CERATITES NODOSUS

A lovely beast of an ammonite, Cératites nodosus, from the collections of the deeply awesome Ange Mirabet. This species is an extinct genus of nektonic marine carnivore from limestone deposits near Alsace on the Rhine River plain of northeastern France.

You can see the nice ceratitic suture pattern on this specimen with his smooth lobes and frilly saddles. The sutures would have increased the strength of the shell and allowed Ceratites (de Haan, 1825) to dive deeper, bearing the additional pressure of the sea in search of food.

Ammonite shells are made up predominantly of calcium carbonate in the form of aragonite and proteinaceous organic matrix or conchiolin arranged in layers: a thin outer prismatic layer, a nacreous layer and an inner lining of prismatic habitat. While their outer shells are generally aragonite, aptychus — those hard shelly plates you see — are distinct as they are composed of calcite.

These ammonites lived in open shallow, to subtidal and basinal environments some 247 to 221 million years ago. We've found them, thus far, in just over forty collections from nearly ninety fossil deposits around the globe. Fossils of species have been found in the Triassic of Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Thailand, Turkey and the United States.

The parent taxon is Ceratitinae according to E. T. Tozer 1981. That's our own Tim Tozer, one of the great knights-errant of the Triassic timescale. Born a Brit but spent his life exploring the wilds of Canada and the Arctic Archipelago. It was Tim Tozer and Norm Silberling who published the classic milestones of the Triassic timescale, "Biostratigraphic Classification of the Marine Triassic in North America, Geological Society of America, Special Paper 110." The Global Triassic: Bulletin 41 from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science by Lucas and Spielmann honours them in their work. Collection of Ange Mirabet, Strasbourg, France.

OH, CORONICERAS!

This Jurassic ammonite is from an all but inaccessible site in Sayward, Bonanza Group, Vancouver Island. He's a Coroniceras with a truly marvellous keel.

By the time these ammonites were being buried in sediment, Wrangellia, the predominately volcanic terrane that now forms Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands, had made its way to the northern mid-latitudes.

Within the basal part of the sequence, sedimentary beds are found interbedded with lapilli and crystal-tuffs. Here you'll see maroon tuffaceous sandstone, orange-grey sandstone, granule sandstone and conglomerate. Within them we find ammonites nestled in with gastropods and pelecypods. 

While the fossiliferous outcrop is quite small, the Bonanza group is much larger, estimated to be at least 1000 metres thick. The site is quite small and in an active logging area, so the window to collect was limited. The drive up the mountain was thrilling as there had just been heavy rains and the road was washed out and narrowed until it was barely the width of our wheelbase and then narrowed further to be just shy of the width of the vehicle — thrilling, to say the least. So scary that my passengers all got out as there was a high probability of going head-first over the edge. I navigating by some handwritten field notes and a wee map on a paper napkin that should have read, "park at the bottom and hike up." Nope. We didn't park at the bottom and were halfway up the mountain before the road narrowed out. Too narrow to turn around, so the only way was up. 

Coroniceras with a sweet, sweet keel

Graham Beard from Qualicum Beach was the fellow who showed me the site and drew the wee map for me. I cannot recall everyone on the trip, but Perry Poon was there — he shot a video of the drive up that he described as thrilling. I've never seen it but would like to one day — and so was Patricia Coutts with her lovely Doberman. 

She and I had just done a trip up to Goldbridge where the cliff we were on had turned into a landslide into a ravine so she was feeling understandably cautious about the power of Mother Nature. Picture the angle, the hood of my jeep riding high and hiding what remained of the road beneath and a lovely stick shift that made you roll backwards a wee bit with every move to put it into gear. So, without being able to see the very narrow path beneath, I had to just keep going. Both Perry and Patricia helped with filling in the potholes so my tires would have something to grip. I bent the frame on the jeep heading up and had some explaining to do when I returned it to the car rental place. 

In the end, we found what we were looking for. Memekay yields a mix of ammonites, gastropods and bivalves. Many of them poorly preserved. It was a hell of a ride but well worth the effort as we found some great fossils and with them more information on the palaeontology and geology of Vancouver Island. Just look at the keel on this beauty.

