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.

FOSSIL BEES, FIRST NATION HISTORY

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

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

My Norwegian cousins on my mother's side call them humle. Norway is a wonderful place to be something wild as the wild places have not been disturbed by our hands. Head out for a walk in the wild flowers and the sounds you will hear are the wind and the bees en masse amongst the flowers.   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We see the first bumblebees arise in the fossil record 100 million years ago and diversify alongside the earliest flowering plants. Their evolution is an entangled dance with the pollen and varied array of flowers that colour our world. 

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

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

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

THE LOST SEA BENEATH THE PYRAMIDS: TETHYS

Tethys Ocean

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZA: FOSSILS IN STONE

Built to endure the tests of time, the pyramids of Giza stand as some of the oldest and last remaining wonders of the ancient world. 

Rising from the desert sands of Egypt’s Giza Plateau, these monuments were constructed from a masterful blend of limestone, granite, basalt, gypsum mortar, and baked mud bricks—materials quarried both locally and from distant sites along the Nile, including the red granite of Aswan.

Their smooth, once-glimmering exteriors were clad in fine-grained white limestone quarried from Tura, just across the river. This stone was prized in antiquity for its purity and brilliant color, chosen for the facing stones of Egypt’s wealthiest tombs. 

But beyond its beauty lies a story much older than any pharaoh. The Tura limestone is made almost entirely of the fossilized shells of Nummulites—single-celled marine organisms whose remains whisper of Egypt’s ancient seas.

First described by Lamarck in 1801, Nummulites are large foraminifera—amoeba-like protists with calcareous, chambered shells (or “tests”). In life, they resembled tiny white discs, their interiors patterned like concentric rings of a sliced tree or the cross-section of a shell. 

During the early Cenozoic, millions of these creatures thrived in the warm, shallow waters of the Tethys Sea. When they died, their calcium carbonate shells settled to the seafloor, accumulating over millennia. Layer upon layer, they were compacted and cemented by time and pressure into limestone—the same rock later quarried to build the tombs of kings.

Nummulites Foraminifera Fossil

It is astonishing to imagine that the Great Pyramid of Khufu (or Cheops), the largest and oldest of the Giza pyramids, built during Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty around 2560 BCE, is composed largely of the fossilized remains of microscopic life forms that lived some 50 million years earlier. 

The pyramid itself—a monument to human ambition—is, quite literally, built from the remains of ancient seas.

Nummulites are commonly found in Eocene to Miocene marine rocks across southwest Asia and the Mediterranean region, including the fossil-rich Eocene limestones of Egypt. In life, they ranged in size from a mere 1.3 cm (0.5 inches) to an impressive 5 cm (2 inches), and in some Middle Eocene species, up to six inches across—astonishingly large for single-celled organisms. 

Their size reflects an evolutionary adaptation: by expanding their surface area, they enhanced diffusion, allowing for more efficient nutrient exchange across the cell membrane. Many also harbored symbiotic algae, much like modern reef-dwelling foraminifera, further fueling their growth through photosynthesis.

Nummulites Foraminifera Fossil

These fossils, once the inhabitants of the ancient Tethys, later became both material and metaphor for Egyptian civilization. Nummulite shells were sometimes used as coins, and their very name—derived from the Latin nummulus, meaning “little coin”—speaks to this connection between life, economy, and art.

The Great Pyramid’s inner chambers tell a different geological story. The central burial chamber housing the pharaoh’s sarcophagus was constructed from massive blocks of reddish-pink granite transported from Aswan, nearly 900 kilometers upriver. This stone, denser and stronger than limestone, helped support the immense weight of the pyramid’s structure.

In 2013, archaeologists made a discovery that breathed life back into these ancient logistics: a 4,600-year-old papyrus scroll found in a cave some 700 kilometers from Giza. 

