CAMBRIAN CROWN: THE SPINED ELEGANCE OF ORGMASPIS

This calcified beauty is Orygmaspis (Parabolinoides) spinula (Westrop, 1986), an Upper Cambrian trilobite recovered from the McKay Group near Tanglefoot Mountain in the Kootenay Rockies—one of those quietly extraordinary places where deep time peeks through in layered stone.

A member of the Order Asaphida, Orygmaspis carries the elegant geometry so characteristic of its kin: an inverted, egg-shaped outline, a broad and gently arched cephalon, modestly sized eyes, and a thorax adorned with a procession of finely spined segments. 

Twelve thoracic segments form its articulated middle, each bearing spines that lengthen progressively toward the ninth before tapering again—a subtle rhythm of form that feels almost architectural in its precision.

Asaphids themselves tell a longer, more dramatic story. Emerging in the Cambrian and flourishing into the Ordovician, they diversified into six superfamilies—Anomocaroidea, Asaphoidea, Cyclopygoidea, Dikelocephaloidea, Remopleuridoidea and Trinucleioidea—each experimenting with variations on a successful marine design. 

Some evolved remarkable visual adaptations, including the long-stalked eyes of Asaphus kowalewskii, which would have lifted their gaze above the seafloor haze, scanning for both prey and peril in the shifting Ordovician seas.

By the close of the Ordovician, a great extinction event swept away five of these six lineages, claiming roughly 60% of marine life. Only the resilient Trinucleioidea persisted, carrying the torch a little further into the Silurian before another global upheaval drew the final curtain on the Asaphida (Fortey & Chatterton, 1988).

Returning to our Kootenay traveller, the cephalon of Orygmaspis is parabolic, less than twice as wide as long, with a well-defined glabella—the central raised axis—measuring roughly three-quarters as wide as it is long. Its surface is modestly convex, tapering forward with faint lateral furrows and a clearly expressed occipital ring marking the posterior boundary. The preglabellar field is short, about a quarter the length of the glabella, giving the headshield a compact, purposeful look.

The eyes, small but well placed, sit between the anterior and mid-length of the glabella, positioned about one-third of the way out from the axis. Surrounding cheeks—the fixigenae and librigenae—are relatively flat, divided by facial sutures that trace an elegant path: diverging just before the eyes, running parallel near the border, then sweeping inward again in a graceful convergence. 

Behind the eyes, these sutures arc outward and back at roughly 45°, cutting the posterior margin in classic opisthoparian fashion.

At the rear, a diminutive pygidium—just a third the width of the cephalon—completes the form. It is twice as wide as long, with a central axis composed of up to four rings that nearly reach the margin. The pleural fields are gently expressed, their segmentation subdued, while the posterior edge carries three to four pairs of spines, each diminishing toward the rear like the final notes of a fading refrain.

Altogether, Orygmaspis spinula is a study in balance—armoured, yes, but refined. A small, spined voyager from Cambrian seas, preserved in stone and beautifully calcified yet still whispering of movement, adaptation, and survival in a world more than half a billion years removed from our own.

The fingers you see holding this specimen are those of the deeply awesome Chris Jenkins. If you're reading this, Chris, I owe you a visit!

SEAGULLS: T'SIK'WI

A gull cries in protest at not getting his share of a meal

Many of us have the good fortune to live near the sea. It is one of the places I seek out to reset my energy and soak up the atmosphere.

I love the feeling of the wind on my face as I take my best-loved path down towards the water —the sand and shells under my feet.

In those moments, the foreshore is alive with the harsh, laughing cries of seagulls, their calls slicing through the steady hush of the tide. 

Wings flash white in the sunlight as they wheel and dive, squabbling over scraps, webbed feet slapping wet sand with a slap-slap before they lift again. The air is thick with the briny tang of seaweed and salt, mingled with the faint sourness of rotting kelp and shells cracked open by the tide. 

Each wave leaves behind a shining film on the rocks, and the gulls pick and probe at it with sharp yellow beaks, clattering and clucking in between their shrieks. The smell of the ocean mixes with the dry, feathery musk of the birds themselves, grounding the scene in a rhythm as ancient as the sea. This is the domain of the seagulls who call these shores home. 

