Sunday 19 April 2015
TAKING IN THE VIEW
Have you ever wondered about the colors you see in these moments? What sunlight actually is? Yes, it's light from the Sun but so much more than that. Sunlight is both light and energy. Once it reaches Earth, we call this energy, "insolation," a fancy term for solar radiation. The amount of energy the Sun gives off changes over time in a never ending cycle. Solar flares (hotter) and sunspots (cooler) on the Sun's surface impact the amount of radiation headed to Earth. These periods of extra heat or extra cold (well, colder by Sun standards...) can last for weeks, sometimes months.
The beams that reach us and warm our skin are electromagnetic waves that bring with them heat and radiation, by-products of the nuclear fusion happening as hydrogen nuclei shift form to helium. Our bodies convert the ultraviolet rays to Vitamin D. Plants use the rays for photosynthesis, a process of converting carbon dioxide to sugar and using it to power their growth (and clean our atmosphere!) That process looks something like this: carbon dioxide + water + light energy -->glucose + oxygen = 6 CO2(g) + 6 H2O + photons → C6H12O6(aq) + 6 O2(g) Photosynthetic organisms convert about 100–115 thousand million metric tonnes of carbon to biomass each year, about six times more power than used my us hoomins.
We've yet to truly get a handle on the duality between light as waves and light as photons. Light fills not just our wee bit of the Universe but the cosmos as well, bathing it in the form of cosmic background radiation that is the signature of the Big Bang.
Once those electromagnetic waves leave the Sun headed for Earth, they reach us in a surprising eight minutes. We experience them as light mixed with the prism of beautiful colors. But what we see is actually a trick of the light. As rays of white sunlight travel through the atmosphere they collide with airborne particles and water droplets causing the rays to scatter. We see mostly the yellow, orange and red hues (the longer wavelengths) as the blues and greens (the shorter wavelengths) scatter more easily and get bounced out of the game rather early.
Tuesday 14 April 2015
Monday 16 March 2015
Sunday 15 March 2015
Sunday 22 February 2015
Saturday 7 February 2015
EOCENE FOSSIL FIELD TRIP
Many of these finds can now be seen at museums in Washington State. While less abundant, evidence of the animals that called this ancient swamp home are also found here. Rare bird, reptile, and mammal tracks have been immortalized in the soft muds along ancient riverways.
Wednesday 4 February 2015
Monday 19 January 2015
FERGUSONITES HENDERSONAE
A few years ago, I had the very great honour of having a new species of ammonite named after me by paleontologist, Louse Longridge.
Meet Fergusonites hendersonae, a Late Hettangian ammonite from the Taseko Lake area of British Columbia, high up in the Canadian Rockies.
He looks a wee bit like the Cadoceras comma we find in the Mysterious Lake Formation at Harrison Lake but a wee bit thinner and smaller.
Friday 9 January 2015
Tuesday 6 January 2015
CAPILANO RIVER FOSSIL TRIP
- Alder
- Unidentified Bark
- Poplar (cottonwood) Populus sp.
- Bigleaf maple Acer machphyllum
- Alder Alnus rubra
- Buttercup Ranvuculus sp.
- Epilobrium
- Red cedar
- Blackberry
- Sword fern
Monday 5 January 2015
Sunday 4 January 2015
Tuesday 30 December 2014
HAIDA GWAII: ISLANDS OF MIST
Today, the Hecate Strait is a tempestuous 40-mile wide channel that separates the mist-shrouded archipelago of Haida Gwaii from the BC mainland. Haida oral tradition tells of a time when the strait was mostly dry, dotted here and there with lakes. During the last ice age, glaciers locked up so much water that the sea level was hundreds of feet lower than it is today. Soil samples from the sea floor contain wood, pollen, and other terrestrial plant materials that tell of a tundra-like environment.
The court is still out on whether or not the strait was ever completely dry during these times, but it certainly contained a series of stepping-stone islands and bridges that remained free of ice.
An ancient Haida tale, recorded in the late 1800s by a Hudson’s Bay Company trader, records the island's glacial history. Scannah-gan-nuncus, a boy who lived in the village now called Skidegate, had canoed up the Hunnah, a once roaring tributary to Skidegate Channel that is now a rocky creek, seldom deep enough to navigate.
The Haida the legend accurately records that it used to be several times deeper. Tired from paddling upstream, Scannah-gan-nuncus landed to take a nap. “In those days at the place where he went ashore were large boulders in the bed of the stream, while on both sides of the river were many trees. While resting by the river, he heard a dreadful noise upstream. Looking to see what it was, he was surprised to behold all the stones in the river coming toward him. … all the trees were cracking and groaning … he went to see what was crushing the stones and breaking the trees. On reaching them, he found that a large body of ice was coming down, pushing everything before it.”
