CRETACEOUS BONE BEDS

Einiosaurus procurvicornis was a horned dinosaur that roamed North America 74 million years ago. We find their bones in mass bone beds in Cretaceous outcrops of Montana and the Blackfeet Nation. The fossils have been recovered from rich bonebeds, largely consisting of only Einiosaurus fossils. Bonebeds with only one species are called monospecific bonebeds. But why do they occur? ⁣

⁣The most commonly suggested reason is that a herd of animals was suddenly killed by a natural disaster, like a volcanic eruption or flood. 

Their bodies were buried and remained in proximity to each other as they preserved, and today excavations uncover the remains of the unfortunate herd. Multiple other monospecific bonebeds have been found for other species of horned dinosaurs, such as Achelousaurus, causing researchers to suggest some groups of horned dinosaurs did exhibit herding behaviour— and that sometimes they met sudden unfortunate ends. But is sudden mass death from a natural disaster the only reason for monospecific bonebeds? ⁣

⁣Researchers say no. While the monospecific nature is still largely argued to represent herding in many cases, natural disaster is not always the cause of death. Sometimes large numbers of animals die from disease or starvation. Their carcasses could later be pushed together and buried by an event like a mudflow unrelated to their deaths. Their bones could also sit on the surface for years before an event that buries them. ⁣

⁣To understand the cause of a bonebed, researchers look at the bones themselves and the sediment that surrounds them. Bonebeds can tell us a lot about how these animals were living— but there is a lot to be learned from trying to figure out how they died, too. ⁣

Currie, P. J., & Padian, K. (Eds.). (1997). Encyclopedia of dinosaurs. Elsevier. • Rogers, R. R. (1989). Taphonomy of three monospecific dinosaur bone beds in the Late Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation northwestern Montana: Evidence for dinosaur mass mortality related to episodic drought. Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 5871. • Sampson, S. D. (1995). 

Two new horned dinosaurs from the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of Montana; with a phylogenetic analysis of the Centrosaurinae (Ornithischia: Ceratopsidae). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 15(4), 743-760. • Schmitt, J. G., Jackson, F. D., & Hanna, R. R. (2014). Debris flow origin of an unusual late Cretaceous hadrosaur bonebed in the Two Medicine Formation of western Montana. Hadrosaurs. Indiana Press, Bloomington, 486-501.

DINOSAUR TRACKWAY

 

FOSSIL BEES AND FIRST NATION HISTORY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MIGHTY EAGLE: KWIKW (KW-EE-KW)

Bald Eagle / Kwikw / Haliaeetus leucocephalus

A mighty Bald Eagle sitting with wings spread looks to be controlling the weather with his will as much as being subject to it. This fellow has just taken a dip for his evening meal and is drying his feathers in the wind. 

As you can imagine, waterlogged feathers make flight difficult. Their wings are built for graceful soaring and gliding on updrafts of warm air called thermals. 

Their long feathers are slotted, easily separating so air flows smoothly and giving them the added benefit of soaring at slower speeds. 

As well as his wings, this fellow is also drying off his white head feathers. A bald eagle's white head can make it look bald from a distance but that is not where the name comes from. It is from the old English word balde, meaning white.

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakiutl First Nations of the Pacific Northwest — or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala — an eagle is known as kwikw (kw-ee-kw) and an eagle's nest is called a kwigwat̕si. 

Should you encounter an eagle and wish to greet them in Kwak'wala, you would just say yo. Yup, just yo. They would like your yo hello better if you offered them some fresh fish. They dine on all sorts of small mammals, fish and birds but are especially fond of pink salmon or ha̱nu'n (han-oon).

These living dinosaurs are a true homage to their lineage. They soar our skies with effortless grace. Agile, violent and beautiful, these highly specialized predators can catch falling prey mid-flight and dive-bomb into rivers to snag delicious salmon. 

Their beauty and agility are millions of years in the making. From their skeletal structure to their blood cells, today’s birds share a surprising evolutionary foundation with reptiles. 

Between 144 million and 66 million years ago, during the Mesozoic era, we see the first birds evolve. Eventually, tens of millions of years ago, an ancient group of birds called kites developed. Like today’s bald eagle, early kites are thought to have scavenged and hunted fish.

About 36 million years ago, the first eagles descended from kites, their smaller cousins. First to appear were the early sea eagles, which — like kites — continued to prey on fish and whose feet were free of feathers, along with booted eagles, which had feathers below the knee. Fossils of Bald Eagles are very rare and date to the late Pleistocene. Eagles are known from the early Pleistocene of Florida, but they are extinct species not closely related to the bald eagle.

Like the kites, bald eagles have featherless feet, but they also developed a range of other impressive adaptations that help them hunt fish and fowl in a watery environment. Each foot has four powerful toes with sharp talons. Tiny projections on the bottom of their feet called “spicules” help bald eagles grasp their prey. A bald eagle also has serrations on the roof of its mouth that help it hold slippery fish, and incredibly, the black pigment in its wing feathers strengthens them against breakage when they dive head first into water.

Obviously, there is much more than their striking white heads that sets these iconic raptors apart from the crowd. Their incredible physiology, built for life near the water, is literally millions of years in the making. 

