery, from the dinosaurs themselves, to the fossil hunters of the 19th century, to today’s scientists still uncovering new secrets. 

Whether you’re a lifelong paleontology fan or just curious about Earth’s story, Dinosaur Ridge offers a rare chance to literally walk in the footsteps of giants.

ORANGUTANS: THE FOREST PHILOSOPHERS

High in the emerald canopy, a branch sways and sunlight spills through a mosaic of leaves. There—an orangutan moves with unhurried grace, her long auburn hair catching the light in fiery streaks. 

She pauses, selecting a cluster of figs with deliberate fingers, inspecting each one as though weighing its worth. 

A peel, a bite, a slow, thoughtful chew. She shares these and some tasty leaves with her young who stays close, learning the art of foraging.

Beneath them, the forest hums—cicadas buzz, hornbills beat their wings overhead, and the musk of damp bark and fruit hangs heavy in the air. 

Today, orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus of Borneo and Pongo abelii of Sumatra, with the recently described Pongo tapanuliensis in Sumatra as well) are the only great apes found outside Africa. 

They are primarily arboreal, moving through the canopy with long, flexible arms and an ease born of a life spent above ground. 

Solitary compared to their African cousins, orangutans live in loose social networks, with males maintaining large territories and females caring for their young for up to eight years—the longest period of maternal dependence of any non-human primate. 

Their diet is largely fruit-based, supplemented by leaves, bark, insects, and occasionally small vertebrates.

The story of orangutans stretches back several million years. Their genus, Pongo, is part of the great ape family Hominidae, which also includes chimpanzees, gorillas, and humans. Fossil evidence shows that orangutans were once far more widespread than their current island ranges. 

During the Pleistocene (about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), Pongo species were found across much of Southeast Asia, from southern China to Java. Fossilized teeth and jaw fragments discovered in caves in Vietnam, Laos, and China reveal a larger-bodied orangutan relative, sometimes referred to as Pongo weidenreichi or Pongo hooijeri. These orangutans thrived in forested environments but declined as habitats shifted and humans expanded.

The deeper roots of orangutans trace back to the Miocene epoch (about 23 to 5 million years ago), often called the "Golden Age of Apes." 

During this time, Asia hosted a rich diversity of hominoids. Among the most important to orangutan ancestry are species of the genus Sivapithecus, found in the Siwalik Hills of India and Pakistan. 

Fossils of Sivapithecus dating from 12 to 8 million years ago reveal striking similarities in facial structure to modern orangutans: a concave face, oval-shaped orbits, and narrow interorbital distance. These features strongly suggest that Sivapithecus was a direct ancestor—or at least a very close relative—of modern orangutans.

In contrast, other Miocene apes such as Gigantopithecus blacki, the largest primate ever known, were distant cousins. Fossils of Gigantopithecus, discovered in China and Southeast Asia, show a massive ape up to three meters tall, likely related to orangutans but representing a side branch that went extinct around 300,000 years ago.

Today’s orangutans are the last survivors of a once-diverse Asian ape lineage. Their survival is precarious: deforestation, palm oil plantations, and hunting have driven populations into sharp decline. Where once their ancestors ranged across a continent, now only fragmented pockets of forest in Borneo and Sumatra hold these remarkable primates. 

TERTAPODS AND THE VERTEBRATE HAND

The irresistable tetrapod Tiktaalik

In the late 1930s, our understanding of the transition of fish to tetrapods — and the eventual jump to modern vertebrates — took an unexpected leap forward. 

The evolutionary a'ha came from a single partial fossil skull found on the shores of a riverbank in Eastern Canada. 

Meet the Stegocephalian, Elpistostege watsoni, an extinct genus of finned tetrapodomorphs that lived during the Late Givetian to Early Frasnian of the Late Devonian — 382 million years ago. 

Elpistostege watsoni — perhaps the sister taxon of all other tetrapods — was first described in 1938 by British palaeontologist and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Thomas Stanley Westoll. Westroll was an interesting fellow whose research interests were wide-ranging. He was a vertebrate palaeontologist and geologist best known for his innovative work on Palaeozoic fishes and their relationships with tetrapods. 