SPOTTED CLEANER SHRIMP: FISH WASH

"Wash that for you, sir?" If you were a fish living in the warm turquoise waters off the coast of Bonaire in the southern Caribbean Sea, you may not hear those words, but you'd see the shrimp sign language equivalent. It seems Periclimenes yucatanicus or the Spotted Cleaner Shrimp are doing a booming business in the local reefs by setting up a Fish Wash service.

That's right, a Fish Wash. You'd be hard-pressed to find a terrestrial Molly Maid with two opposable thumbs as studious and hardworking as this wee marine beauty. You'll find them each day cleaning and snacking on a host of parasites. As many as twenty to thirty shrimp gather together to assemble a  highly-efficient marine cleaning station. They're even open to partnerships and mergers, partnering up with Cleaner Wrasse, or cleaner fish, for larger, high-end clients.

Spotted cleaner shrimp are about 2.5 cm long and have a delightful transparent body with telltale white and brown spots. Their legs, or chelae, are striped in purple, white and red. They live about 24 metres (or 79 ft) down on the seafloor in many of our planet's most beautiful waters. Aside from the Caribbean, they also enjoy setting up shop in the Bahamas, southern Florida and live as far south as Panama and Columbia. They are carnivorous crustaceans in the family, Palaemonidae.

This quiet marine mogul is turning out to be one of the ocean's top entrepreneurs. Keeping its host and diet clean and green, the spotted shrimp hooks up with the locals, in this case, local sea anemones and sets up a fish wash. Picture a car wash but without the noise and teenage boys. The signage posted is the shrimps' natural colouring which attracts fish from around the reefs. They sway back and forth to indicate that they are open for business.

Wash on, wash off.

Once within reach, the shrimp cleans the surface of the fish, giving the fish a buff and the shrimp its daily feed. This is good news for the shrimp, especially this time of year as they breed and brood their eggs in summer. 

After hatching, the larvae pass through a series of sadly, tasty planktonic stages before setting up a fish wash of their own. These cuties form a solid base for the oceanic food chain. Once they are older, they gain some protection from being eaten by their clients by a special signalling system that essentially shouts, "just here cooperation not as food." Here's to Periclimenes for keeping up the family business.

HETEROPTERAN OF THE GREEN RIVER

A delightful Heteropteran collected this past year by Jim Barkley from Eocene exposures of the Green River Formation of Western Colorado. The specimen looks like he's been brushed as ink across rough watercolour paper. The Green River Formation boasts very fine detail in the preservation of the fossils found here. 

This was once the bottom of an extensive series of Eocene lakes. The fossils record which species called this area home and what the climate was like they lived in some 50 million years ago. It was warmer and wetter than that area today. Think temperate to sub-tropical, with temperatures ranging from 15 to 20 degrees Celsius. The Green River Formation has layers and layers of fine-grain sedimentary rock particularly abundant in beautifully preserved fossil fish, eleven species of reptiles including a 13.5ft crocodile, an armadillo-like mammal, Brachianodon westorum, bats, birds and other freshwater aquatic goodies.

CRASPEDITES OF RUSSIA

This stunning block with the black matrix holds two lovely ammonoids found near the town of Rybinsk in the Yaroslavl region of Russia just northeast of Moscow. Interestingly, both Miss Russia 1998 and the first women in space hail from here, Anna Malova and Valentina Tereshkova respectively. Beyond bright, beautiful women, the area is home to some of the most interesting fossil specimens on the globe. 

You can see two of them here. The lovely larger ammonoid with the oil-in-water colouring is Craspedites okensis (d'Orbigny, 1945). Craspedites is an ammonoid cephalopod included in the Perisphinctaceae that lived during the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, found in Canada, Greenland, Poland and Russia.

The genus Craspedites was first described by Aleksei Petrovich Pavlow in 1892. It is characterized by a small — up to about 5 cm in diameter — smooth, involute shell with simple ammonitic sutures. The whorl section is rounded with a smooth centre and small umbilicus exposing the dorsal portion of the inner whorls. Craspedites was thought to be restricted to the Upper Jurassic Tithonian until the discovery of a new species, C. sachsi, from the Berriasian of Russia (A. E. Igolnikov, 2012) named in honour of palaeontologist V.N. Sachs.

The smaller ammonite you see on the bottom of this block is Craspedites sp. from Jurassic deposits of the Volgian Stage, the zone subditus — 150 - 140.2 million years old. The photo credit belongs to the deeply awesome Emil Black. This block is in his personal collection. If you're interested in learning more about the ammonites from Russia, there is a publication from Ernst Gerold Westermann you may want to read, The Jurassic Ammonite Zones of the Soviet Union, Issue 223.