The document—addressed to Ankh-haf, half-brother of Pharaoh Khufu—records the journey of a 200-man crew tasked with transporting limestone from the Tura quarries to the Giza Plateau. After loading the stone blocks onto boats, the workers sailed down the Nile, where as many as 100,000 laborers waited to haul the two- to three-ton blocks up earthen ramps toward the construction site. It is a rare and poetic glimpse into one of humanity’s most ambitious building projects—and into the transformation of fossil limestone into enduring architecture.

Even in antiquity, the project stirred strong opinions. Writing centuries later, the Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt and chronicled Khufu’s reign in his Histories. He described Khufu as a cruel tyrant who closed temples, oppressed his people, and forced them into servitude. According to Herodotus, 100,000 men labored in three-month rotations to quarry and transport the stone, while another decade was spent constructing the grand causeway leading to the pyramid—a feat of engineering almost as impressive as the monument itself.

Modern estimates suggest that 5.5 million tonnes of nummulitic limestone, 8,000 tonnes of granite, and 500,000 tonnes of gypsum mortar were used to complete the Great Pyramid. Whether viewed as an act of divine devotion, human hubris, or cruel genius, its creation also represents one of the largest—and most extraordinary—paleontological extractions in history.

For within its weathered stones, the fossils of an ancient sea still rest, silent witnesses to both deep time and the enduring reach of human imagination.

FOSSILS AND FIRST NATIONS HISTORY: NOOTKA

Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam

The rugged west coast of Vancouver Island offers spectacular views of a wild British Columbia. Here the seas heave along the shores slowly eroding the magnificent deposits that often contain fossils. 

Just off the shores of Vancouver Island, east of Gold River and south of Tahsis is the picturesque and remote Nootka Island.

This is the land of the proud and thriving Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations who have lived here always. 

Always is a long time, but we know from oral history and archaeological evidence that the Mowachaht and Muchalaht peoples lived here, along with many others, for many thousands of years — a time span much like always. 

While we know this area as Nootka Sound and the land we explore for fossils as Nootka Island, these names stem from a wee misunderstanding. 

Just four years after the 1774 visit by Spanish explorer Juan Pérez — and only a year before the Spanish established a military and fur trading post on the site of Yuquot — the Nuu-chah-nulth met the Englishman, James Cook.  

Captain Cook sailed to the village of Yuquot just west of Vancouver Island to a very warm welcome. He and his crew stayed on for a month of storytelling, trading and ship repairs. Friendly, but not familiar with the local language, he misunderstood the name for both the people and land to be Nootka. In actual fact, Nootka means, go around, go around. 

Two hundred years later, in 1978, the Nuu-chah-nulth chose the collective term Nuu-chah-nulth — nuučaan̓uł, meaning all along the mountains and sea or along the outside (of Vancouver Island) — to describe themselves. 

It is a term now used to describe several First Nations people living along western Vancouver Island, British Columbia. 

It is similar in a way to the use of the United Kingdom to refer to the lands of England, Scotland and Wales — though using United Kingdom-ers would be odd. Bless the Nuu-chah-nulth for their grace in choosing this collective name.  

An older term for this group of peoples was Aht, which means people in their language and is a component in all the names of their subgroups, and of some locations — Yuquot, Mowachaht, Kyuquot, Opitsaht. While collectively, they are the Nuu-chah-nulth, be interested in their more regional name should you meet them. 

But why does it matter? If you have ever mistakenly referred to someone from New Zealand as an Aussie or someone from Scotland as English, you have likely been schooled by an immediate — sometimes forceful, sometimes gracious — correction of your ways. The best answer to why it matters is because it matters.

Each of the subgroups of the Nuu-chah-nulth viewed their lands and seasonal migration within them (though not outside of them) from a viewpoint of inside and outside. Kla'a or outside is the term for their coastal environment and hilstis for their inside or inland environment.

It is to their kla'a that I was most keen to explore. Here, the lovely Late Eocene and Early Miocene exposures offer up fossil crab, mostly the species Raninid, along with fossil gastropods, bivalves, pine cones and spectacularly — a singular seed pod. These wonderfully preserved specimens are found in concretion along the foreshore where time and tide erode them out each year.