Elpistostege watsoni

As a specialist in early fish, Westoll was the perfect person to ask to interpret that single partial skull roof discovered at the Escuminac Formation in Quebec, Canada. 

His findings and subsequent publication named Elpistostege watsoni and helped us to better understand the evolution of fishes to tetrapods — four-limbed vertebrates — one of the most important transformations in vertebrate evolution. 

Hypotheses of tetrapod origins rely heavily on the anatomy of but a few tetrapod-like fish fossils from the Middle and Late Devonian, 393–359 million years ago. 

These taxa — known as elpistostegalians — include Panderichthys, Elpistostege and Tiktaalik — none of which had yet to reveal the complete skeletal anatomy of the pectoral fin. 

Elpistostege watsoni

None until 2010 that is, when a complete 1.57-metre-long articulated specimen was found and described by Richard Cloutier et al. in 2020. 

The specimen helped us to understand the origin of the vertebrate hand. Stripped from its encasing stone, it revealed a set of paired fins of Elpistostege containing bones homologous to the phalanges (finger bones) of modern tetrapods and is the most basal tetrapodomorph known to possess them. 

Once the phalanges were uncovered, prep work began on the fins. The fins were covered in wee scales and lepidotrichia (fin rays). The work was tiresome, taking more than 2,700 hours of preparation but the results were thrilling. 

Origin of the Vertebrate Hand

We could now clearly see that the skeleton of the pectoral fin has four proximodistal rows of radials — two of which include branched carpals — as well as two distal rows organized as digits and putative digits. 

Despite this skeletal pattern — which represents the most tetrapod-like arrangement of bones found in a pectoral fin to date blurring the line between fish and land vertebrates — the fin retained lepidotrichia (those wee fin rays) distal to the radials. 

This arrangement confirmed an age-old question — showing us for the first time that the origin of phalanges preceded the loss of fin rays, not the other way around.

E. watsoni is very closely related to Tiktaalik roseae found in 2004 in the Canadian Arctic — a tetrapodomorpha species also known as a Choanata. These were advanced forms transitional between fish and the early labyrinthodonts playfully referred to as fishapods — half-fish, half-tetrapod in appearance and limb morphology. 

Up to that point, the relationship of limbed vertebrates (tetrapods) to lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygians) was well known, but the origin of major tetrapod features remained obscure for lack of fossils that document the sequence of evolutionary changes — until Tiktaalik. While Tiktaalik is technically a fish, this fellow is as far from fish-like you can be and still be a card-carrying member of the group. 

Tiktaalik roseae

Complete with scales and gills, this proto-fish lacked the conical head we see in modern fish but had a rather flattened triangular head more like that of a crocodile. 

Tiktaalik had scales on its back and fins with fin webbing but like early land-living animals, it had a distinctive flat head and neck. He was a brawny brute. The shape of his skull and shoulder look part fish and part amphibian.

The watershed moment came as Tiktaalik was prepped. Inside Tiktaalik's fins, we find bones that correspond to the upper arm, forearm and even parts of the wrist — all inside a fin with webbing — remarkable! 

Its fins have thin ray bones for paddling like most fish, but with brawny interior bones that gave Tiktaalik the ability to prop itself up, using his limbs for support. I picture him propped up on one paddle saying, "how you doing?" 

Six years after Tiktaalik was discovered by Neil Shubin and team in the ice-covered tundra of the Canadian Arctic on southern Ellesmere Island, a team working the outcrops at Miguasha on the Gaspé Peninsula discovered the only fully specimen of E. watsoni found to date — greatly increasing our knowledge of this finned tantalizingly transitional tetrapodomorph. 

E. watsoni fossils are rare — this was the fourth specimen collected in over 130 years of hunting. Charmingly, the specimen was right on our doorstop — extracted but a few feet away from the main stairs descending onto the beach of Miguasha National Park. 

L'nu Mi’gmaq First Nations of the Gespe’gewa’gi Region

Miguasha is nestled in the Gaspésie or Gespe’gewa’gi region of Canada — home to the Mi’gmaq First Nations who self-refer as L’nu or Lnu. The word Mi’gmaq or Mi’kmaq means the family or my allies/friends in Mi'kmaw, their native tongue (and soon to be Nova Scotia's provincial first language). They are the people of the sea and the original inhabitants of Atlantic Canada having lived here for more than 10,000 years. 