A. E. Igolnikov (2012). Craspedites (Vitaliites?) sachsi, a New Boreal Berriasian ammonite species of the North of Eastern Siberia (Nordvik Peninsula) Paleontological Journal. 46 (1): 12–15. Here's the link if you'd like to read it: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20131017012543/http://rogov.zwz.ru/Igolnikov%2C2012_Craspedites_sachsi_en.pdf

AMMONITES OF THE VOLGA REGION

The Heteromorph, Jaubertites (Audouliceras) renauxianum

A stunningly beautiful example of the heteromorph ammonite Jaubertites (Audouliceras) renauxianum (d'Orbigny, 1842) from the Volga region in Russia. The Volga region encompasses the drainage basin of the Volga River, the longest river in Europe, in central and southern European Russia. The area is well-known for the beautiful fossil assemblages found here.

These magnificent Jaubertites (Audouliceras) renauxianum heteromorph ammonites are often composites — built with exceptional artful skill from various partial specimens.

We sometimes see them cut in two symmetrical parts and glued into a matrix then doctored up a bit for sale. The practice is frowned upon both scientifically and commercially but continues as does the demand for these exceptional specimens. This beauty is in the collection of José Juárez Ruiz and is complete with some minor restorations. I love these chunky Jaubertites and particularly appreciate the beautiful oil in water colouring in the nacre.

The second photo here shows a lovely busy block of ammonites with Deshayesites volgensis (Sasonova, 1958), and Aconeceras (Sinzovia) trautscholdi (Sinzow. 1870) from Lower Cretaceous, Aptian, (120 - 112 MYA), deposits in the v. Shilovka, Ulyanovsk Region of Russia. This beauty is in the collections of Emil Black. While Emil has counselled me that there are some fundamental challenges with the interpretation of these faunal groups, I will share what is available from the current literature.

Aptian deposits near the Volga River between Ul'yanovsk and Saratov have been studied for more than a century. The area produces some of the most beautiful and sought after ammonite specimens in the world. I've never had the pleasure of collecting in this region but follow the literature and local collectors with enthusiastic interest. Looking at the specimens from here, I'm sure you can appreciate why.

Deshayesites volgensis & Aconeceras trautscholdi

The age of lower Aptian deposits was traditionally established based on changing ammonite assemblages of the family Deshayesitidae. The beauty you see to the right with the lovely ribbing and coloured from cream through to pink and blue is the hallmark species of this area.

But Deshayesitidae are not the only specimens found here. The vast array of heteromorphic ammonites  —  the Ancyloceratidae, inhabitants of relatively deep basins, has made it possible to propose a new scheme of ammonoid zonation in the lower Aptian epipelagic deposits of the Russian plate.

Many of the identified ancyloceratids were established here for the first time. The analysis of coexisting deshayesitids and heteromorphs enables a correlation of stratigraphic schemes for the monomorphic Deshayesitidae and heteromorphic Ancyloceratidae.

The described generic taxa and species are Volgoceratoides I. Michailova et Baraboshkin, gen. nov., V. schilovkensis I. Michailova et Baraboshkin, sp. nov., Koeneniceras I. Michailova et Baraboshkin, gen. nov., K. tenuiplicatum (von Koenen, 1902), K. rareplicatum I. Michailova et Baraboshkin, sp. nov.

In some sections of the Saratov Volga area, specifically in the central part of the Russian Platform, we find both offshore and nearshore lithofacies of the epicontinental Middle Russian Sea. Here we see simultaneous changes in ammonite and belemnite successions that speak to an environmental shift. The significant influence of anoxic events on faunal turnovers in marine communities is well-established. However, many studies are focused on the impact of anoxic conditions on benthic organisms, not on the hunter-gatherers living higher up in the sea column and food chain. For this reason, coeval changes in pelagic cephalopod assemblages remain relatively poorly studied and marginally understood.

Belemnites, represented by the late members of the family Oxyteuthididae, are common in the interval directly preceding the anoxic event, but totally disappear with the onset of the black shale deposition. We see a reduction in the shell size of the Deshayesites ammonites across the mudstone – black shale boundary (maximum shell diameter of adults reduces from ∼20 cm to 7–8 cm).