Gulls, or colloquially seagulls, are seabirds of the family Laridae in the suborder Lari. The Laridae are known from not-yet-published fossil evidence from the Early Oligocene — 30–33 million years ago. 

Three gull-like species were described by Alphonse Milne-Edwards from the early Miocene of Saint-Gérand-le-Puy, France. 

Another fossil gull from the Middle to Late Miocene of Cherry County, Nebraska, USA, has been placed in the prehistoric genus Gaviota. 

These fossil gulls, along with undescribed Early Oligocene fossils are all tentatively assigned to the modern genus Larus. Among those of them that have been confirmed as gulls, Milne-Edwards' "Larus" elegans and "L." totanoides from the Late Oligocene/Early Miocene of southeast France have since been separated in Laricola.

Gulls are most closely related to the terns in the family Sternidae and only distantly related to auks, skimmers and distantly to waders. 

A historical name for gulls is mews, which is cognate with the German möwe, Danish måge, Swedish mås, Dutch meeuw, Norwegian måke/måse and French mouette. We still see mews blended into the lexicon of some regional dialects.

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, gulls are known as t̕sik̕wi. Most folk refer to gulls from any number of species as seagulls. This name is a local custom and does not exist in the scientific literature for their official naming. Even so, it is highly probable that it was the name you learned for them growing up.

If you have been to a coastal area nearly everywhere on the planet, you have likely encountered gulls. They are the elegantly plumed but rather noisy bunch on any beach. You will recognize them both by their size and colouring. 

Gulls are typically medium to large birds, usually grey or white, often with black markings on the head or wings. 

They typically have harsh shrill cries and long, yellow, curved bills. Their webbed feet are perfect for navigating the uneven landscape of the foreshore when they take most of their meals. 

Most gulls are ground-nesting carnivores that take live food or scavenge opportunistically, particularly the Larus species. 

Food often includes crab, clams (which they pick up, fly high and drop to crack open), fish and small birds. Gulls have unhinging jaws which allow them to consume large prey which they do with gusto. 

Their preference is to generally live along the bountiful coastal regions where they can find food with relative ease. Some prefer to live more inland and all rarely venture far out to sea, except for the kittiwakes. 

The larger species take up to four years to attain full adult plumage, but two years is typical for small gulls. Large white-headed gulls are typically long-lived birds, with a maximum age of 49 years recorded for the herring gull.

Gulls nest in large, densely packed, noisy colonies. They lay two or three speckled eggs in nests composed of vegetation. The young are precocial, born with dark mottled down and mobile upon hatching. Gulls are resourceful, inquisitive, and intelligent, the larger species in particular, demonstrating complex methods of communication and a highly developed social structure. Many gull colonies display mobbing behaviour, attacking and harassing predators and other intruders. 

Certain species have exhibited tool-use behaviour, such as the herring gull, using pieces of bread as bait with which to catch goldfish. Many species of gulls have learned to coexist successfully with humans and have thrived in human habitats. 

Others rely on kleptoparasitism to get their food. Gulls have been observed preying on live whales, landing on the whale as it surfaces to peck out pieces of flesh. They are keen, clever and always hungry. Near where I live along the west coast, I hear their calls and they always bring a smile to my day.

WHERE CARNIAN MEETS NORIAN: THE UPPER TRIASSIC LUNING FORMATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SAILS OF THE PERMIAN: DIMETRODON

Dimetrodon by Daniel Eskridge

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

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

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

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

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

Dimetrodon by Daniel Eskridge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NUNAVUT: LAND OF ICE AND SNOW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ANCIENT AMBUSH KILLER: MACHAIRODUS

Saber-Toothed Cat, Machairodus aphanistus

The skull before you lies cradled in a glass case at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain.

This museum—one of my most cherished anywhere in the world—houses extraordinary treasures in the heart of a city I adore.

Even at a distance, the skull seems almost unreal, its sweeping lines and lethal symmetry more like an artifact of myth than a product of natural selection.

The upper canines of Machairodus aphanistus sweep downward in a deadly curve, their bases thick and reinforced, their blades tapering into elegant, murderous crescents. 

Grooves along their sides lighten the teeth without robbing them of strength, an evolutionary compromise that allowed this ancient predator to deliver precise, slicing blows. The zygomatic arches flare outward with commanding confidence, a testament to the enormous jaw muscles that once powered the bite. Even the wide nasal opening hints at a creature ruled by scent, finely attuned to the faintest whispers of prey on a warm Miocene wind.