Scannah-gan-nuncus’ experience with the glacier would have been familiar to the inhabitants of the Queen Charlottes. In recent years, the highest peaks are often bare of vegetation and snow-covered during most of the year, but back in the time of the glaciers, these same local mountains were the birthplace of advancing ice.
Precipitation and a significant drop in temperature gave rise to the Queen Charlottes ice-sheet, a thick mass of flowing ice that ran tandem with the Cordilleran sheet in the Hecate Lowlands.
Strolling around you can see where the glaciers left their mark on the Islands’ U-shape valleys, once a steep V-shape, now scoured smooth by glaciers that also deposited the erratic boulders can been seen sitting like sentinels on the beach.
CRETACEOUS NANAIMO GROUP
Monday 29 December 2014
CAMBRIAN TRILOBITES
The Cambrian was a time of expansion for the Earth's complex animal forms. Molluscs and arthropods and their friends with hard shells and exoskeletons dominated the seas. The specimen you see here is of a Wanneria dunnae trilobite from the Eager Formation, Rifle Range site near Cranbrook, British Columbia.
Thursday 25 December 2014
Friday 19 December 2014
JELLYFISH: DANCERS OF THE DEEP
Her brethren are playing in the waters of the deep all over the world, from surface waters to our deepest seas — and they are old. They are some of the oldest animals in the fossil record.
Jellyfish and sea jellies are the informal common names given to the medusa-phase or adult phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria — more closely related to anemones and corals.
Jellyfish are not fish at all. They evolved millions of years before true fish. The oldest conulariid scyphozoans appeared between 635 and 577 million years ago in the Neoproterozoic of the Lantian Formation, a 150-meter-thick sequence of rocks deposited in southern China.
Others are found in the youngest Ediacaran rocks of the Tamengo Formation of Brazil, c. 505 mya, through to the Triassic. Cubozoans and hydrozoans appeared in the Cambrian of the Marjum Formation in Utah, USA, c. 540 million years ago.
I have seen all sorts of their brethren growing up on the west coast of Canada. I have seen them in tide pools, washed up on the beach and swam amongst thousands of Moon Jellyfish while scuba diving in the Salish Sea. Their movement in the water is marvellous.
In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, jellyfish are known as ǥaǥisama.
The watercolour ǥaǥisama you see here in dreamy pink and white is but one colour variation. They come in blue, purple, orange, yellow and clear — and are often luminescent. They produce light by the oxidation of a substrate molecule, luciferin, in a reaction catalyzed by a protein, luciferase.
Wednesday 17 December 2014
Monday 17 November 2014
Thursday 30 October 2014
KOALA: BABY JOEY
Fossil remains of Koala-like animals have been found dating back 25 million years. Some of the relatives of modern koalas were much larger, including the Giant Koala, Phascolarctos stirtoni.
It should likely have been named the Robust Koala, instead of Giant, but this big boy was larger than modern koalas by about a third. Phascolarctos yorkensis, from the Miocene, was twice the size of the modern koalas we know today. Both our modern koalas and their larger relatives co-existed during the Pleistocene, sharing trees and enjoying the tasty vegetation surrounding them.
Tuesday 23 September 2014
TRACKING THEROPODS
We get a bird's eye view (or Theropod's eye view) of life back in the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. Both here and at Elliott we see dinosaur remains tracks and dino eggs!
Thursday 18 September 2014
PETRIFIED WOOD
And while there is often amazing preservation of the big woody bits, the telltale leaves that help us identify that wood to species are often lost. If this is the case, we add our best guess at the genus and add xlon. So, Palmoxylon is the indeterminate wood of a palm, though we may never know which palm. If you have an interest in botany and fossils, you may want to consider making a career of it. The study of fossil wood is called palaeoxylology. And a palaeoxylologist is someone who studies fossil wood.
Thursday 21 August 2014
Tuesday 29 July 2014
Sunday 27 July 2014
Tuesday 22 July 2014
AMMONITES & MARINE REPTILES FROM THE MYSTERIOUS CREEK FORMATION
Sunday 13 July 2014
TYLOSTOMA TUMIDUM
Tylostoma have thick, smooth shells with a moderately elevated spire. Their aperture is ovato-lunate with the lips meeting above at a sharp angle. The outer lip is furnished internally, running the whole length and ending with a thickened edge. This specimen shows the wear and tear of erosion common at the site.