Five years after Spanish explorer Juan Pérez's first visit, the Spanish built and maintained a military post at Yuquot where they tore down the local houses to build their own structures and set up what would become a significant fur trade port for the Northwest Coast — with the local Chief Maquinna's blessing and his warriors acting as middlemen to other First Nations. 

Following reports of Cook's exploration British traders began to use the harbour of Nootka (Friendly Cove) as a base for a promising trade with China in sea-otter pelts but became embroiled with the Spanish who claimed (albeit erroneously) sovereignty over the Pacific Ocean. 

Dan Bowen searching an outcrop. Photo: John Fam

The ensuing Nootka Incident of 1790 nearly led to war between Britain and Spain (over lands neither could actually claim) but talk of war settled and the dispute was settled diplomatically. 

George Vancouver on his subsequent exploration in 1792 circumnavigated the island and charted much of the coastline. His meeting with the Spanish captain Bodega y Quadra at Nootka was friendly but did not accomplish the expected formal ceding of land by the Spanish to the British. 

It resulted however in his vain naming the island "Vancouver and Quadra." The Spanish captain's name was later dropped and given to the island on the east side of Discovery Strait. Again, another vain and unearned title that persists to this day.

Early settlement of the island was carried out mainly under the sponsorship of the Hudson's Bay Company whose lease from the Crown amounted to 7 shillings per year — that's roughly equal to £100.00 or $174 CDN today. Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, was founded in 1843 as Fort Victoria on the southern end of Vancouver Island by the Hudson's Bay Company's Chief Factor, Sir James Douglas. 

With Douglas's help, the Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Rupert on the north end of Vancouver Island in 1849. Both became centres of fur trade and trade between First Nations and solidified the Hudson's Bay Company's trading monopoly in the Pacific Northwest.

The settlement of Fort Victoria on the southern tip of Vancouver Island — handily south of the 49th parallel — greatly aided British negotiators to retain all of the islands when a line was finally set to mark the northern boundary of the United States with the signing of the Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846. Vancouver Island became a separate British colony in 1858. British Columbia, exclusive of the island, was made a colony in 1858 and in 1866 the two colonies were joined into one — becoming a province of Canada in 1871 with Victoria as the capital.

Dan Bowen, Chair of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS) did a truly splendid talk on the Fossils of Nootka Sound. With his permission, I have uploaded the talk to the ARCHEA YouTube Channel for all to enjoy. Do take a boo, he is a great presenter. Dan also graciously provided the photos you see here. The last of the photos you see here is from the August 2021 Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam, Vice-Chair, Vancouver Paleontological Society (VanPS).

Know Before You Go — Nootka Trail

The Nootka Trail passes through the traditional lands of the Mowachaht/Muchalat First Nations who have lived here since always. They share this area with humpback and Gray whales, orcas, seals, sea lions, black bears, wolves, cougars, eagles, ravens, sea birds, river otters, insects and the many colourful intertidal creatures that you'll want to photograph.

This is a remote West Coast wilderness experience. Getting to Nootka Island requires some planning as you'll need to take a seaplane or water taxi to reach the trailhead. The trail takes 4-8 days to cover the 37 km year-round hike. The peak season is July to September. Permits are not required for the hike. 

Access via: Air Nootka floatplane, water taxi, or MV Uchuck III

• Dan Bowen, VIPS on the Fossils of Nootka: https://youtu.be/rsewBFztxSY
• https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-james-douglas
• file:///C:/Users/tosca/Downloads/186162-Article%20Text-199217-1-10-20151106.pdf
• Nootka Trip Planning: https://mbguiding.ca/nootka-trail-nootka-island/#overview

PRETTY IN PINK: FLAMINGOS

At ungodly-o’clock in the morning, while the rest of us are still grumbling into our pillows, European flamingos are out there looking like someone spilled a sunrise into the Mediterranean. 

Pale peach, rose, and full-on “salmon mousse,” these birds glide across mirror-flat lagoons on legs that appear to have been stolen from a straw factory.