This skull—stripped of flesh, muscle, and fur—remains a vivid record of a predator that walked the Earth between nine and five million years ago, long before the saber-toothed icons of the Americas made their mark. 

Machairodus aphanistus lived in the shifting landscapes of the Late Miocene, a time when Europe and western Asia were giving way to broader grasslands and open woodlands. Forest canopies receded. Herds grew larger and faster. Predators had to adapt or perish, and Machairodus responded with a design both beautiful and deadly.

Unlike its more famous descendant, Smilodon, with its compact body and powerful forelimbs, Machairodus moved with the grace of a panther. It was long-limbed and athletic, relying on bursts of speed and stealth to launch an ambush. But its skull tells a more nuanced story—one of tension between speed and specialization. The tall sagittal crest reveals a powerhouse of jaw muscles anchoring deep into the bone. 

The forward-facing orbits provide the stereoscopic vision needed to track prey with extraordinary accuracy. The sheer length of the canines required a jaw capable of opening nearly ninety degrees, a gape far wider than that of any modern cat, allowing those great blades to descend unobstructed into vulnerable regions like the throat.

You will be relieved to hear that our ancestors did not hunt and were not hunted by this impressive predator. Machairodus aphanistus went extinct in the Late Miocene, roughly 5–9 million years ago.

The earliest members of the human lineage (Homo) did not appear until about 2.8 million years ago, in the early Pleistocene. Even our more ancient relatives—Australopithecines—don’t show up until 4–4.5 million years ago.

So there is a gap of millions of years between the disappearance of Machairodus and the emergence of anything that could be considered human or human-adjacent. For that, I think we can all breath a collective sigh.

Still, others were alive on the plains that were their hunting grounds. Both hunters and prey.

In the warm, open savannas of the Miocene, the world of Machairodus was alive with competition. Packs of early hyenas honed their bone-crushing skills. Bear-dogs patrolled the river valleys. Other machairodonts—kin, rivals, or both—shared the same hunting grounds. 

The herbivores were just as diverse: early horses galloped across the plains in tight herds, while rhinocerotids, camelids, and horned antelope moved in cautious groups, ever aware of shadows that shifted in the tall grass. To survive in this dynamic ecosystem, Machairodus embraced an ambush strategy refined over countless generations. It would stalk silently, using shrubs, boulders, or dim forest edges for cover. 

When the distance closed, it lunged with explosive force, using its muscular forelimbs to pin or destabilize its prey before delivering a swift, slicing bite to the neck. Death came quickly—less by crushing force and more by catastrophic blood loss.

There is a sense, looking at its skull that you are seeing an evolutionary idea mid-transformation.

Machairodus aphanistus stands at a pivotal moment in the story of the saber-toothed cats. Its body remained agile and panther-like, but its cranial features were edging ever closer to the extreme adaptations that would define later giants like Homotherium and Smilodon. It represents a crucial chapter in which nature was experimenting, refining, and pushing the boundaries of what a predator could become.

The skull contains all of this history within its bone: the open grasslands, the pounding hooves of prey, the quiet tension of ambush, and the relentless arms race that shaped predator and prey alike. 

In its silence, it speaks. It tells of a world both familiar and wild, a world where the line between beauty and brutality was sharpened to a sabre’s edge.

HUNTING NEUTRINOS AND DARK MATTER

Deep inside the largest and deepest gold mine in North America scientists are looking for dark matter particles and neutrinos instead of precious metals. It may not seem exciting on the surface — but it was far below!

The Homestake Gold Mine in Lawrence County, South Dakota was a going concern from about 1876 to 2001.

The mine produced more than forty million troy ounces of gold in its one hundred and twenty-five-year history, dating back to the beginnings of the Black Hills Gold Rush.

To give its humble beginnings a bit of context, Homestake was started in the days of miners hauling loads of ore via horse and mule and the battles of the Great Sioux War. Folk moved about via horse-drawn buggies and Alexander Graham Bell had just made his first successful telephone call.

Wyatt Earp was working in Dodge City, Kansas — he had yet to get the heck outta Dodge — and Mark Twain was in the throes of publishing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. — And our dear Thomas Edison had just opened his first industrial research lab in Menlo Park. 