Saturday 5 July 2014
LIVING FOSSIL: COMB JELLY
Living Fossil / Comb Jelly / Ctenophore |
Saturday 14 June 2014
FIERCE WARRIORS: CRABS
Look how epic this little guy is!
He is a crab — and if you asked him, the fiercest warrior that ever lived. While that may not be strictly true, crabs do have the heart of a warrior and will raise their claws, sometimes only millimetres into the air, to assert dominance over their world.
Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the Phylum Arthropoda.Crabs build their shells from highly mineralized chitin — and chitin gets around. It is the main structural component of the exoskeletons of many of our crustacean and insect friends. Shrimp, crab, and lobster all use it to build their exoskeletons.
Chitin is a polysaccharide — a large molecule made of many smaller monosaccharides or simple sugars, like glucose.
It is handy stuff, forming crystalline nanofibrils or whiskers. Chitin is actually the second most abundant polysaccharide after cellulose. It is interesting as we usually think of these molecules in the context of their sugary context but they build many other very useful things in nature — not the least of these are the hard shells or exoskeletons of our crustacean friends.
Crabs in the Fossil Record
The earliest unambiguous crab fossils date from the Early Jurassic, with the oldest being Eocarcinus from the early Pliensbachian of Britain, which likely represents a stem-group lineage, as it lacks several key morphological features that define modern crabs.
Most Jurassic crabs are only known from dorsal — or top half of the body — carapaces, making it difficult to determine their relationships. Crabs radiated in the Late Jurassic, corresponding with an increase in reef habitats, though they would decline at the end of the Jurassic as the result of the decline of reef ecosystems. Crabs increased in diversity through the Cretaceous and represented the dominant group of decapods by the end.
We find wonderful fossil crab specimens on Vancouver Island. The first I ever collected was at Shelter Point, then again on Hornby Island, down on the Olympic Peninsula and along Vancouver Island's west coast near Nootka Sound. They are, of course, found globally and are one of the most pleasing fossils to find and aggravating to prep of all the specimens you will ever have in your collection. Bless them.
Sunday 1 June 2014
CANADODUS SUNTOKI: 25-MILLION YEAR OLD FOSSIL FISH FROM SOOKE
The species named the Canadodus suntoki by Russian researcher Evgeny Popov is named after collector Steve Suntok who donated the fossil to the Royal BC Museum in 2014.
The name roughly translates to “tooth from Canada,” as the fossil is part of a fish dental plate.
Popov, who is one of the world’s leading experts on fossil holocephalian fishes, says that the fossil that Suntok found is an entirely new fish compared to anything found before.
“I knew it was something significant. Not necessarily a new species but something significant,” Suntok told CTV News Thursday.
The fossil dental plate indicates that the fish was likely a type of Chimaeridae, which is a species of fish that feeds on invertebrates by crushing their shells on its hard flat dental plates, before eating the animal inside, according to researchers.
Suntok found the fossil in a northwest portion of Sooke. Researchers say that Sooke is an excellent area for paleontological discoveries, with a variety of fossils at the Royal BC Museum coming from the region.
Ancient whale vertebrae and rib specimens have been found in Sooke and donated to the museum, as well as a potential terrestrial mammal bone, fossil leaves, and many invertebrate fossils, such as oysters, barnacles and snails.
The Suntok family has experience finding and preserving fossils on Vancouver Island. Many fossils discovered by the family have been donated to the Royal BC Museum, including a new waterbird coracoid bone which was named after Steve Suntok’s daughter, Leah, in 2015, named the Stemec suntokum.“Because of erosion, every time we go there there’s something new,” said Suntok.
“New things get exposed so from time to time I go back just to check out the site. On this occasion, I found something I’d never seen before, which was pretty exciting.”
Researchers say that cliff faces near Muir Creek and beaches near Kirby Creek in Sooke “easily contain the richest exposures of fossils near Victoria.” Fossils in the area tend to date back approximately 25 million years.
Vancouver Island palaeontologist Marji Johns, who is a co-author of research on the Canadodus suntoki, says that she was thrilled by the discovery.
Sooke, British Columbia and Juan de Fuca Strait |
Johns says that very few palaeontologists in B.C. and Canada are able to do fieldwork while conducting research and that volunteer collectors like the Suntok family are largely responsible for finding rare and usual fossils..
Suntok says that having the Canadodus suntoki named after him is a dream come true.
“I’m ecstatic about it. It’s the dream of every amateur collector,” he said.
“It’s an honour. I don’t deserve it, but I’m extremely appreciative of it.”
