FISHING UP ON THE FRASER

HAIDA GWAII

WILDERNESS SANCTUARY

AUTUMN LIGHT :: WINTER CALLING

AMMONITES A GO GO

WIDGEON ESTUARY

BELLA COQUINA

OH, SHE'S A BEAUTY :: CASTLE PEAK NORTH OF GOLDBRIDGE

Castle Peak, the glorious landmark and loadstone of basalt that marks the spot on our Jurassic/Triassic paleo adventures...

DINOSAUR TRACKWAY

MIST THROUGH THE TREES

AMMONITE MOSAIC

DRUMHELLER

GREAT BEAR DETAIL

CACTUS EN PROVENCE

CANADIAN ROCKIES: TYAUGHTON

VIEIL AIX

WHEN THE TIDE IS OUT THE TABLE IS SET

Have you ever watched salmon jump, twist and leap their way past the many hurtles to return to their place of birth to spawn?

We are all familiar with the image of salmon returning to fresh water, to the rivers of their youth, to spawn and complete their lifecycle, in fact, it is one of the staple images of British Columbia. As adults, we bring our children to witness this cycle, rushing to the banks of our local rivers to watch as the adults, keen in their fight for reproduction and survival, struggle to complete their epic journeys against currents and predators. Arriving as they do, year upon year, season upon season, it seems to us that this is how it has been since time immemorial.

But we now have evidence that migration to the sea may be a relatively recent behaviour. Fossil beds at Driftwood Canyon, near Smithers, contain large numbers of fossil salmonid remains from the Eocene age, approximately 45 million years ago. What is interesting is that the fossil beds are filled equally with both juvenile and larger adults.

If these salmon were heading off to sea in their juvenile form and returning to spawn as adults we would expect to find an abundance of larger carcasses in the lake sediments and relatively few juveniles. Given the equal numbers, we can conclude that the salmonids of the Eocene, lived out their lifecycle as a landlocked species, the way Kokanee do today.

GRIZZLY & BLACK BEARS

Both grizzly and black bears descend from a common ancestor, Ursavus, a bear-dog the size of a raccoon who lived more than 20 million years ago. Seems an implausible lineage given the size of their large descendents.

ICE AGE AFTERNOON

PUPPY LOVE: KANE AND MEADOW

FOSSILS OF THE OLYMPIC PENINSULA

This lovely Lower Miocene nautiloid is Aturia angustata collected on the foreshore near Clallam Bay, Olympic Peninsula, northwestern Washington. 

I have been exploring Washington State for many years. It is rugged, windswept and has amazing fossil exposures all along its northern edge. The area goes by the name of the Olympic Peninsula and it is a wilderness playground. The sites I usually visit are Majestic Beach for its rare but prized fossil whale bone.

Further west are the beach exposures that have fossil echinoids in matrix and Ghost shrimp claws in concretion. There is a clay mine that holds wonderful nautiloids like the creamy Aturia you see here. Sometimes they are cemented together and come out whole. Sometimes calcified and show yellow, brown and white when you hold them to the light. Further up are the beach exposures along Clallam Bay.

Aturia is an extinct genus of Paleocene to Miocene nautilids within Aturiidae, a monotypic family, established by Campman in 1857 for Aturia Bronn, 1838, and is included in the superfamily Nautilaceae in Kümmel, 1964.

Aturia is characterized by a smooth, highly involute, discoidal shell with a complex suture and subdorsal siphuncle. 

Their shells are rounded ventrally and flattened laterally; the dorsum is deeply impressed. The suture is one of the most complex within Nautiloidea. It has a broad flattened ventral saddle, narrow pointed lateral lobes, broad rounded lateral saddles, broad lobes on the dorso-umbilical slopes, and a broad dorsal saddle divided by a deep, narrow median lobe. 

The siphuncle is moderate in size and located subdorsally in the adapical dorsal flexure of the septum. Based on the feeding and hunting behaviours of living nautiluses, Aturia most likely preyed upon small fish and crustaceans. It is well worth exploring the exposures at Clallam Bay. The local clay quarry is on private land so you would need to seek permission. I have also seen calcified beauties of this species collected from river sites within the Olympic Peninsula range, though I have not explored these myself.

INSPIRATION: MOR-PHAR

What inspires us to explore the world? Sometimes it is the area in which we live, the encouragement of those we love blended with a natural curiosity. The two pivital players in my life were and are my grandfather and father. Both wonderful naturalists in their own right. The world was our playground.

That legacy carries on in the like-minded community of those I write, kayak and fossil collect with. Amazing people who fill me with wonder as they take in the beauty, rugged strength and delicate balance of this imperfect yet utterly perfect world.