The L'nu were the first First Nation people to establish contact and trade with European explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries — and perhaps the Norse as early as the turn of the Millenium. Sailing vessels filled with French, British, Scottish, Irish and others arrived one by one to lay claim to the region — settling and fighting over the land. As each group rolled out their machinations of discovery, tensions turned to an all-out war with the British and French going head to head. I'll spare you the sordid details but for everyone caught in the crossfire, it went poorly.

North America Map 1775 (Click to Enlarge)

Cut to 1760, the British tipped the balance with their win at the Battle of the Restigouche, the last naval battle between France and England for possession of the North American continent — Turtle Island. 

The bittersweet British victory sparked the American War of Independence. 

For the next twenty years, the L'nu would witness and become embroiled in yet another war for these lands, their lands — first as bystanders, then as American allies, then intimidated into submission by the British Royal Navy with a show of force by way of a thirty-four gun man-of-war, encouraging L'nu compliance — finally culminating in an end to the hostilities with the 1783 Treaty of Paris. 

The peace accord held no provisions for the L'nu, Métis and First Nations impacted. None of these newcomers was Mi'kmaq — neither friends nor allies.

It was to this area some sixty years later that the newly formed Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) began exploring and mapping the newly formed United Province of Canada. Geologists in the New Brunswick Geology Branch traipsed through the rugged countryside that would become a Canadian province in 1867. 

It was on one of these expeditions that the Miguasha fossil outcrops were discovered. They, too, would transform in time to become Miguasha National Park or Parc de Miguasha, but at first, they were simply the promising sedimentary exposures on the hillside across the water —  a treasure trove of  Late Devonian fauna waiting to be discovered.

In the summer of 1842, Abraham Gesner, New Brunswick’s first Provincial Geologist, crossed the northern part of the region exploring for coal. Well, mostly looking for coal. Gesner also had a keen eye for fossils and his trip to the Gaspé Peninsula came fast on the heels of a jaunt along the rocky beaches of Chignecto Bay at the head of the Bay of Fundy and home to the standing fossil trees of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. 

Passionate about geology and chemistry, he is perhaps most famous for his invention of the process to distil the combustible hydrocarbon kerosene from coal oil — a subject on which his long walks exploring a budding Canada gave him a great deal of time to consider. We have Gesner to thank for the modern petroleum industry. He filed many patents for clever ways to distil the soft tar-like coal or bitumen still in use today.

He was skilled in a broad range of scientific disciplines — being a geologist, palaeontologist, physician, chemist, anatomist and naturalist — a brass tacks geek to his core. Gesner explored the coal exposures and fossil outcrops across the famed area that witnessed the region become part of England and not France — and no longer L'nu.

Following the Restigouche River in New Brunswick through the Dalhousie region, Gesner navigated through the estuary to reach the southern coast of the Gaspé Peninsula into what would become the southeastern coast of Quebec to get a better look at the cliffs across the water. He was the first geologist to lay eyes on the Escuminac Formation and its fossils.

In his 1843 report to the Geologic Survey, he wrote, “I found the shore lined with a coarse conglomerate. Farther eastward the rocks are light blue sandstones and shales, containing the remains of vegetables. In these sandstone and shales, I found the remains of fish and a small species of tortoise with fossil foot-marks.”

We now know that this little tortoise was the famous Bothriolepis, an antiarch placoderm fish. It was also the first formal mention of the Miguasha fauna in our scientific literature. Despite the circulation of his report, Gesner’s discovery was all but ignored — the cliffs and their fossil bounty abandoned for decades to come. Geologists like Ells, Foord and Weston, and the research of Whiteaves and Dawson, would eventually follow in Gesner's footsteps.

North America Map 1866 (Click to Enlarge)

Over the past 180 years, this Devonian site has yielded a wonderfully diverse aquatic assemblage from the Age of Fishes — five of the six fossil fish groups associated with the Devonian including exceptionally well-preserved fossil specimens of the lobe-finned fishes. 