Reference:
https://www.iheartradio.ca/580-cfra/it-s-an-honour-newly-discovered-fossil-fish-species-named-after-vancouver-island-collector-1.13515837
Wednesday 21 May 2014
Saturday 3 May 2014
ISOGRAPTUS MAXIMUS
Graptolites (Graptolita) are colonial animals. The biological affinities of the graptolites have always been debatable. Originally regarded as being related to the hydrozoans, graptolites are now considered to be related to the pterobranchs, a rare group of modern marine animals.
The graptolites are now classed as hemichordates (phylum Hemichordata), a primitive group which probably shares a common ancestry with the vertebrates.
In life, many graptolites appear to have been planktonic, drifting freely on the surface of ancient seas or attached to floating seaweed by means of a slender thread. Some forms of graptolite lived attached to the sea-floor by a root-like base. Graptolite fossils are often found in shales and slates. The deceased planktonic graptolites would sink down to and settle on the sea floor, eventually becoming entombed in the sediment and are thus well preserved.
Graptolite fossils are found flattened along the bedding plane of the rocks in which they occur. They vary in shape, but are most commonly dendritic or branching (such as Dictoyonema), saw-blade like, or "tuning fork" shaped (such as Didymograptus murchisoni).
This fellow is pure "Bat Sign" with his showy "wings" looking like something out of a DC Comic. He's also received a nod as the Panem symbol in Hunger Games and been described as having eagle or angel wings. No matter how you interpret his symbolism, there is not doubt that he is spectacular. He is in the collection of the deeply awesome Gilberto Juárez Huarachi from Tarija, Bolivia.
Friday 2 May 2014
Friday 14 February 2014
Tuesday 21 January 2014
Friday 17 January 2014
SUMAS EOCENE SITE
Once the skies cleared, hikers found plant impressions in the rock and alerted the local paleo community. I was invited to tag along on a trip to photograph the site while George Mustoe took moulds of the palm trunks and trackways.
The slide site at Sumas Mountain revealed many large exposures of fossil plants. Some exposures were 10 feet across. There was great excitement at seeing shorebird tracks and trackways of the large flightless bird Diatryma. Many of these finds can now be seen at the Burke Museum in Washington State. While less abundant, evidence of the animals that called this ancient swamp home are also found here. Rare bird, reptile, and mammal tracks have been immortalized in the soft muds along ancient riverways.
Wednesday 15 January 2014
Thursday 9 January 2014
Monday 6 January 2014
NORTHWEST BAY, VANCOUVER ISLAND
Sunday 5 January 2014
Tuesday 31 December 2013
MOON RAVEN TOTEM AT SAXMAN TOTEM PARK
Moon Raven Pole at Saxman Totem Park |
The art of totem pole carving was a luxury that experienced its heyday in the mid-1700s to the late 1800s.
In the late 1800s, Tlingits from the old villages of Cape Fox and Tongass searched out the Saxman site as a place where they could build a school and a church.
Sunday 29 December 2013
OYSTER: TLOXTLOX
While rare today, these are British Columbia’s only native oyster. Had you been dining on their brethren in the 1800s or earlier, it would have been this species you were consuming. Middens from Port Hardy to California are built from Ostrea lurida.
These wonderful invertebrates bare their souls with every bite. Have they lived in cold water, deep beneath the sea away from the suns rays and heat? Are they the rough and tumbled beach denizens whose thick shells have formed to withstand the pounding of the sea?
Is the oyster in your mouth thin and slimy having just done the nasty spurred by the warming waters of Spring? Is this oyster a local or was it shipped to your current local and if asked would greet you with "Kon'nichiwa?" Not if the beauty on your plate is indeed Ostrea lurida.
We have been cultivating, indeed maximizing the influx of invasive species to the cold waters of the Salish Sea. But in the wild waters off the coast of British Columbia is the last natural abundant habitat of the tasty Ostrea lurida in the pristine waters of Nootka Sound. The area is home to the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations who have consumed this species boiled or steamed for thousands of years. Here these ancient oysters not only survive but thrive — building reefs and providing habitat for crab, anemones and small marine animals.
Oysters are in the family Ostreidae — the true oysters. Their lineage evolved in the Early Triassic — 251 - 247 million years ago.
In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, an oyster is known as t̕łox̱t̕łox̱. I am curious to learn if any of the Nuu-chah-nulth have a different word for an oyster. If you happen to know, I would be grateful to learn.
Wednesday 25 December 2013
Tuesday 17 December 2013
PADDLING ICY WATERS
Sunday 17 November 2013
Monday 28 October 2013
Sunday 20 October 2013
MEERKAT: MONGOOSE
The head-and-body length is around 24–35 cm, and the weight is typically between 0.62 and 0.97 kg.