BLACK DRAGON POOL: LIJIANG

GINKO BILOBA

Each year, I grow Ginko and Metasequoia to plant on Earth Day. They serve as an homage to the environment and a offering to Gaia for a cleaner, kinder world.

RAIN SHOWERS BRING...

DALI, YUNNAN

BONE TO STONE

Calcium carbonate reacts with water saturated with carbon dioxide to form the soluble calcium bicarbonate. Bone already contains calcium carbonate, as well as calcium phosphate, Ca2, but it is also made of protein, cells and living tissue.

Decaying bone acts as a sort of natural sponge that wicks in the calcium carbonate displaced from the shells. As protein decays inside the bone, it is replaced by the incoming calcium carbonate, making the bone harder and more durable.

PEACEFUL AFTERNOON ON EMERALD LAKE

MISTY MORNING

HIKING YOHO NATIONAL PARK

AMMONITE BEAUTY

Varying in size from millimeters to meters across, ammonites are prized as both works of art and index fossils helping us date rock. The ammonites were cousins in the Class Cephalopoda, meaning "head-footed," closely related to modern squid, cuttlefish and octopus. Cephalopods have a complex eye structure and swim rapidly. The ones shown here are from a Sinemurian site I visited a few years back high up in the Canadian Rockies.

Ammonites used these evolutionary benefits to their advantage, making them successful marine predators. I shared some ammonites with my wee paleontologist cousins this weekend, Madison and Melaina. They were impressed with the amazing range of species and body styles. Their favorites were the ones from Alberta and England with their original mother of pearl still intact.

AMMONITE FOSSIL PLATE

SUNSET ON TSAWWASSEN

LATE OLIGOCENE SOOKE FORMATION

Desmostylus, Royal Ontario Museum Collection

The late Oligocene Sooke Formation outcrops at several coastal localities along the South-west coast of Vancouver Island. The most well-known and most collected of these are the exposures to the west of Muir Creek.

The formation contains marine fossils including a diversity of intertidal and near shore gastropods, bivalves, abundant barnacle (Balanus) plates, and rare coral, echinoid (sand dollar) and mammal (Desmostylus) fossils.

When these fossils were laid down, the Northeastern Pacific had cooled to near modern levels and the taxa that were preserved as fossils bear a strong resemblance to those found living today beneath the Strait of Juan de Fuca. In fact, many of the Sooke Formation genera are still extant.

We find near shore and intertidal genera such as Mytilus (mussels) and barnacles, as well as more typically subtidal predatory globular moon snails, surf clams (Spisula, Macoma), and thin, flattened Tellin clams.

In several places, there are layers thickly strewn with fossils, suggesting that they were being deposited along a strand line. The rock is relatively coarse-grained sandstone, suggesting a high energy environment as would be found near a beach.

The outcrops at Muir Creek make for a great day trip. This is a family friendly site best enjoyed and collected at low tide.

MOUNT BURGESS & EMERALD LAKE

LOST LAKE, WHISTLER

HANGING WITH THE CREW

CETACEA: HUMPBACK WHALE

Look at this lovely maternal bond between an adult Humpback whale female, Megaptera novaeangliae, and her young. Humpbacks are a species of baleen whale for whom I hold a special place in my heart. 

Baleens are whales who feed on plankton and other wee oceanic tasties that they consume through their baleens, a specialised filter of keratin that frames their mouths.

There are fifteen species of baleen whales. They inhabit all major oceans, in a wide band running from the Antarctic ice edge to 81°N latitude.

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, whales are known as g̱wa̱'ya̱m. Both the California grey and the Humpback whale live on the coast. Only a small number of individuals in First Nation society had the right to harpoon a whale. It was generally only the Chief who was bestowed this great honour. Humpback whales like to feed close to shore and enter the local inlets. Around Vancouver Island and along the coast of British Columbia, this made them a welcome food source as the long days of winter passed into Spring.