This is exciting as it is the lobe-finned fishes — the sarcopterygians — that gave rise to the first four-legged, air-breathing terrestrial vertebrates – the tetrapods. 

Fossil specimens from Miguasha include twenty species of lower vertebrates — anaspids, osteostra-cans, placoderms, acanthodians, actinopterygians and sarcopterygians — plus a limited invertebrate assemblage, along with terrestrial plants, scorpions and millipedes.

Originally interpreted as a freshwater lacustrine environment, recent paleontological, taphonomic, sedimentological and geochemical evidence corroborates a brackish estuarine setting — and definitely not the deep waters of the sea. This is important because the species that gave rise to our land-living animals began life in shallow streams and lakes. It tells us a bit about how our dear Elpistostege watsoni liked to live — preferring to lollygag in cool river waters where seawater mixed with fresh. Not fully freshwater, but a wee bit of salinity to add flavour.  

• Photos: Elpistostege watsoni (Westoll, 1938 ), Upper Devonian (Frasnian), Escuminac formation, Parc de Miguasha, Baie des Chaleurs, Gaspé, Québec, Canada. John Fam, VanPS
• Origin of the Vertebrate Hand Illustration, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2100-8
• Tiktaalik Illustration: By Obsidian Soul - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47401797

References & further reading:

• From Water to Land: https://www.miguasha.ca/mig-en/the_first_discoveries.php
• UNESCO Miguasha National Park: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/686/
• Office of L'nu Affairs: https://novascotia.ca/abor/aboriginal-people/
• Cloutier, R., Clement, A.M., Lee, M.S.Y. et al. Elpistostege and the origin of the vertebrate hand. Nature 579, 549–554 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2100-8
• Daeschler, E. B., Shubin, N. H. & Jenkins, F. A. Jr. A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan. Nature 440, 757–763 (2006).
• Shubin, Neil. Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion History of the Human Body.
• Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03972-8

FOSSIL HUNTRESS PALEONTOLOGY PODCAST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SMILODON NORTH OF THE 49TH PARALLEL

This fierce predator with the luxurious coat is Smilodon fatalis — a compact but robust killer that weighed in around 160 to 280 kg and was 1.5 - 2.2 metres long.

Smilodon is a genus of the extinct machairodont subfamily of the felids. It is one of the most famous prehistoric mammals and the best known saber-toothed cat. Although commonly known as the saber-toothed tiger, it was not closely related to the tiger or other modern cats.

Up until a few years ago, all the great fossil specimens of this apex predator were found south of us in the United States. That was until some interesting bones from Medicine Hat, Alberta got a second look.

A few years ago, a fossil specimen caught the eye of researcher Ashley Reynolds as she was rummaging through the collections at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. 

Back in the 1960s,  University of Toronto palaeontologist C.S. Churcher and his team had collected and donated more than 1,200 specimens from their many field seasons scouring the bluffs of the South Saskatchewan River near Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Churcher is a delightful storyteller and a palaeontologist with a keen eye. I had the very great pleasure of listening to many of his talks out at the University of British Columbia and a few Vancouver Paleontological Society meetings in the mid-2000s. 

"Rufus" was a thoroughly charming storyteller and shared many of his adventures from the field. 

He moved out to the West Coast for his retirement, first to Gabriola Island then to Victoria, but his keen love of the science kept him giving talks to enthralled listeners keen to hear about his survey of the Dakhleh Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt, geomorphology, stratigraphy, recent biology, Pleistocene and Holocene lithic cultures, insights learned from Neolithic Islamic pottery to Roman settlements.

The specimens he had collected had been roughly sorted but never examined in detail. Reynolds, who was researching the growth patterns and life histories of extinct cats saw a familiar-looking bone from an ancient cat's right front paw. That tiny paw bone had reached through time and was positively identified as Canada's first Smilodon.

These Apex Predators used their exceptionally long upper canine teeth to hunt large mammals. 

Isotopes preserved in the bones of S. fatalis in the La Brea Tar Pits in California tell us that they liked to dine on bison (Bison antiquus) and camels (Camelops) along with deer and tapirs. Smilodon is thought to have killed its prey by holding it still with its forelimbs and biting it. And that was quite the bite!