The mine is part of the Homestake Formation, an Early Proterozoic layer of iron carbonate and iron silicate that produces auriferous greenschist gold. What does all that geeky goodness mean? 

If you were a gold miner it would be music to your ears. They ground down that schist to get the glorious good stuff and made a tiny wee sum doing so. But then gold prices levelled off — from 1997 ($287.05) to 2001 ($276.50) — and rumblings from the owners started to grow. They bailed in 2001, ironically just before gold prices started up again.

But back to 2001, that levelling saw the owners look to a new source of revenue in an unusual place. One they had explored way back in the 1960s in a purpose-built underground laboratory that sounds more like something out of a science fiction book. 

The brainchild of chemist and astrophysicists, John Bahcall and Raymond Davis Jr. from the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, the laboratory was used to observe solar neutrinos, electron neutrinos produced by the Sun as a product of nuclear fusion.

Davis had the ingenious idea to use 100,000 gallons of dry-cleaning solvent, tetrachloroethylene, with the notion that neutrinos headed to Earth from the Sun would pass through most matter but on very rare occasions would hit a chlorine-37 atom head-on turning it to argon-37. His experiment was a general success, detecting electron neutrinos,  though his technique failed to sense two-thirds of the number predicted. 

In particle physics, neutrinos come in three types: electron, muon and tau. Think yellow, green, blue. What Davis had failed to initially predict was the neutrino oscillation en route to Earth that altered one form of neutrino into another. Blue becomes green, yellow becomes blue... He did eventually correct this wee error and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002 for his efforts.

Though Davis’ experiments were working, miners at Homestake continued to dig deep for ore in the belly of the Black Hills of western South Dakota for almost another forty years. As gold prices levelled out and ore quality dropped the idea began to float to re-purpose the mine as a potential site for a new Deep Underground Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL).

A pitch was made and the National Science Foundation awarded the contract to Homestake in 2007.  The mine is now home to the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) using DUSEL and Large Underground Xenon to look at both neutrinos and dark particle matter. It is a wonderful re-purposing of the site and one that few could ever have predicted. Well done, Homestake. The future of the site is a gracious homage to the now deceased Davis. He would likely be delighted to know that his work continues at Homestake and our exploration of the Universe with it.

DINOFLAGELLATES: TEENSY OCEAN STARS

This showy Christmas Cracker is a Dinoflagellate

The showy royal blue Christmas cracker looking fellow you see here is a dinoflagellate. 

Bioluminescent dinoflagellates are a type of plankton — teensy marine organisms that make the seaways shimmer as you swim through them or the tide crashes them against the shore. 

The first modern dinoflagellate was described by Baker in 1753, the first species was formally named by Muller in 1773. 

The first fossil forms were described by Ehrenberg in the 1830s from Cretaceous outcrops. More dinoflagellates have lived, died and gone extinct than there are living today. We know them mainly from fossil dinocysts dating back to the Triassic. They are one of the most primitive of the eukaryotic group with a fossil record that may extend into the Precambrian. They combine primitive characteristics of prokaryotes and advanced eukaryotic features.

The luciferase found in dinoflagellates is related to the green chemical chlorophyll found in plants. Their twinkling lights are brief, each containing about 100 million photons that shine for only a tenth of a second. 

While each individual flicker is here and gone in the wink of an eye, en masse they are breathtaking. I have spent several wondrous evenings scuba diving amongst these glittering denizens off our shores. What you know about light above the surface does not hold true for the light you see as bioluminescence. Its energy and luminosity come from a chemical reaction. 

In a luminescent reaction, two types of chemicals — luciferin and luciferase — combine together. 

Together, they produce cold light — light that generates less than 20% thermal radiation or heat. 

The light you see is produced by a compound called Luciferin. It is the shiny, showy bit in this chemical show. Luciferase acts as an enzyme, the substance that acts as a catalyst controlling the rate of chemical reactions, allowing the luciferin to release energy as it is oxidized. 

The colour of the light depends on the chemical structures of the chemicals. There are more than a dozen known chemical luminescent systems, indicating that bioluminescence evolved independently in different groups of organisms.