Their down-curved bills are evolutionary multi-tools — built not for glamour, but for vacuuming up brine shrimp and algae with the intensity of someone cleaning nacho dust out of a keyboard. It’s not chic, but it works, and in science points, it’s a 10/10.

But here’s the kicker: Phoenicopterus roseus isn’t just a pretty face in a wetland spa. It’s the last surviving branch of a lineage forged way back — we’re talking more than 30 million years, mid-Eocene hangover era, when Europe had giant lakes, strange mammals, and nobody worrying about the price of olive oil.

The flamingo story starts with Palaelodus — the awkward teen phase of flamingo evolution. Imagine a tall bird, very leggy, somewhat unsure of its angles, but tragically lacking the extreme bendy straw beak we now know and love. Fossils in France, Germany, and North America show it poking around ancient alkaline lakes like a bird who had not yet received the memo about being fabulous.

Then came the Miocene (aka the “Let’s Try Flamingos For Real” chapter). Suddenly, ancient Spain, Italy, Hungary, and Greece are full of lakebeds stuffed with flamingo bones and trackways. Flamingo highways! Flamingo stomping grounds! Flamingos everywhere! 

And honestly — they looked more or less like the modern ones, suggesting evolution took one glance and said: “Perfect. Don’t change a thing.”

For years, scientists tried to figure out who flamingos were related to. Were they storks? Herons? Ducks? Feathered mystery cryptids? At one point the evolutionary family tree was basically a messy group chat. 

Then genetics swooped in and declared flamingos and grebes — yes, the chunky diving birds — as siblings in a clade called Mirandornithes. 

One is a pink runway model, the other is a potato with scuba certification, but the ancestry checks out.

Modern flamingos have claimed the best real estate the Mediterranean can offer: the Camargue, Doñana, Sicily, Sardinia, Turkey’s salt pans, and the lagoons of North Africa. Their blushing pink comes from carotenoid pigments in their food, proving once and for all that you literally are what you eat — even if what you eat is tiny shrimp smoothies.

Their mud-tower nests are a direct callback to their Miocene ancestors, preserved not just in rock but in behaviour, which is basically evolution’s way of saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t reinvent the flamingo.”

So the next time you see a flock drifting across a salt lagoon like pastel confetti on stilts, remember you’re looking at one of evolution’s longest-running success stories. Flamingos nailed their niche early, kept the receipts, and have been slaying the alkaline wetlands scene ever since.

Thirty million years. Zero design revisions. Pink forever. Epic and awesome. Bless them!

HUNTERS OF PANTHALASSAN SEAS: SHONISAURUS

Shonisaurus sikanni / Sikanni Chief River

More than 200 million years ago, when the supercontinent Pangaea was still knitting the world together, a leviathan moved through the warm Panthalassan seas that covered what is now northeastern British Columbia. 

Shonisaurus sikanniensis was colossal. At an estimated 21 metres (about 70 feet) in length, it rivals or exceeds the largest whales alive today. 

This was no scaly sea dragon but an ichthyosaur: a dolphin-shaped marine reptile with immense paddle-like limbs, a long, tapering snout, and eyes built for the dim light of deep water. 

Its vertebrae alone are the size of dinner plates. When it swam, it would have moved with powerful sweeps of its crescent tail, master of a Late Triassic ocean teeming with ammonites and early marine reptiles.

The type specimen of Shonisaurus sikanniensis was discovered along the banks of the Sikanni Chief River and painstakingly excavated over three ambitious field seasons led by Dr. Betsy Nicholls of the Royal Tyrrell Museum. 

A Rolex Laureate and one of Canada’s most respected vertebrate palaeontologists, Dr. Nicholls undertook what remains one of the most formidable fossil excavations ever attempted in this country. 

The animal lay entombed in limestone, and freeing it required extraordinary logistics, teamwork, and resolve over many field seasons.  

That immense skeleton — the largest marine reptile ever described — reshaped our understanding of just how big ichthyosaurs could become.