Their razor-sharp incisors were arranged in an arch. Once they bit down, the teeth would hold their prey still and stabilize it while the canine bite was delivered — and what a bite that was. They could open their mouths a full 120 degrees.

Smilodon died out at the same time that most North and South American megafauna disappeared, about 10,000 years ago. Its reliance on large animals has been proposed as the cause of its extinction, along with climate change and competition with other species. 

APEX HUNTER OF ITS TIME: ANKYLORHIZA

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rare treasures, these, for creatures of the sea. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A body in transition, yet already capable.

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

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

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

CERVUS CANADENSIS: MAGNIFICENT ELK

Nature awes me everyday. Quiet moments often shared solo or if lucky, with a good friend or one of the amazing animals that walk this Earth.

I was especially lucky to have many of them while staying in Banff, Alberta. 

A morning stroll became an epic moment shared with a herd of wild but nonplussed elk enjoying their breakfast.

There is something quietly magnificent about an elk moving through fresh snow — head lowered, breath curling into the cold air, long legs parting the white silence of a winter morning in Banff. It feels timeless. And in a way, it is.

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

Elk are members of the family Cervidae, a group that first appears in the fossil record during the Early Miocene, roughly 20 million years ago. These early deer were small, forest-dwelling creatures, lacking the impressive antlers we associate with their modern kin.

By the Late Miocene and into the Pliocene, cervids began to diversify in both form and habitat. Antlers — those seasonal crowns of bone — became more elaborate, evolving as tools of display and combat. 

The genus Cervus, which includes modern elk, appears later, with fossils known from Eurasia before spreading into North America via the Bering Land Bridge during the Pleistocene, likely within the last 2 million years.

Once here, elk flourished.

Pleistocene deposits across North America — from tar seeps like Rancho La Brea in California to river gravels and cave assemblages further north — preserve their bones alongside an Ice Age cast of giants: mammoths, mastodons, dire wolves and short-faced bears. 

Elk held their own in this formidable company, adaptable grazers and browsers able to navigate shifting climates and changing ecosystems.

In Canada, elk fossils are known from a number of Quaternary sites, including Alberta and the Yukon, where their remains speak to a long history on these lands. 

As the glaciers withdrew at the end of the last Ice Age, elk expanded into newly opened habitats, tracking the spread of grasslands and open forests.

What you are seeing in Banff today is the continuation of that story — a survivor of ice and upheaval, still moving with quiet purpose through a landscape shaped by deep time.

I've been lucky enough to get to spend some time in Banff, looking for fossils, as an artist and exploring nature in all its glory.  It was heartwarming to see Elk most every day there and snow multiple times a week—and all this in April and May!

QUENSTEDTOCERAS WITH PATHOLOGY

What you are seeing here is a protuberance extruding from the venter of Quenstedtoceras cf. leachi (Sowerby). It is a pathology in the shell from hosting immature bivalves that shared the seas with these Middle Jurassic, Upper Callovian, Lamberti zone fauna from the Volga River basin. 

The collecting site is the now inactive Dubki commercial clay quarry and brickyard near Saratov, Russia. 

The site has produced thousands of ammonite specimens. A good 1,100 of those ended up at the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City, South Dakota. 

Roughly 1,000 of those are Quenstedtoceras (Lamberticeras) lamberti and the other 100 are a mix of other species found in the same zone. These included Eboraciceras, Peltoceras, Kosmoceras, Grossouvria, Proriceras, Cadoceras and Rursiceras. 

What is especially interesting is the volume of specimens — 167 Quenstedtoceras (Lamberticeras) lamberti and 89 other species in the Black Hills collection — with healed predation injuries. It seems Quenstedtoceras (Lamberticeras) lamberti are the most common specimens found here and so not surprisingly the most common species found injured. 

Of the 1,000, 655 of the Quenstedtoceras (Lamberticeras) lamberti displayed some sort of deformation or growth on the shell or had grown in a tilted manner. 

Again, some of the Q. lamberti had small depressions in the centre likely due to a healed bite and hosting infestations of the immature bivalve Placunopsis and some Ostrea. 

The bivalves thrived on their accommodating hosts and the ammonites carried on, growing their shells right up and over their bivalve guests. 