CANADIAN ROCKIES

CRANEO DE TIGRE DE DIENTES DE SABLE

Machairodus aphanistus, Batallones, Madrid 9 Ma. Vallesiense, Mioceno

MOSASAURS: APEX MARINE PREDATORS

A Mosasaur Snatches a Tasty Bite

Slip beneath the surface of a Late Cretaceous ocean—if you dare—and you enter the domain of one of Earth’s most spectacular marine predators: the mosasaur. 

Long before whales ruled the deep, these muscular, paddle-limbed lizards patrolled warm inland seas with the confidence of creatures that knew nothing could challenge them for long.

Imagine a body built like a torpedo, jaws hinged like a trap, and teeth designed for the dual purposes of slicing and holding. Some species stretched over 15 metres long—longer than a city bus—yet they moved with the agility of oversized crocodiles on turbo mode. 

With a powerful tail fin beating side to side, they could lunge forward in explosive bursts, swallowing ammonites whole or ambushing unsuspecting sharks. Yes—sharks were on their menu.

Scientifically, mosasaurs are a wonderful paradox. They were reptiles—close cousins of modern monitor lizards—but they evolved flippers, streamlined skulls, and even tail flukes remarkably similar to those of whales and ichthyosaurs. Convergent evolution at its flashy finest.

Mosasaurs hunted in our Cretaceous Seas

Their fossils also tell a tale of planetary drama. The chalky cliffs of Europe, the badlands of Morocco, the ancient seaways of Kansas—all hold the remains of these sea dragons. 

Every jawbone and vertebra is a relic from a vanished ocean that once split North America in two.

Along the rugged shores of Vancouver Island, mosasaurs left their mark as well. 

In the Nanaimo Group—marine deposits laid down in the twilight of the Cretaceous—researchers have uncovered beautifully preserved remains that once cruised the ancient Pacific coastline. 

Species recorded from these rocks include Tylosaurus pembinensis, Plioplatecarpus marshii, Mosasaurus hoffmanni, Clidastes liodontus, and the smaller but no less impressive Phosphorosaurus ponpetelegans. 

These fossils, often found in shale and sandstone, offer a rare West Coast window into the last great age of marine reptiles.

And yet, their spectacular reign was brief. When the asteroid struck 66 million years ago, the seas dimmed, the food chains collapsed, and even these titans couldn’t outswim extinction.

But in stone, they still roar. Their skeletons—sleek, predatory, impossibly elegant—remind us that Earth’s oceans were once ruled by lizards the size of whales… and that nature occasionally writes stories no novelist would dare invent.

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

SAUROPTERYGIANS

The sauropterygians are a group of diverse extinct aquatic marine reptiles that developed from terrestrial ancestors soon after the end Permian extinction. We see their earliest rellies about 245 million years ago, during the Triassic.

Their oldest relatives were small, semi-aquatic reptiles with four limbs that were adapted for paddling around in shallow water. By the end of the Triassic, they had grown to much larger animals fully adapted to a life at sea and were incapable of coming to shore.

Throughout the Jurassic and the Cretaceous developed a diverse range of body plans adapted for a life in the water. They went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous along with the dinosaurs.

The best known of the sauropterygians are the long neck Plesiosaurs but this taxon includes a whole host of other interesting Mesozoic marine reptiles. then flourished during the Mesozoic.

Sauropterygians are united by a radical adaptation of their pectoral girdle, designed to support powerful flipper strokes. While Tyrannosaurs ruled the land, and flying reptiles ruled the skies, the mighty Mosasaurs dominated the seas. They were late to the aquatic party, being the last clade to evolve. Photo: By Ryan Somma - PlesiosaurusUploaded by FunkMonk, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6735975

SILENT WANDERER

CRANEO DE OSO

Ursus spelaeus. Aitzkirri, Guipuzcoa. Pleistoceno superior

BRITISH COLUMBIA'S GREAT BEARS

Hiking in BC, both grizzly and black bear sightings are common. Nearly half the world's population, some 25,000 grizzlies, roam the Canadian wilderness. This photo of Edward (yes, we named him) was taken off the west coast of Vancouver Island by Larissa Harding of Great Bear Nature Tours.

Both bear families 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 very large descendents.

An average Grizzly weighs in around 800 lbs (363 kg), but a recent find in Alaska tops the charts at 1600 lbs (726 kg). This mighty beast stood 12' 6' high at the shoulder, 14' to the top of his head. It is one of the largest grizzly bears ever recorded. This past month this king of the forest was seen once again in the Washington Cascades -- the first sighting in 50 years.

TORVOSAURUS TANNERI

The genus Torvosaurus includes a unique species of megalosaurid therapod dinosaur.

This fellow is from the Morrison Formation, western United States but his kind spread widely and fossil specimens of the same species have been found in the Lourinha Formation near Lisbon, Portugal. He is currently on display at the Museo Nacional De Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain.

Torvosaurus were one of the largest and most robust carnivores of the Jurassic. These "savage lizards" were true to their name. Skilled hunters, who could grow from 9 to ll meters long, weigh over 2 tons, were bipedal with powerful dentition and strong claws on their forelegs, they ruled the Upper Jurassic.

While currently speculative, there seems to be a high likelihood that these bad boys hunted and dined upon the big sauropods of their time.