Some other ammonites become numerous (Sinzovia) within the black shale interval or show the first occurrence in it (Koeneniceras and Volgoceratoides). The diminishing of Deshayesites shell size during the early Aptian OAE may have been caused by palaeoenvironmental factors such as progressive warming and regional input of brackish water.

The significant influence of anoxic events on faunal turnovers in marine communities is well-established. However, many studies are focused on the impact of anoxic conditions on benthic organisms, not on the hunter-gatherers living higher up in the sea column. This means that coeval changes in pelagic cephalopod assemblages remain relatively poorly understood.

Photo: Jaubertites (Audouliceras) renauxianum (d'Orbigny, 1842) collection of José Juárez Ruiz.
Photo: Deshayesites volgensis (Sasonova, 1958), and Aconeceras (Sinzovia) trautscholdi (Sinzow. 1870) collections of Emil Black. The diameter on the Deshayesites shown here is 70 mm.

Rogov, Mikhail & Shchepetova, Elena & Ippolitov, Alexei & Seltser, Vladimir & Mironenko, Aleksandr & Pokrovsky, Boris & Desai, Bhawanisingh. (2019). Response of cephalopod communities on abrupt environmental changes during the early Aptian OAE1a in the Middle Russian Sea. Cretaceous Research. 10.1016/j.cretres.2019.01.007.

E. Yu. Baraboshkin and I. A. Mikhailova. New Stratigraphic Scheme of the Lower Aptian in the Volga River Middle Courses. Stratigraphy arid Geological Correlation, Vol 10, No 6, 2002, pp 603-626 Translated from Stratigrafiy a Geologicheskaya Korrelyatsiya, Vol 10, No 6, 2002, pp 82-105

HETTANGIAN: TETHYAN AFFINITY

This Hettangian ammonite, Alsatites proaries, is a lovely example of the cephalopods cruising our ancient oceans at that time. Alsatites is an extinct genus of cephalopod belonging to the Ammonite subclass. They lived during the Early Jurassic, Hettangian till the Sinemurian and are generally extremely evolute, many whorled with a broad keel. Or, as described by one of my very young friends, he looks like a coiled snake you make in pottery class.

It is during the Hettangian that the smooth shelled ammonite genus Psiloceras first appears. They span the time between 201.3 ± 0.2 Ma and 199.3 ± 0.3 Ma (million years ago). For my European friends, the Hettangian is the time span in which the marine limestone, shales and clay Lias of western Europe were deposited.

The Hettangian is an interesting little period of our history. It spans the time between 201.3 ± 0.2 Ma and 199.3 ± 0.3 Ma (million years ago). For my European friends, the Hettangian is the time in which the marine limestone, shales and clay Lias of western Europe were deposited. In British Columbia, Canada, we see the most diverse middle and late Hettangian (Early Jurassic) ammonite assemblages in the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii), an archipelago about 50 km off British Columbia's northern Pacific coast. In total, 53 ammonite taxa are described of which Paradasyceras carteri, Franziceras kennecottense, Pleuroacanthites charlottensis, Ectocentrites pacificus and Curviceras haidae are new.

In general, North American Early Jurassic ammonites are of Tethyan affinity or endemic to the eastern Pacific. For this reason, a separate zonation for the Hettangian and Sinemurian of the Western Cordillera of North America was established. Taylor et al. (2001), wrote up and published on much of this early research though, at the time, very little Canadian information was included.

Longridge, L. M., et al. “Three New Species of the Hettangian (Early Jurassic) Ammonite Sunrisites from British Columbia, Canada.” Journal of Paleontology, vol. 82, no. 1, 2008, pp. 128–139. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20144175. Accessed 27 Jan. 2020.

Tozer, ET (Tim): Marine Triassic faunas of North America: Their significance for assessing plate and terrane movements. Geol Rundsch 71, 1077-1104 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01821119

Danner, W. (Ted): Limestone resources of southwestern British Columbia. Montana Bur. Mines & Geol., Special publ. 74: 171-185, 1976.

Davis, G., Monger, JWH & Burchfiel, BC: Mesozoic construction of the Cordilleran “collage”, central British Columbia to central California. Pacific Coast Paleography symposium 2, Soc. Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, Los Angeles: 1-32, 1978.