Many dedicated researchers have contributed to expanding the story of Shonisaurus and its kin. Scholars such as Dean Lomax and Sven Sachs, among others, continue to refine our understanding of ichthyosaur anatomy, growth patterns, and evolutionary relationships. 

Recent work on giant ichthyosaurs from the Triassic of Europe and North America suggests that extreme body size evolved rapidly after the end-Permian mass extinction. New discoveries of enormous jaw fragments and vertebrae hint that multiple lineages independently pushed the limits of marine reptile gigantism. 

These animals were likely deep-diving specialists, feeding on abundant soft-bodied cephalopods and fish, filling ecological roles that whales would not occupy for another 150 million years.

The Sikanni Chief River flows through the traditional territory of the Kaska Dena, whose stewardship of these lands spans countless generations. Any scientific work in this region exists within that broader and much older human story, and it is important to acknowledge the enduring relationship between the land, the river, and the people who know it best.

Today, the bones of Shonisaurus sikanniensis rest in Alberta, but its story stretches far beyond a museum gallery. It is a tale of deep time, bold fieldwork, collaboration across continents, and the simple human wonder that arises when we uncover something vast and ancient from stone. 

From the warm Triassic seas to the careful hands of modern researchers, the story of Shonisaurus reminds us that our planet has always been capable of producing giants — and that with patience, teamwork, and curiosity, we can bring their stories joyfully back into the light.

MEET THE NIGER RIVER'S TOP PREDATOR: SUCHOMINUS

Here is a fellow to strike terror into your heart. 

Meet Suchomimus tenerensis, a large, long-snouted spinosaurid theropod who prowled what is now Niger during the Early Cretaceous, roughly 125 million years ago. 

If you imagine a T. rex that fell headfirst into a river ecosystem and decided fish were the future, you’re getting close. 

This was no blunt-faced bone-crusher. Suchomimus had a narrow, crocodile-like snout lined with over a hundred slender, conical teeth perfectly suited for gripping slippery prey.

The fossils come primarily from the Elrhaz Formation in the Ténéré Desert of the Sahara. Today, it is an expanse of sand and heat shimmer. In the Early Cretaceous, it was a lush floodplain threaded with rivers, swamps, and seasonal lakes. Think mangroves, ferns, and conifers rather than dunes. It was discovered in the 1990s by a team led by Paul Sereno, and its name fittingly means “crocodile mimic.”

Suchomimus shared this watery paradise with a lively cast of characters. The sail-backed Ouranosaurus browsed on vegetation nearby. 

The stocky, heavily armored Nigersaurus grazed low-growing plants with its astonishing vacuum-cleaner jaw. Small, nimble theropods darted through the undergrowth. And lurking in the water were giant crocodyliforms like Sarcosuchus imperator, the so-called “SuperCroc,” who could grow over 11 metres long. Imagine the tension at the riverbank. You go fishing and something bigger than your canoe is watching you fish.

Diet-wise, Suchomimus was likely a specialized piscivore, meaning fish were firmly on the menu. Its long jaws, studded with conical teeth and a subtle rosette at the tip, were built for snapping shut on struggling prey. The teeth lack the serrations you see in typical meat-slicing theropods, suggesting it wasn’t primarily designed for tearing chunks from large dinosaurs. 

That said, it was still a 10–11 metre predator with powerful forelimbs and a thumb claw that could make an impression. Fish may have been the specialty, but opportunism is practically a dinosaur hobby. Small terrestrial prey would not have been safe if they wandered too close.

Hunting probably involved a patient, semi-aquatic strategy. Its long snout allowed it to dip into shallow water with minimal disturbance, and the conical teeth helped trap wriggling fish. 

Some spinosaurids show evidence of sensory pits in their snouts, similar to modern crocodilians, suggesting they could detect movement in water. While direct evidence for this in Suchomimus is still debated, the resemblance is striking enough to make you wonder whether it had a similar trick up its sleeve. Or, more accurately, up its snout.