Coelenterazine is the type of luciferin we find in shrimp, fish and jellyfish. Dinoflagellates and krill share another class of unique luciferins, while ostracods or firefleas and some fish have a completely different luciferin — but all produce lights of various colours to great effect.  

MIGUASHA BOTHRIOLEPIS CANADENSIS

Bothriolepis canadensis

A stunning replica of Bothriolepis canadensis from Upper Devonian (Frasnian), Escuminac formation, Parc de Miguasha, Baie des Chaleurs, Gaspé, Québec, Canada.

Bothriolepis was found and originally described by geologist Abraham Gesner in 1842 as "a tortoise with fossil foot-marks." He was wrong, of course, but these placoderm fish in the order Antiarchi do bear a superficial resemblance to turtles.

For nearly two centuries, the Late Devonian Miguasha biota from eastern Canada has offered up a near-complete brackish water community — 20 species of lower vertebrates — anaspids, osteostra-cans, placoderms, acanthodians, actinopterygians and sarcopterygians — a limited invertebrate assemblage, and terrestrial plants and arthropods — scorpions and millipedes.

Originally interpreted as a freshwater lacustrine environment, recent paleontological, taphonomic, sedimentological and geochemical evidence corroborates a brackish estuarine setting. 

Over 18,000 fish specimens have been recovered from the rock lain down in these brackish waters. They show various modes of fossilization, including uncompressed material and soft-tissue preservation. 

Most vertebrates are known from numerous, complete, articulated specimens. Exceptionally well-preserved larval and juvenile specimens have been identified for fourteen out of the twenty species of fishes, allowing growth studies. 

Numerous horizons within the Escuminac Formation are now interpreted as either Konservat or Konzentrat–Lagerstätten. 

The fine replica above was purchased at the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle, Miguasha (MHNM) and is in the collection of the deeply awesome — and well-travelled — John Fam, Vice-Chair of the Vancouver Paleontological Society.

Great Canadian Lagerstätten 4. The Devonian Miguasha Biota (Québec): UNESCO World Heritage Site and a Time Capsule in the Early History of Vertebrates, Richard Cloutier, Département de Biologie, Chimie et Géographie, Université du Québec à Rimouski, 300 allée des Ursulines, Rimouski, QC, Canada, G5L 3A1, richard_cloutier@uqar.ca, http://dx.doi.org/10.12789/geocanj.2013.40.008

Image: Restoration of the upper and underside of B. canadensis. By Unknown author - Popular Science Monthly Volume 82, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20672589

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.

THIRST OF THE LOST CONTINENT: DODOS AT THE RIVER OF MAURITIA

Dodo Birds by Daniel Eskridge

Two dodo birds—one warm brown like sun-baked coconut husk, the other a pale, ghostly white with hints of grey—stand beak-deep in the shallows of a river that winds like a silver serpent through the tropical jungles of ancient Mauritia. 

Their feet sink into cool silt and damp leaves at a rivers edge. 

The air is thick with the scent of pandanus and damp leaves, heavy enough to taste. Dragonflies hover in lazy spirals above them, iridescent flashes stitching over the water’s skin.

The brown male dodo dips first, scooping up a beakful of water with a gentle glop, while the white female one pauses, head cocked, watching a fruit drift downstream. For a moment the world feels impossibly quiet—no humans, no predators bold enough to trouble them, only the chorus of the forest and the steady rhythm of their drinking.

These feathered oddities belong to an island that itself has slipped through time. Mauritia, a now-lost microcontinent once nestled between Madagascar and India, cracked and sank more than 60 million years ago as the Indian Ocean spread and rearranged the world’s geography. All that remains today are a few scattered fragments—Mauritius, Réunion, Rodrigues—emerald crumbs left atop an ancient submerged landmass.

Dodo Birds by Daniel Eskridge

It is on one of these volcanic islands, long after Mauritia’s foundering, that the dodo evolved into its peculiar glory. 

Descended from flighted pigeons that likely swept in on storm winds from Southeast Asia, the dodo abandoned the sky entirely. 

With no natural predators and an island full of fruits, nuts, and fallen seeds, wings became more decorative than practical. Their legs grew stout. Their bodies rounded. 

Their beaks curved into the iconic hooked silhouette now etched into the imagination of every natural historian.