Gibson, DW: Triassic rocks of the Rocky Mountain foothills and front ranges of northeastern British Columbia and west-central Alberta. Geol. Surv. Canada Bull. 247, 1975.

Photo: Alsatites proaries, Coll. Reiter, Neoammoniten, 30 July 2011, 19:26:10

EXPLORING THE GSC COLLECTIONS

From years of field collecting, the drawers of the Geological Survey in Canada are filled to the brim. John Fam, Vice-Chair of the Vancouver Paleontological Society kindly lent me his photo from a recent field trip to the GSC.

Marine Triassic occurs on the North American Plate over a latitudinal spread of 46 degrees, from California to Ellesmere Island. At some intervals of time faunas on the Plate permit the discrimination of two or three provinces with distinctively different coeval faunas. The faunal differences are evidently related to paleolatitude and the provinces are designated LPL, MPL, HPL (low, mid, high paleolatitude). Nevada provides the diagnostic characters of the LPL province; northeastern British Columbia the MPL; the Sverdrup Basin the HPL. In the Lower Triassic and early Middle Triassic (Anisian), the distinction between the MPL and HPL provinces cannot be made. All three provinces are recognized in the Ladinian, Carnian and Norian deposits.

In the western tracts of the Cordillera, the part formed of suspect terranes, apparently allochthonous with respect to the North American Plate, marine faunas are known all the way from southern Alaska and Yukon to Mexico. Lower and Upper Triassic faunas from these terranes, including some which today are at 63 degrees north, have the characters of the LPL province.

Middle Triassic faunas from the terranes, as presently known, do not contribute significant data. In the terranes of the Western Cordillera, LPL faunas were now up to 3,000 km north of their counterparts on the American Plate. Through the fossil fauna assemblages, we can see this level of tectonic displacement.

Taking into account the faunas and the nature of the rocks, the Triassic palaeogeography is interpreted as a tectonically quiet west shore for the North American Plate, bordered by an open sea or ocean; then, well off-shore, a series of volcanic archipelagos shedding sediment into adjacent basins. Some were fringed or intermittently covered by coralline shoals and carbonate banks. Deeper basins were in between. The islands probably were within 30 degrees of the Triassic equator and extended offshore for about 5000 km, to the spreading ridge directly ancestral to the East Pacific Rise. The geography west of the spreading ridge was probably comparable.

Jurassic and later generation of crust at the ridge had driven some of the islands into the North American Plate; some probably to South America; others have gone west to Asia. Evidence is given that northern New Guinea, New Caledonia and New Zealand may have been at a north latitude of 30 degrees or more in the Triassic. The terranes now forming the Western Cordillera had probably amalgamated, and reached the North American Plate, before the end of the Jurassic.

At the end of the Rhaetian – part of the Triassic — most of the ammonites had died out. The Hettangian, a rather poorly understood 3 million year time interval followed the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction event. During the Hettangian, the new or  Neoammonites developed quite quickly. Within a million years, a fairly large, diverse selection of genera and species had risen to fill the void. The gap created by the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event was re-filled and our ability to "read the rocks' to understand their continued movement through tectonic plate shifting recommenced.

NORTH AMERICAN MIDDLE TRIASSIC AMMONOIDS

Grambergia sp. Early Anisian (Middle Triassic) Ammonoid

In the early 1980s, Tim Tozer, Geological Survey of Canada was looking at the spread of marine invertebrate fauna in the Triassic of North America. In the western terranes of the Cordillera, marine faunas from southern Alaska and Yukon to Mexico are known from the parts that are obviously allochthonous with regard to the North American plates.

Lower and upper Triadic faunas of these areas, as well as some that are today up to 63 ° North, have the characteristics of the lower paleo latitudes. As far as is known, Middle Triadic faunas in these zones do not provide any significant data.

In the western Cordillera, these faunas of the lower paleo latitudes can be found up to 3,000 km north of their counterparts on the American plate. This indicates a tectonic shift of significant magnitude. There are marine triads on the North American plate over 46 latitudes from California to Ellesmere Island. For some periods, two to three different faunal provinces can be distinguished. The differences infaunal species are linked, not surprisingly, to their paleolatitude. They are called LPL, MPL, HPL (lower, middle, higher paleolatitude).