Unlike its later and more extreme cousin Spinosaurus, Suchomimus does not appear to have had a towering sail. Instead, it sported a low ridge of elongated neural spines along its back, perhaps forming a modest hump or ridge. Stylish, but not showy. Think understated riverbank chic.

One of the fun quirks of Suchomimus is its place in the spinosaurid family tree. It sits in the Baryonychinae, closely related to Baryonyx from England. Yes, England. So while one cousin stalked Early Cretaceous river systems in what is now West Africa, another was doing much the same in Surrey. Spinosaurids, it seems, were cosmopolitan anglers.

And then there are those arms. Strong, well-developed forelimbs with large claws, including a prominent thumb claw, suggest it could grapple with prey or perhaps haul itself along muddy banks. It was not the tiny-armed stereotype of later theropods. 

If Suchomimus reached out to grab something, it likely succeeded.

In the fossil record, Suchomimus helps us understand the early evolution of spinosaurids before they became even more specialized. It represents a moment when dinosaurs were experimenting with ecological niches beyond the classic terrestrial predator role. River margins were not just crocodile territory. They were contested real estate.

So picture it: 125 million years ago, on a warm Cretaceous floodplain in what is now the Sahara, a long-snouted predator stands at the water’s edge. 

Fish scatter beneath the surface. A distant Ouranosaurus snorts. Somewhere, a SuperCroc slides silently into the river. 

And Suchomimus waits, patient and perfectly adapted, the elegant angler of the dinosaur world.

Not every theropod needed to rule the land. Some were quite happy ruling the river.

ARMADILLOS: NATURE'S TINY TANK

Armadillos, part tank, part roly-poly

If you’ve ever seen an armadillo, you know they look like something straight out of a prehistoric cartoon—part mouse, part tank, part roly-poly. 

I saw my first of these tiny tanks while in Mexico and was instantly entranced!

These fascinating creatures didn’t just roll into the scene yesterday; their ancestors have been roaming Earth for tens of millions of years! 

Let’s dig into the story of armadillos, from fossil giants to today’s armor-clad adventurers.

Armadillos belong to a family of mammals called Xenarthrans, which includes sloths and anteaters. 

Their ancient relatives first show up in the fossil record around 60 million years ago, not long after the dinosaurs vanished.

Back then, South America was an isolated continent—like a giant tropical island—and it became the perfect place for armadillos’ ancestors to evolve. 

One of the most impressive was the Glyptodon, a prehistoric giant that lived about 2.5 million years ago during the Ice Age. Picture an armadillo the size of a small car, with a bony shell thick enough to deflect the bite of a sabre-toothed cat! Glyptodons even had spiked tails, a bit like medieval maces.

When the Panama land bridge formed about 3 million years ago, armadillos and their relatives marched north into North America. 

That’s why today you can find their descendants, like the Nine-Banded Armadillo, as far north as the southern United States—and they’re still creeping slowly farther north each year.

Today, there are 21 species of armadillos, most living in Central and South America. 

The Nine-Banded Armadillo is the most widespread and is famous for its habit of jumping straight up when startled—sometimes up to 1.5 metres into the air! (It’s a funny trick, though not always helpful when cars are involved.)

Armadillos live in grasslands, rainforests, deserts, and scrublands, where they dig burrows to sleep during the day and come out at night to hunt for food. 

Their name comes from Spanish and means “little armoured one”—a perfect fit for their bony shell made of osteoderms, plates of bone covered by keratin (the same stuff in your fingernails).

Armadillos are expert insect-hunters. They use their super-sensitive noses and long, sticky tongues to sniff out and slurp up ants, termites, beetles, and grubs. Some species also eat fruit, small amphibians, and even carrion (dead animals). Their clawed forefeet are perfect for digging through soil, logs, and leaf litter to find a crunchy snack.

And get this—armadillos can hold their breath for up to six minutes and even walk underwater across small streams in search of food. When they reach deeper water, they just inflate their stomach and intestines like balloons and float across!