The brown dodo nudges the white one aside, perhaps a sign of affection, perhaps mild irritation—dodos, after all, were social birds, not the clumsy caricatures drawn centuries later. 

They waddled in flocks, nested on the ground, and lived comfortably beneath the canopy of ebony forests. Their feathers, described by early visitors as soft and hair-like, varied from gray-brown to white depending on age, sex, and perhaps even seasonal cycles.

But their peace was fragile, vulnerable to change they could not see coming.

When humans finally set foot on Mauritius in the late 1500s, they brought ships that carried pigs, rats, goats, and monkeys, all eager for eggs, seedlings, and anything edible. 

Forests were cut, nests trampled, and the trusting dodos, unaccustomed to fear, walked directly into the hands of sailors who considered them a convenient, if not particularly tasty, meal. Within roughly a century, they were gone.

But in this imagined moment—two birds drinking from a clear jungle river on an island born from a drowned continent—they live again. 

The sun breaks through a gap in the canopy, scattering gold across their backs. The white dodo lifts its head, droplets falling like tiny jewels, and lets out a soft, throaty grunt.

Here, in the cool breath of Mauritia’s shadowed past, the dodos are a symbol of loss—curious, gentle, utterly at home.

And for a heartbeat, we remember them.

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

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

SHAGGY TITANS OF THE GRASSLANDS: BISON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TINY DINO BIG SECRETS: ALNASHETRI

Alnashetri cerropoliciensis

Slip back 90 million years and wander the sun-baked floodplains of Patagonia, where the giants get all the glory—but it’s the tiny, fleet-footed oddballs that hold the real secrets.

Meet Alnashetri cerropoliciensis, a delicate little dinosaur with a big story to tell. We’re talking under two pounds soaking wet—lighter than your average house cat—but armed with clues powerful enough to untangle one of palaeontology’s most puzzling lineages: the alvarezsaurs.

These were no ordinary theropods. Picture a bird-like body, teeth reduced to tiny pegs, and arms so short they seem almost comical—until you notice the business end: a single, oversized claw built for digging. Think ant-eater, but make it a dinosaur.

For decades, alvarezsaurs have been a bit of a head-scratcher. Beautiful fossils from Asia told part of the tale, but their South American cousins? Fragmentary, elusive, maddeningly incomplete. Then along comes Alnashetri—a near-complete skeleton pulled from the fossil-rich beds of La Buitrera—and suddenly the story sharpens into focus.

And what a twist it is.

This wee creature shows us that alvarezsaurs didn’t shrink because they specialized—they were already pint-sized before evolving their quirky, ant-snuffling toolkit. Longer arms, bigger teeth—Alnashetri still carries the echoes of its less specialized ancestors. It’s evolution mid-sentence, frozen in bone.

Even better, it’s fully grown. No baby here. Just a tiny adult navigating a world of much larger predators with speed, stealth, and a very particular taste in snacks.

The real magic? This fossil acts like a Rosetta Stone for the group, giving scientists a reference point to decode those scrappy, half-told specimens tucked away in collections around the world. Suddenly, the family tree starts to make sense.

And the plot thickens.

Rather than evolving in one place and spreading outward, these curious little dinosaurs likely trace their roots back to Pangaea—before the continents tore themselves apart. As the landmasses drifted, so too did their descendants, leaving behind a scattered but connected fossil trail across the globe.

So here we have it: a tiny dinosaur rewriting a very big story. A cheeky wee dino challenging what we thought we knew!

Reference: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10194-3

URSUS CURIOUS: TLA'YI

A young Black Bear cub, Ursus americanus, tip-toes toward a frisky (and very startled) Striped Skunk, Mephitis mephitis — two wonderfully charismatic neighbours here in southern British Columbia.

Skunks, despite their reputation as the great olfactory villains of the mammal world, are actually closer to Old World stink badgers than to true polecats. 

Their infamous spray comes from paired anal scent glands capable of delivering a sulphur-rich chemical cocktail with uncanny accuracy — up to three metres, cross-wind. 

A single blast contains thiols so potent that predators learn, very quickly, that curiosity is overrated. Well… most predators. This wee bear clearly didn’t get the memo.

Black Bear cubs are, by nature, little bundles of kinetic joy and overwhelming inquisitiveness. Born in mid-winter, blind and tiny (weighing little more than a can of soup), they spend their first months cozied up in the den. 