This relationship led to some weird and deformities of their shells. They grow in, around, up and over nearly every surface of the shell and seem to have lived out their lives there. It must have gotten a bit unworkable for the ammonites, their shells becoming warped and unevenly weighted. 

Over time, both the flourishing bivalves and the ammonite shells growing up and over them produced some of the most interesting pathology specimens I have ever seen.    

In the photo here from Emil Black, you can see some of the distorted shapes of Quenstedtoceras sp. 

Look closely and you see a trochospiral or flattened appearance on one side while they are rounded on the other. 

All of these beauties hail from the Dubki Quarry near Saratov, Russia. The ammonites were collected in marl or clay used in brick making. The clay particles suggest a calm, deep marine environment. 

One of the lovely features of the preservation here is the amount of pyrite filling and replacement. It looks like these ammonites were buried in an oxygen-deficient environment. 

The ammonites were likely living higher in the water column, well above the oxygen-poor bottom. An isotopic study would be interesting to prove this hypothesis. 

There's certainly enough of these ammonites that have been recovered to make that possible. It's estimated that over a thousand specimens have been recovered from the site but that number is likely much higher. But these are not complete specimens. We mostly find the phragmocones and partial body chambers. Given the numbers, this may be a site documenting a mass spawning death over several years or generations.

If you fancy a read on all things cephie, consider picking up a copy of Cephalopods Present and Past: New Insights and Fresh Perspectives edited by Neil Landman and Richard Davis. Figure 16.2 is from page 348 of that publication and shows the hosting predation quite well. 

Photos: Courtesy of the deeply awesome Emil Black. These are in his personal collection that I hope to see in person one day. 

It was his sharing of the top photo and the strange anomaly that had me explore more about the fossils from Dubki and the weird and wonderful hosting relationship between ammonites and bivalves. Thank you, my friend!

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A HADROSAUR

Glorious Parasaurolophus art work by Daniel Eskridge

Morning mist curls along the banks of a wide, slow river. The air is heavy with the earthy scent of wet ferns and moss, tinged with the sweet tang of distant flowering trees. 

Sunlight filters through the canopy of towering conifers, catching the mist in golden rays that dance across the forest floor. 

In the dappled light, a herd of Edmontosaurus—duck-billed hadrosaurs—trundle slowly along the muddy bank. Their broad, flattened snouts graze the lush vegetation as they move, leaves crunching softly underfoot. 

Occasionally, one lifts its head, nostrils flaring as it senses the faint rustle of small mammals or the distant call of a Troodon hunting nearby. The low, resonant calls of the herd echo through the valley—a combination of hums, grunts, and whistling notes, a complex social language that signals alertness or contentment.

Around the herd, the world teems with life. Tiny lizards dart among fallen logs. Feathered dinosaurs like Caudipteryx flit through the branches, their wings rustling against the leaves. In the sky, pterosaurs wheel silently, shadowing the riverbanks, while fish occasionally leap from the water, disturbing the mirrored surface. 

A Tyrannosaurus stalks at a distance, its presence felt more than seen, tension rippling through the herd as they lift their heads in unison, scanning the forest edge. Yet for now, they continue to feed, grazing on conifers, ferns, and flowering plants, their broad dental batteries efficiently shearing tough plant material.

As the sun climbs higher, the herd’s rhythm shifts. Juveniles cluster together near the center of the group, protected by adults forming a loose perimeter. Mothers communicate constantly with low-frequency hums that travel through the ground, letting their young know it is safe to graze. Each hadrosaur maintains a personal space, yet the herd moves as a fluid unit, coordinated by sight, sound, and subtle gestures. 

Occasionally, two adults nuzzle briefly or bump heads—a gentle reinforcement of social bonds within the herd.

By midday, the river becomes a focal point. Hadrosaurs wade into shallow water, stirring the mud with their broad feet, creating a chorus of splashes and grunts. The water’s surface reflects the glittering canopy above, disturbed only by the occasional leap of fish or the landing of a pterosaur. 