Baby Armadillos and Family Life — Armadillo families are just as curious as their armour. Most species give birth once a year, after a long nap-like period called delayed implantation, where the fertilised egg just hangs out for months before growing into an embryo.

The Nine-Banded Armadillo is especially famous for giving birth to identical quadruplets—four baby armadillos from one egg, each a perfect genetic copy of the others! The babies, called pups, are born with soft, pink shells that harden as they grow. Mothers care for them in cozy burrows until they’re ready to explore on their own.

Cool Armadillo Facts — 

• Armadillos can roll into a ball—well, some can! Only the Three-Banded Armadillo can fully curl up and seal itself tight like a living pinball.
• Their low body temperature and slow metabolism make them less likely to get sick, but they can catch diseases like leprosy (which scientists study carefully—don’t worry, they’re not spreading it around your backyard).
• Armadillos are important for ecosystems: their digging helps aerate soil and spread plant seeds.
• Fossils of ancient armadillos have been found across both Americas, showing how they survived massive climate changes, Ice Ages, and the rise of humans.

From Fossils to Forests — From the car-sized Glyptodon to the jumpy Nine-Banded Armadillo, these armoured mammals have been Earth’s quiet diggers for millions of years. 

They’ve crossed continents, survived predators, and evolved into some of the most unique animals alive today. If you happen to be lucky enough to see an armadillo waddling beside the road or across a field—or just a photo of one—you’re looking at the tiny descendant of an Ice Age tank. 

And that’s one seriously cool survivor.

TEMNODONTOSAURUS CRASSIMANUS

Temnodontosaurus crassimanus

Meet Temnodontosaurus crassimanus — the sea monster that looked like someone asked nature to weld a dolphin to a speed-boat and then crank the dial to “chaos.” 

This big Jurassic unit was patrolling the ancient oceans some 180 million years ago, back when Britain was less tea-and-crumpets and more sharks, ammonites, and unsupervised evolutionary experimentation.

Our lad here carries a rather posh pedigree. Temnodontosaurus crassimanus was first named by none other than Sir Richard “Coined-the-Word-Dinosaur” Owen — the Victorian gentleman naturalist, master of self-promotion, and inaugural superintendent of what would become the Natural History Museum in London. 

Owen had a long habit of tussling with ideas and people (poor Darwin), but to his credit, the man knew a good fossil when he saw one. And this brute was a standout.

Fast-forward a century and a bit and the ever-industrious Dean Lomax (palaeontologist, author, and Yorkshire’s own fossil whisperer) rolled up to study this celebrity specimen as part of his research leading into his PhD. When future palaeontologists write the social history of ichthyosaur fandom, Lomax will certainly get his own chapter. He's a boy about town in a vocation filled with dusty fossil filled cases and muddy field work.

So, is Temnodontosaurus crassimanus a big deal? Yeppers. The Yorkshire specimen isn’t just a Temnodontosaurus. He’s the Temnodontosaurus. The Type Specimen. The gold standard. The reference fossil. The one all wannabes must measure up to before they earn the name. If ichthyosaur taxonomy were a Regency romance, this fellow is the Duke of Diagnostic Features. Everyone else gets compared to him.

He lives today in respectable comfort at the Yorkshire Museum, a stately resident amid ammonites, plesiosaurs, and other Jurassic goodies. 

But his road to fame was… inelegant.

Back in 1857, workmen quarrying alum shale near Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast started turning up chunks of gigantic reptile bones. No one blinked an eye at digging giant holes into cliffs (Victorian industry was chaos incarnate), but thirty-foot prehistoric reptiles were another matter. 

Word got passed up the chain of command, and eventually Sir Richard Owen himself was summoned, presumably with much whisker-stroking and Latin.

Recovering the fossil was a scene straight out of an industrial novel. More than fifty slabs. Massive shale blocks. Quarry operations thundering around. Men shouting. Someone trying not to drop a vertebra the size of a teapot. 