By spring, though? Trouble. Pure, adorable trouble. Cubs stay with their mothers for about two years, learning every essential skill — how to climb, what to eat, what not to poke — but sometimes a particularly irresistible mystery will lure one a few metres away for a solo investigation.

Skunks, meanwhile, are far more than their signature scent. They’re accomplished insectivores with surprisingly strong forelimbs, adapted for rooting out beetle larvae, grubs, and other soil-dwelling goodies. 

They’re also bold. A skunk will usually stomp its feet, click its teeth, and arch its tail in a dramatic “Don’t make me do it” warning display. 

And yet — miracle of miracles — nobody got skunked. A karmic win for everyone involved.

This charming moment is also a reminder of the rich biodiversity we’re blessed with on the rugged west coast of British Columbia, where coastal rainforests shelter everything from salmon-loving black bears to nocturnal, grub-snuffling skunks.

Bears and skunks also have deep, fascinating roots in the fossil record. The lineage leading to modern skunks (Mephitidae) first appears in the Oligocene, roughly 30–32 million years ago, with early forms like Promephitis showing many of the skeletal hallmarks — and likely the scent-gland superpowers — of their modern cousins. 

Bears (Ursidae), meanwhile, trace their ancestry back even further. Their earliest known relatives emerge in the late Eocene, around 38 million years ago, with small, doglike proto-bears such as Parictis and later the hemicyonids, sometimes called “dog-bears,” bridging the evolutionary steps toward the true bears we know today. 

By the Miocene, both families were well established across North America, sharing ancient forests and floodplains just as their modern descendants do today — though hopefully with just as few skunk-related mishaps.

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, this playful black bear is t̕ła'yi — a name that captures both its spirit and its place within these lands. 

A perfect word for a perfect little explorer with an arguably questionable sense of danger.

SPIRALING BEAUTY: AMMONITES AS INDEX FOSSILS

Argonauticeras besairei, Collection of José Juárez Ruiz.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ammonoidea can be divided into six orders:

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

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

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

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

Hoplites bennettiana (Sowby, 1826).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OWLS: MASTERS OF THE HUNT

They move through the night as if stitched into it, seamless and soundless. You don’t hear an owl arrive. 

You feel it—the brief shift in the air above your head, a whisper of movement. It always feels me with a sense of awe. 

The silence is part of the hunt. Each feather, soft-edged and velvet-fringed, pulls the air apart without letting it stitch back into a sound. It is the most refined stealth technology evolution ever produced.

Out of the dusk they come, low and spectral. A heart-shaped face turns like a satellite dish, searching, mapping the world not with sight but with sound—every rustle of vole or beetle sketched in invisible lines. 

In Kwak’wala, the language of the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples of northern Vancouver Island, both an owl and a carved owl mask are called, Da̱xda̱xa̱luła̱mł, (though I have also heard them called Gwax̱w̱a̱lawadi, names that carries deep layers of meaning within their sounds. 

Snowy Owl

Amongst the Kwagu’ł and cousin Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations (those who speak Kwak'wala), the owl is often regarded as a messenger between worlds—a being that moves freely between the realm of the living and the spirit world. 

Its nocturnal calls are heard as sounds of the forest but also messages from ancestors, guiding, cautioning, or reminding listeners of their connection to those who came before. 

The owl’s ability to see in darkness and to travel silently through the night makes it a symbol of perception, transformation, and spiritual awareness, woven into the ceremonial stories and teachings that link human life to the greater cycles of nature and the unseen.

The Barn Owl, Tyto alba, pale as old linen and light as breath, drifts over stubble fields and meadows on a night wind. Its back is mottled with gold and grey, a shimmer of faded ochre dusted with starlight, while its underparts are moon-pale, unmarked. To see one cross a field in darkness is to glimpse a ghost that has learned to eat.

Barn Owls wear the night differently from their kin. Where they are gold and ivory, the Great Grey Owl, Strix nebulosa, is a storm of silver mist and charcoal, all rings and ripples of smoke. The Snowy Owl, Bubo scandiacus, gleams white as an Arctic sunbeam, each feather edged in ink like frost-shadow on snow. 