Here, the herd drinks, cools down, and reorients itself to the sun’s angle. Younglings playfully chase each other through the shallows, their calls mingling with the rhythmic lapping of water. Predators lurk nearby, and the herd’s vigilance never wavers—any unusual sound or movement triggers a wave of alert postures, heads lifting in unison, tails flicking nervously.

As afternoon wanes, the herd moves toward forested areas, seeking shade. The scent of resin from conifers mingles with the damp earth, masking the smell of predators. The larger adults lead, while subadults and juveniles follow, practicing the complex patterns of herd movement they will rely on for survival. 

The subtle vibrational signals—footsteps, tail swishes, body shifts—help coordinate the group over distances that the eyes alone cannot manage. Within these social structures, older hadrosaurs seem to guide the young, showing where the most nutritious plants grow and signaling which areas are safe.

By evening, the forest becomes alive with nocturnal creatures. Crickets and insects add a constant hum to the air, while small mammals rustle in the underbrush. The herd settles in a sheltered clearing, forming protective clusters. 

Some adults lower themselves to rest, heads tucked under broad forelimbs, while juveniles huddle close, still vocalizing softly, practicing the calls they will use to communicate when they reach adulthood. 

The sounds of the night—rustling leaves, distant predator calls, and the gentle low-frequency hums of the hadrosaurs—create a layered, symphonic soundscape of life at the end of a Cretaceous day.

The world of hadrosaurs was far from solitary—their forests, riverbanks, and floodplains teemed with life, forming a complex and interconnected ecosystem. While the herd grazed, the air vibrated with the calls of feathered dinosaurs like Microraptor flitting between branches, occasionally diving to snatch insects from the foliage. Small mammals—ancestors of shrews and multituberculates—scuttled across the forest floor, their tiny claws stirring the moss and fallen leaves.

Predators lurked at every edge. Tyrannosaurus and Albertosaurus prowled open plains and forest margins, stalking both hadrosaurs and smaller herbivores. Juvenile hadrosaurs, particularly vulnerable, relied on the protective circle of adults, whose heads, tails, and bodies created a living barrier. Even crocodilians patrolled the rivers, their eyes breaking the water’s surface as they waited for an unwary hadrosaur to drink or bathe.

But the landscape was not only danger and vigilance. Insects buzzed among flowering angiosperms, pollinating as they fed, while dragonfly-like odonates skimmed over ponds and streams. Frogs croaked from the damp undergrowth, adding a pulsing rhythm to the daily soundscape. Trees, ferns, and cycads provided more than food; their dense canopies offered shelter from predators and sun, while fallen logs and leaf litter created microhabitats for countless invertebrates.

Seasonal changes added another layer of complexity. During rainy months, riverbanks became muddy feeding grounds, leaving tracks that we find and study today. 

In drier periods, herds migrated across plains and valleys, guided by the scent of water and fresh vegetation. The interplay of predators, prey, plants, and smaller animals created a dynamic, constantly shifting stage where survival depended on vigilance, cooperation, and adaptability.

Through fossil evidence—trackways, bone beds, and stomach content analysis—we can reconstruct this rich tapestry. Imagining the sensory richness: the smell of resin and damp soil, the low hum of a herd communicating, the distant roar of predators, and the flash of feathered wings overhead, gives life to a world that has been silent for 66 million years. 

In that world, hadrosaurs were central actors in a vibrant, thriving ecosystem. Hadrosaurs were not solitary wanderers but highly social beings, capable of complex communication, coordinated group behavior, and protective care of their young. 

The hadrosaurs you see in this post are Parasaurolophus — one of the last of the duckbills to roam the Earth and their great crests were the original trumpets. We now know that their bizarre head adornments help them produce a low B-Flat or Bb. This is the same B-Flat you hear wind ensembles tune to with the help of their tuba, horn or clarinet players.

I imagine them signaling to the troops with their trumpeting sound carried on the winds similar to the bugle-horn call of an elephant.

Imagining a day in their life—from morning grazing along rivers to evening rest in the forest—reveals the richness of their world, teeming with interactions and sensory experiences that echo across millions of years.

For those that love paleo art, check out the work of Daniel Eskridge (shared with permission here) to see more of his work and purchase some to bring into your world by visiting:https://daniel-eskridge.pixels.com/

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. 

WHEN GORGON 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.