I had the opportunity to head to Nevada last year to look at the Triassic ammonoids and ichthyosaur remains in the West Humboldt Mountains. Nevada provides the diagnostic features of the lower (LPL); northeastern British Columbia that of the middle (MPL) and Sverdrup Basin, the large igneous province on Axel Heiberg Island and Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada near the rifted margin of the Arctic Ocean, that of the higher paleolatitude (HPL).

A distinction between the provinces of the middle and the higher paleo-situations can not be made for the lower Triassic and lower Middle Triassic (anise). However, all three provinces can be seen in the deposits of Ladin, Kam and Nor.

In the early 2000s, as part of a series of joint UBC, VIPS and VanPS fossil field trips (and then Chair of the VanPS), I explored much of the lower faunal outcrops of northeastern British Columbia. It was my first time seeing many of British Columbia's Triassic outcrops. The Nevada faunal assemblages are a lovely match. The quality of preservation at localities like Fossil Hill in the Humboldt Mountains of Nevada, perhaps the most famous and important locality for the Middle Triassic (Anisian/Ladinian) of North America, is truly outstanding. Aside from sheer beauty and spectacular preservation, the ammonoids and belemnites are cosied up to some spectacular well-preserved ichthyosaur remains.

Tozer's interest in our marine invert friends was their distribution. How and when did certain species migrate, cluster, evolve — and for those that were prolific, how could their occurrence — and therefore significance — aide in an assessment of plate and terrane movements that would help us to determine paleolatitudinal significance. I share a similar interest but not exclusive to our cephalopod fauna. The faunal collection of all of the invertebrates holds appeal.

This broader group held an interest for J.P. Smith who published on the marine fauna in the early 1900s based on his collecting in scree and outcrops of the West Humboldt Mountains, Nevada. He published his first monograph on North American Middle Triassic marine invertebrate fauna in 1914.

N. J. Siberling from the US Geological Survey published on these same Nevada outcrops in 1962. His work included nearly a dozen successive ammonite faunas, many of which were variants on previously described species. Both their works would inform what would become a lifelong piecing together of the Triassic puzzle for Tozer.

If one looks at the fauna and the type of sediment, the palaeogeography of the Triassic can be interpreted as follows: a tectonically calm west coast of the North American plate that bordered on an open sea; in the area far from the coast, a series of volcanic archipelagos delivered sediment to the adjacent basins. Some were lined or temporarily covered with coral wadding and carbonate banks. Deeper pools were in between. The islands were probably within 30 degrees of the triadic equator. They moved away from the coast up to about 5000 km from the forerunner of the East Pacific Ridge. The geographical situation west of the back was probably similar.

Jurassic and later generations of the crust from near the back have brought some of the islands to the North American plate; some likely to South America; others have drifted west, to Asia. There are indications that New Guinea, New Caledonia and New Zealand were at a northern latitude of 30 ° or more during the Triassic period.

NAPPING KOALA

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.

POKEY TACHYCLOSSIDAE

This pokey fellow 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.  

Like the platypus, they are equipped with electro sensors, but while the platypus has 40,000 electroreceptors on its bill, the long-beaked echidna has only 2,000. The short-beaked echidna, which lives in a drier environment, has no more than 400 at the tip of its snout.

Echidnas evolved between 20 and 50 million years ago, descending from a platypus-like monotreme. Their ancestors were aquatic, but echidnas have adapted to life on land. Today, they weigh in at about 7 kg today but back in the Pleistocene, they were much larger. The Giant Echnida, Megalibwilia ramsayi was about 10% larger at 10 kg and Zaglossus hacketti was a whopping 30 kg. 

Fossil remains are relatively rare and sadly, incomplete, but they tell us potentially two other species of Echidna thriving in the Pleistocene. We also find Robust Echidna, Zaglossus robustus, in slightly older Miocene aged outcrops in a goldmine in Australia. The Giant Echnida's we find in the fossil record are relatives of the Long-Beaked Echidnas who live in New Guinea today.      

INUKSUK: STONE SENTINELS

An inuksuk or inukshuk, pronounced ih-nook-suuk — the human-shaped stone cairns built by the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, and other peoples of the Arctic regions of northern Canada, Greenland, and Alaska. 

These rocky sentinels stand as helpful reference markers for navigation. 

Translated from Inuktitut, the word inuksuk means that which acts in the capacity of a human, combining inuk or person and suk, to substitute.