Humpback whales are rorquals, members of the Balaenopteridae family that includes the blue, fin, Bryde's, sei and minke whales. The rorquals are believed to have diverged from the other families of the suborder Mysticeti during the middle Miocene. 

While cetaceans were historically thought to have descended from mesonychids— which would place them outside the order Artiodactyla— molecular evidence supports them as a clade of even-toed ungulates — our dear Artiodactyla. Baleen whales split from toothed whales, the Odontoceti, around 34 million years ago.

DELIGHTFUL MONOTREME

This chunky monkey is a Short-beaked Echidna, Tachyclossus aculeatus, which grows to about the size of an overweight cat. They are native to Australia and New Guinea. 

Echidnas are sometimes called spiny anteaters and belong in the family Tachyglossidae (Gill, 1872). They are monotremes, an order of egg-laying mammals. There are four species of echidnas living today. They, along with the platypus, are the only living mammals who lay eggs and the only surviving members of the order Monotremata. 

Superficially, they resemble the anteaters of South America and other spiny mammals like porcupines and adorable hedgehogs. They are usually a mix of brown, black and cream in colour. While rare, there have been several reported cases of albino echidnas, their eyes pink and their spines white. Echidnas have long, slender snouts that act as both nose and mouth for these cuties. The Giant Echidna we see in the fossil record had beaks more than double this size.  

MUD, MONSTERS AND AMMONITES: FOSSIL COLLECTING KIMMERIDGE BAY

There’s a particular kind of madness that takes hold when you arrive at Kimmeridge Bay on the Jurassic Coast of Dorset. 

You tell yourself you’re just going for a “nice seaside walk,” but five minutes later you’re crouched in the mud like an enthusiastic raccoon, pockets bulging with ammonites and your knees soaked through by 150 million years of ancient ooze.

Welcome to fossil hunting on England’s Jurassic Coast — where the cliffs leak time.

Kimmeridge Bay is part of the famed Jurassic Coast UNESCO World Heritage Site, and what a glorious bit of deep-time drama it is. These dark shales and limestones belong to the Kimmeridge Clay Formation, laid down during the Late Jurassic, roughly 157–152 million years ago, when Dorset sat beneath a warm, shallow sea teeming with life. 

No cream teas. No tourists in sensible rain jackets. Just marine reptiles, squidgy cephalopods, fish, crustaceans and enough mud to preserve a kingdom.

The cliffs here are famously rich in organic material — so rich, in fact, that the Kimmeridge Clay became one of the major source rocks for North Sea oil. Every step you take is over the compressed remains of ancient plankton, algae and marine life. Delightful, really. Ancient death soup under your hiking boots.

And the fossils! Oh, the fossils.

Ammonites are the stars of the show, spiralled little beauties weathering out of the shale after winter storms and heavy tides. Some are tiny enough to fit on your fingertip; others are dinner-plate-sized beasts that make you briefly consider whether you can casually carry 40 pounds of rock back to the car without injuring yourself or your dignity.

You’ll also find belemnites — the bullet-shaped internal guards of extinct squid-like cephalopods — scattered about like Jurassic cigars tossed aside by some enormous marine gangster. Bivalves, marine snails, crustaceans and fossil wood turn up regularly, and if the fossil gods are smiling upon you, you may glimpse bones from ichthyosaurs or plesiosaurs weathering from the cliffs. Proper sea dragons.

These waters once swam with predators. Ichthyosaurs sliced through the sea with tuna-shaped precision while long-necked plesiosaurs lurked below like nightmare swans with teeth. Above them drifted ammonites in absurd abundance, jetting through the water column while trying very hard not to become lunch.

The real joy of Kimmeridge is that the geology is laid out like pages in a very muddy storybook. Broad wave-cut platforms stretch out at low tide, exposing bedding planes packed with fossils. You can literally walk across ancient seabeds while gulls scream overhead and the English Channel hurls itself dramatically against the shore in proper British fashion.