All while alum production hummed away — an industry that had made Yorkshire indispensable to the textile world since the 1500s. Synthetic chemistry ultimately doomed the trade; by the 1860s it was sputtering, and by 1871 it was gone entirely. But in those twilight years, the alum quarries gifted paleontology an eight-metre aquatic missile — one of the largest ichthyosaurs ever discovered in the UK.

Not a bad parting present, really.

Today we look at Temnodontosaurus and think sleek marine super-predator — a creature built for speed, crushing jaws, and a diet that likely included belemnites, fish, and anything else foolish enough to loom into view. 

But in the early 1800s, these beasts were still rewriting natural history. Mary Anning’s discoveries at Lyme Regis had upended old ideas, and ichthyosaurs became one of the first fossil groups to teach Victorian Britain that extinction was real and the Earth had been home to worlds utterly unlike our own.

So, should you happen by the museum to take a gander at that big Yorkshire slab of Jurassic muscle, give him a little nod. He survived catastrophic oceans, industrial quarrying, and the politics of Victorian science — and still looks fabulous for it.

Paleo-coordinates: 54.5° N, 0.6° W: paleocoordinates 42.4° N, 9.3° E

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

Titanites occidentalis, Fernie Ammonite

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fernie, British Columbia, Canada

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Journey Up Coal Mountain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOSSIL DOLPHIN VERTEBRAE FROM THE NORTH SEA

Dolphin Fossil Vertebrae

Pulled from the cold, turbid bottom of the North Sea, a fossil dolphin vertebra is a small but eloquent survivor of a very different ocean. 

Today, the North Sea is shallow, busy, and heavily worked by trawlers, dredges, and offshore infrastructure. Beneath that modern churn lies a remarkable archive of Cenozoic life, quietly releasing its fossils when nets and dredges scrape sediments that have not seen daylight for millions of years.

Fossil cetacean bones—vertebrae, ribs, mandibles, and the occasional ear bone—are among the most evocative finds recovered from the seafloor. 

Dolphin vertebrae are especially common compared to skulls, as their dense, spool-shaped centra survive transport and burial better than more delicate skeletal elements. 

These fossils are typically dark brown to black, stained by long exposure to iron-rich sediments and phosphates, and often bear the polished surfaces and rounded edges that speak to a history of reworking by currents before final burial.

The North Sea is famous for yielding a mixed assemblage of fossils spanning multiple ice ages and interglacial periods, but many marine mammal remains originate from Miocene deposits, roughly 23 to 5 million years old. During the Miocene, this region was not the marginal, shallow sea we know today. It formed part of a broad, warm to temperate epicontinental sea connected to the Atlantic, rich in plankton, fish, sharks, and early whales and dolphins. 

This was a critical chapter in cetacean evolution, when modern groups of toothed whales, including early delphinids and their close relatives, were diversifying and refining the echolocation-based hunting strategies that define dolphins today.

Most North Sea cetacean fossils are found accidentally rather than through targeted excavation. Commercial fishing trawls, aggregate dredging for sand and gravel, and construction linked to wind farms and pipelines routinely disturb Miocene and Pliocene sediments. 

Fossils are hauled up tangled in nets or mixed with shell hash and glacial debris, often far from their original point of burial. As a result, precise stratigraphic context is usually lost, and age estimates rely on sediment still adhering to the bone, associated microfossils, or comparison with well-dated onshore Miocene marine deposits in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and eastern England.

A dolphin vertebra from this setting tells a story of both life and loss. In life, it was part of a flexible, powerful spine built for speed and agility, driving rapid tail beats through warm Miocene waters. 

After death, the carcass likely sank to the seafloor, where scavengers stripped it and currents scattered the bones. Over time, burial in sand and silt allowed mineral-rich waters to replace organic material with stone, locking the bone into the geological record. 

Much later, Ice Age glaciers reshaped the seafloor, reworking older sediments and concentrating fossils into lag deposits that modern dredges now disturb.

Though often found in isolation, these vertebrae are scientifically valuable. They confirm the long presence of dolphins in northern European seas and help refine our understanding of Miocene marine ecosystems, biogeography, and climate.