KEUPPIA: UNCOVERING OCTOBRACHIA

A wonderful example of Keuppia levante (Fuchs, Bracchi & Weis, 2009), an extinct genus of octopus that swam our ancient seas 95 million years ago.

Keuppia is in the family Palaeoctopodidae, and one of the earliest representatives of the order Octopoda. These ancient marine beauties are in the class Cephalopoda making them relatives of our modern octopus, squid and cuttlefish.

There are two species of Keuppia, Keuppia hyperbolaris and Keuppia levante, both of which we find as fossils. We find their remains, along with those of the genus Styletoctopus, in Cretaceous-age Hâqel and Hjoula localities in Lebanon. 

For many years, Palaeoctopus newboldi (Woodward, 1896) from the Santonian limestones at Sâhel Aalma, Lebanon, was the only known pre‐Cenozoic coleoid cephalopod believed to have an unambiguous stem‐lineage representative of Octobrachia Fioroni. 

With the unearthing of some extraordinary specimens with exquisite soft‐part preservation in the Lebanon limestones, our understanding of ancient octopus morphology has blossomed. The specimens are from the sub‐lithographical limestones of Hâqel and Hâdjoula, in north‐west Lebanon. These localities are about 15 km apart, 45 km away from Beirut and 15 km away from the coastal city of Jbail. Fuchs et al. put a nice little map in their 2009 paper that I've included and referenced here.

Palaeoctopus newboldi had a spherical mantle sac, a head‐mantle fusion, eight equal arms armed with suckers, an ink sac, a medially isolated shell vestige, and a pair of (sub‐) terminal fins. The bipartite shell vestige suggests that Palaeoctopus belongs to the octopod stem‐lineage, as the sister taxon of the Octopoda, the Cirroctopoda, is characterized by an unpaired clasp‐like shell vestige (Engeser 1988; Haas 2002; Bizikov 2004).

It is from the comparisons of Canadian fauna combined with those from Lebanon and Japan that things really started to get interesting with fossil Octobrachia. Working with fossil specimens from the Campanian of Canada, Fuchs et al. (2007a ) published on the first record of an unpaired, saddle‐shaped shell vestige that might have belonged to a cirroctopod. 

Again from the Santonian–Campanian of Canada and Japan, Tanabe et al. (2008) reported on at least four different jaw morphotypes. Two of them (Paleocirroteuthis haggarti  Tanabe et al. , 2008 and Paleocirroteuthis pacifica  Tanabe et al ., 2008) have been interpreted as being of cirroctopod type, one of octopod type, and one of uncertain octobrachiate type. 

Interestingly Fuchs et al. have gone on to describe the second species of Palaeoctopus, the Turonian Palaeoctopus pelagicus from limestones at Vallecillo, Mexico. While more of this fauna will likely be recovered in time, their work is based solely on a medially isolated shell vestige.

Five new specimens have been found in the well-known Upper Cenomanian limestones at Hâqel and Hâdjoula in Lebanon that can be reliably placed within the Octopoda. Fuchs et al. described these exceptionally well‐preserved specimens and to discuss their morphology in the context of phylogeny and evolution in their 2008 paper (2009 publishing) in the Palaeontology Association Journal, Volume 51, Issue 1.

The presence of a gladius vestige in this genus shows a transition from squid to octopus in which the inner shell has divided in two in early forms to eventually be reduced to lateralized stylets, as can be seen in Styletoctopus.

The adorable fellow you see here with his remarkable soft-bodied preservation and inks sack and beak clearly visible is Keuppia levante. He hails from Late Cretaceous (Upper Cenomanian) limestone deposits near Hâdjoula, northwestern Lebanon. The vampyropod coleoid, Glyphiteuthis abisaadiorum n. sp., is also found at this locality. This specimen is in the collection of the deeply awesome David Appleton. 

Fuchs, D.; Bracchi, G.; Weis, R. (2009). "New octopods (Cephalopoda: Coleoidea) from the Late Cretaceous (Upper Cenomanian) of Hâkel and Hâdjoula, Lebanon". Palaeontology. 52: 65–81. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00828.x.

Photo credit: David Appleton. Figure Two: Topographic map of north‐western Lebanon with the outcrop area in the upper right-hand corner. Fuchs et al, 2009.