Now — and this bit matters — Kimmeridge Bay is not a free-for-all fossil freebie buffet. The bay is privately owned and protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), which means loose fossils may be collected responsibly, but hammering into the shale ledges or cliffs and extracting fossils from the rock is strictly forbidden. The cliffs are unstable enough without enthusiastic humans attacking them with geology hammers like caffeinated dwarves.

Kimmeridge is also not quite the fossil bonanza you’ll find at Lyme Regis or Charmouth. Folk sometimes arrive expecting ammonites rolling at their feet like Jurassic tennis balls, but much of what you see here remains embedded in the ledges, often beautifully preserved but heavily compressed by millions of years of pressure. 

This is less grabbing a fossil every five seconds and more patiently scan the rocks while questioning your tide timing.

And speaking of tides — always check them. The sea at Kimmeridge comes in with alarming enthusiasm and absolutely no regard for your collecting plans. More than one eager fossil hunter has found themselves stranded while trying to “just check one more rock.” The ledges are notoriously slippery with seaweed as well, and the coastguard regularly ends up rescuing visitors who underestimate both the tides and their own balance. Jurassic mud wrestling with the English Channel is rarely a winning strategy.

The second rule? Never trust a shale slab. The moment you pick one up, it will either crumble beautifully to reveal a perfect ammonite — or explode directly into your face like a Jurassic cream cracker.

Honestly, both outcomes are part of the experience.

And that is the magic of Kimmeridge Bay. It is messy, windswept, ancient and utterly alive with stories. Every fossil you hold was once part of a thriving Jurassic ecosystem long before humans arrived to invent car parks, sandwiches and waterproof trousers.

Before heading down to the shore, it is always worth stopping into The Etches Collection Museum of Jurassic Marine Life in Kimmeridge Village. 

The museum houses one of the finest collections of Jurassic marine fossils in Britain, and the staff are wonderfully generous with advice on safe and responsible collecting. If you want to understand the strange and beautiful creatures hidden in those black shales, this is the place.

You arrive looking for fossils, but somewhere between the ammonites, the sea spray and the black shale under your boots, you begin to feel something else entirely — the dizzying wonder of deep time.

Also, lower back pain from carrying too many rocks. Fossil hunting is a glamorous business.

PHASSCOLARCTOS CINEREUS

Koala, Phasscolarctos cinereus, are truly adorable marsupials native to Australia. These cuddly "teddy bears" are not bears at all. Koalas belong to a group of mammals known as marsupials. 

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.

DINOSAUR TRACKWAY: TUMBLER RIDGE

 

BACK IN THE USSR: KEPPERLITES

This glorious chocolate block contains the creamy grey ammonite Kepplerites gowerianus (Sowerby 1827) with a few invertebrate friends, including two brachiopods: Ivanoviella sp., Zeilleria sp. and the deep brown gastropod Bathrotomaria sp. 

There is also a wee bit of petrified wood on the backside.

These beauties hail from Jurassic, Lower Callovian outcrops in the Quarry of Kursk Magnetic Anomaly (51.25361,37.66944), Kursk region, Russia. Diameter ammonite 70мм. 

In the mid-1980s, during the expansion and development of one of the quarries, an unusual geological formation was found. This area had been part of the seafloor around an ancient island surrounded by Jurassic Seas. 

The outcrops of this geological formation turned out to be very rich in marine fossil fauna. This ammonite block was found there years ago by the deeply awesome Emil Black. 

In more recent years, the site has been closed to fossil collecting and is in use solely for the processing and extraction of iron ore deposits. Kursk Oblast is one of Russia's major producers of iron ore. The area of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly has one of the richest iron-ore deposits in the world. Rare Earth minerals and base metals also occur in commercial quantities in several locations. Refractory loam, mineral sands, and chalk are quarried and processed in the region. 

The Kursk Magnetic Anomaly Quarry is not far from the Sekmenevsk Formation or Sekmenevska Svita in Russian, a Cretaceous (Albian to Cenomanian) terrestrial geologic formation where Pterosaur fossils have been found in the sandstones. 