The Tawny Owl, Strix aluco, one of my favourite woodland companions, takes the colour of leaf litter and bark, warm brown and russet, perfectly disguised against a tree trunk’s skin. 

The diversity of owl plumage tells the story of their worlds—the open field, the frozen tundra, the dense woodland—and of their mastery of concealment. 

Every pattern is a negotiation with light and habitat, a balance between being unseen and seeing everything.

The eyes, of course, are what we remember. They are not round but tubes, locked in place by bone, forcing the head to turn instead. Two great wells of amber, gold, or black glass, evolved to harvest every drop of night. Behind them, the facial disc funnels sound to asymmetrical ears—one higher than the other, tuned to triangulate the faintest scurry in the dark. 

An owl hears in three dimensions; it knows precisely not just where a mouse is, but how far beneath the snow or under the leaf mould it crouches. 

The result is a predator with seemingly supernatural powers. The flight is the confirmation.

Yet for all their modern perfection, owls are ancient creatures. Their lineage stretches far back into the Oligocene and beyond. 

The earliest fossils we can confidently call owls—members of the order Strigiformes—appear around 60 million years ago, just after the age of dinosaurs gave way to the age of mammals. 

One of the oldest known is Ogygoptynx wetmorei, found in the Paleocene deposits of Colorado, a time when tropical forests spread across what is now the Rocky Mountain region. 

Slightly later, in the early Eocene, we meet Berruornis from France and Primoptynx from Wyoming—owls large and powerful, already showing the curved talons and forward-facing eyes that mark their descendants.

The fossil record reveals that the ancestors of modern owls were even larger and, in some cases, more diurnal than today’s secretive forms. 

The Miocene produced giants like Ornimegalonyx oteroi of Cuba—standing nearly a metre tall, possibly flightless, stalking prey through forest shadows. Europe once hosted Strix intermedia, and North America its share of extinct Tyto species, some with wingspans rivaling modern eagles. 

By the Pleistocene, many of the owl forms we know today had already arrived: Snowy Owls gliding over Ice Age steppes, Barn Owls haunting caves where mammoth bones lay.

Those caves, in fact, preserve some of our best records of owl life. Owls, being generous regurgitators, leave behind pellets—compressed bundles of fur and bone that fossilize beautifully in dry shelters. 

Through these, we reconstruct vanished ecosystems: field mice of species long extinct, voles that once roamed British lowlands before the sea cut us from the continent. Each pellet is a time capsule, the residue of a meal but also of a habitat. These little truth revealing pellets are a delight to find (don't be squeamish!) and pull apart as they tell us as much today as they do from the past. 

There’s something wonderfully contradictory about owls in prehistory: creatures so adapted to darkness, yet so enduring in stone. The silent of their wings does not fossilize, but echoes persist in bone and pellet and in the gouge marks of their claws on ancient prey. 

In the fossil layers of Rancho La Brea in California, the tar pits have trapped the remains of owls that hunted across the Late Pleistocene grasslands—Barn Owls and Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) caught in the sticky legacy of bitumen. 

In Europe, the famous Messel Pit of Germany has yielded exquisite Eocene specimens, complete with impressions of feathers and talons—evidence that the essential owl form has changed little in 50 million years. Once you are perfect, evolution tends to leave you alone.

Their success lies in specialisation: asymmetrical hearing, silent flight, low metabolic rate, unmatched night vision. Yet their story is also one of vulnerability. The very silence that serves them in the wild renders them invisible to us until they are gone. Barn Owl numbers have fallen in much of Europe as hedgerows vanish and grasslands are ploughed. 

In contrast, urban owls like the adaptable Great Horned Owl have expanded their ranges, turning city parks into hunting grounds. Some species are reclaiming ancient territories; others fade into absence, leaving only their echoes and fossils behind. Where I live on Vancouver Island, I can hear their call in the night and early morning as they send out their plaintive calls for a mate.

So much of what makes an owl remarkable—the hush of its wings, the glimmer of its eyes, the shape of its face—seems almost designed for myth. We have read them as omens, messengers, symbols of wisdom or death. But the truth, as the fossil record reminds us, is simpler and deeper. 

Owls are survivors, engineers of silence that have watched the world change for sixty million years. When one glides over a moonlit field, I stand in humility watching its perfect design and adaptation to this world and its connection to realms I can only dream of.