GIANT'S CAUSEWAY: NORTHERN IRELAND

The Giant's Causeway is a spectacular expanse of interlocking hexagonal basalt columns formed from volcanic eruptions during the Paleocene some 50-60 million years ago.

Highly fluid molten basalt intruded through chalk beds which later cooled, contracted and cracked into hexagonal columns, creating a surreal visual against a dark and stormy Irish Sea.

KEPPLERITES

A perfect Kepplerites from the collections of Emil Black.

FOSSILES PRINCIPAUX DES TERRAINS - EMILE BAYLE

Bayle and Zeiller Atlas, Planche LIX, 1878

SOUTH OF FRANCE

DINOSAUR FOOTPRINTS: HISTORY IN STONE

Dinosaur Track, Tumbler Ridge

Imagine kneeling beside a three-toed depression in a slab of sandstone, your fingers tracing the edges of a print left by a creature that thundered across the Earth over 100 million years ago. 

Dinosaur tracks—known scientifically as ichnites—are time capsules, snapshots of behavior frozen in stone. 

Unlike bones, which tell us what dinosaurs looked like, footprints reveal how they moved, how fast they walked, whether they traveled alone or in herds, and even how they interacted with their environment.

Footprints are classified by shape rather than by exact species, since tracks are trace fossils—evidence of activity, not anatomy. Paleontologists group them into “ichnogenera,” names based on their form.

• Theropods, the meat-eating dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus, left narrow, three-toed prints (tridactyl) with claw marks. Their tracks often show long, slender toes and a V-shaped outline.
• Ornithopods, the plant-eaters like Iguanodon, also made three-toed prints, but theirs are broader with blunt toes—built for walking on both two and four legs.
• Sauropods, the long-necked giants, left large round or oval footprints—massive impressions of their column-like feet, often paired with crescent-shaped handprints nearby.
• Ankylosaurs and stegosaurs left shorter, wider tracks, with toe impressions that resemble stubby, armored stumps.

Theropod Track

You can see spectacular dinosaur tracks across the world and close to home in western Canada. 

The Peace Region of British Columbia boasts the Tumbler Ridge Global Geopark, where hundreds of Cretaceous-era footprints adorn ancient riverbeds. 

In Alberta, the Dinosaur Provincial Park and the Willow Creek tracksites near Lethbridge preserve both sauropod and theropod prints. 

Farther south, classic trackways appear in Utah’s St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site and Colorado’s Picketwire Canyonlands, where sauropods once waded through ancient mudflats.

If you spot a fossil track, look closely at its size, toe count, and depth. 

Is it long and narrow, hinting at a swift predator, or broad and round, evidence of a lumbering herbivore? 

These shapes tell stories—of migration, of pursuit, of entire ecosystems now long vanished—each print a footprint not just in rock, but in time itself.

Definitely take a photo if you are able and if within cell range, drop a GPS pin to mark the spot to share with local experts when you get home.

Sometimes, you can find something amazing but it takes a while for others to believe you. This happened up in Tumbler Ridge when the first dino tracks were found.

Flatbed Creek Dino Tracks

In the summer of 2000, two curious boys exploring a creek bed near Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, made a discovery that would put their small northern town on the paleontological map. 

While splashing along Flatbed Creek, Mark Turner and Daniel Helm noticed a series of large, three-toed impressions pressed deep into the sandstone—too regular to be random. 

They had stumbled upon the fossilized footprints of dinosaurs that had walked there some 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous. 

Their find sparked scientific interest that led to the establishment of the Tumbler Ridge Museum and later the Tumbler Ridge Global Geopark. 

Since then, paleontologists have uncovered thousands of tracks in the area—from nimble theropods to massive sauropods—etched into the ancient riverbeds and preserving a vivid record of dinosaurs on the move in what was once a lush coastal plain. 

MORNING LIGHT: HAPPY 2018

KAYAK SAILING: WEST COAST

HOLA TITAN!

Mike Trask, Titan occidentalis, Fernie, BC

Titanites occidentalis, the second of these giant ammonite fossils recovered at Coal Mountain near Fernie, British Columbia.

The first was about one-third the size and was identified as Lytoceras, a fast-moving nektonic carnivore. This specimen, found in 2004, is significantly larger and relatively rare in North America. With no ruler of an appropriate size, you can see Mike Trask sitting in for scale.

It has been identified as a Titanites occidentalis, (Western Giant), the second known specimen of this extinct fossil species. The first was discovered in 1947 in nearby Coal Creek by a British Columbia Geophysical Society mapping team.

Titanities is an extinct ammonite cephalopod genus within the family Dorsoplanitidae that lived during the upper Tithonian state of the Late Jurassic, some 152 to 145 million years ago.

In the summer of 1947, a field crew was mapping coal outcrops for the BC Geological Survey east of Fernie. One of the students reported finding “a fossil truck tire.” Fair enough. The similarity of size and optics are pretty close to your average Goodridge.

A few years later, GSC Paleontologist Hans Frebold described and named the fossil Titanites occidentalis, after the large Jurassic ammonites from Dorset, England.

The name comes from Greek mythology. Tithonus, as you may recall, was Prince of Troy. He fell in love with Eos, the Greek Goddess of the Dawn. Eos begged Zeus to make her mortal lover immortal. Zeus granted her wish but did not grant Tithonus eternal youth. He did indeed live forever, aging hideously. Ah, Zeus, you old trickster.

It is a clever play on time placement. Dawn being the beginning of the day and the Tithonian being the dawn of the Cretaceous.

Clever Hans!

TUSKED TITANS OF THE ARCTIC: WALRUS

A lazy walrus lounges on an ice floe, its massive, blubbery body shimmering under the low Arctic sun. 

With a deep, rumbling sigh, it shifts its weight and scratches an itch on its side—more out of habit than necessity. Life, for this marine titan, moves at the pace of the tides.

Odobenus rosmarus, the walrus is the only surviving member of the family Odobenidae, a once-diverse group of pinnipeds that includes extinct relatives such as Dusignathus and Pontolis. 

Fossil remains place their lineage back to the late Miocene, around 10–11 million years ago. Early odobenids first appeared in the North Pacific and were more varied than the tusked, bottom-feeding walrus we know today—some had shorter tusks or none at all, and many hunted fish rather than clams.

These ancient walruses belonged to a broader superfamily, the Pinnipedia, which also includes seals and sea lions. Genetic and fossil evidence suggests pinnipeds split from terrestrial carnivores roughly 25–30 million years ago, likely from bear-like ancestors that took to the water during the Oligocene. Odobenids evolved later, perfecting their specialization as suction feeders. 

Their powerful tongues can vacuum soft-bodied mollusks straight from their shells—a skill that defines modern walrus diets.

Today, walruses inhabit the icy Arctic and subarctic waters of the Northern Hemisphere, with two recognized subspecies: the Atlantic walrus, O. r. rosmarus, found in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, and the Pacific walrus, O. r. divergens, ranging from the Bering Sea to the Chukchi Sea. They prefer shallow continental shelf regions where bivalves abound and haul out on sea ice or rocky shores in vast, noisy colonies.

Despite their ponderous appearance, walruses are powerful swimmers and social creatures with intricate communication and hierarchy systems. Their tusks—elongated canines present in both males and females—serve for dominance displays, hauling out, and defense. 

To Arctic peoples, walruses have long been vital for food, hides, and ivory, woven into traditional lifeways and mythology.

In Inuktitut, the word for walrus is “aiviq” (ᐊᐃᕕᖅ). It’s pronounced roughly eye-vik or ay-vik, depending on the dialect. The plural form is “aiviat” (ᐊᐃᕕᐊᑦ). The walrus, aiviq, holds deep cultural and spiritual importance in Inuit communities, long valued for its meat, ivory, and hide—vital resources for survival in the Arctic.

From Miocene shores to the modern polar ice, the walrus story is one of adaptation and endurance—a lineage that has survived shifting seas and ice ages, still scratching its ancient itch beneath the northern sun.