KWAKIUTL GRIZZLY BEAR FRONTLET BY CHIEF MUNGO MARTIN

A rare hand-carved and painted wooden frontlet attributed to the great Kwakiutl Chief Mungo Martin circa 1920. The work was attributed to Mungo Martin (1879-1962) by Peter McNair. 

The carving depicts a grizzly bear and is titled in pencil on the reverse. Works by this artist rarely if ever come up for sale. This rare piece will make a fine addition to anyone's collection. Martin was born in 1879 in Fort Rupert, British Columbia, to parents of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation. 

He was the son of Yaxnukwelas, a high-ranking First Nation Kwakiutl from Gilford Island. His mother was Q'omiga, also known by her English name, Sarah Finlay, who was the daughter of a Kwakwaka'wakw woman and a Scottish man working with the Hudson's Bay Company. 

Martin's father died when he was in his teen years. His mother married Yakuglas, also known in English as Charlie James. Martin's mother wanted her son to become a woodcarver and song maker, and held rituals to ensure this future

While still young, Martin regularly participated in the rituals, songs, arts, and traditions of the local Kwakwaka'wakw and North Coastal culture. This formed the basis of his knowledge of the Northwest Coast style, and he applied it to design, carving, and painting and lifelong song making. Martin was raised in the potlatch tradition practiced by the Kwakwaka'wakw, and all aspects of their culture. 

As a boy Martin had been apprenticed as a carver to a paternal uncle. His stepfather Charlie James, a noted Northwestern artist, was his principal influence in honing his natural talent. Martin developed as one of the first traditional artists to adopt many types of Northwest Coast sculptural and painting styles. 

He carved his first commissioned totem pole in Alert Bay c1900, and titled it "Raven of the Sea." Martin also restored and repaired many carvings and sculptures, totem poles, masks, and various other ceremonial objects. He gained fame for holding the first public potlatch since the governmental potlatch ban of 1885. 

He was awarded with a medal by the Canadian Council.[2] In 1947, Martin was hired by the Museum of Anthropology at UBC for restoration and replica work. 

During this time, Martin lived on the university campus, and continued to paint and carve small works during the night. Gwaxwiwe' hamsiwe' (mask of the raven man-eater) by Mungo Martin at the Seattle Art Museum Later, Martin was hired in 1952 by the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, British Columbia to create works of Northwest Coastal Art as display pieces and examples. The final result was a huge totem pole, carved out of cedar, standing 160 feet tall. It was raised in 1956 and remained standing until 2000.[3] 

He also constructed Wawadit'la, a Kwakwaka'wakw "big house", at Thunderbird Park in front of the museum. During this time he and American anthropologist Bill Holm became fast friends and Martin designed a Kwak'waka'wakw big house on the coast in Washington State. 

Martin was also the designer and principal carver of the famous Totem Pole in Windsor Great Park in the United Kingdom. The Totem Pole was a gift from the people of Canada to HM The Queen in June, 1958. Standing 100 feet high, there is one foot for every year, and marks the centenary of British Columbia, which was named by Queen Victoria and proclaimed a Crown Colony on November 19, 1858. It is now the Pacific Coast Province of Canada. 

The figures on the pole reading from the top are, Man with large hat, Beaver, Old Man, Thunderbird, Sea Otter, The Raven, The Whale, Double headed Snake, Halibut Man and Cedar Man. Each figure represents the mythical ancestor of a clan. The pole was carved from a single log of Western Red Cedar and weighs 27,000 pounds. It was cut from a tree 600 years old from the forests of the Queen Charlotte Islands, 500 miles north of Vancouver. 

When Martin went to work for the museum in Victoria, his son David and his family, and relatives Henry and Helen Hunt (Helen was Martin's wife's granddaughter) and their family joined him in living in James Bay near Thunderbird Park and the focus of the work to be done. His son David, and Henry Hunt, and even Henry's son Tony who was only twelve when the families engaged in this undertaking, became apprentices. Martin trained his son David in his craft but David died in 1959. Henry's sons Stanley Hunt and Richard Hunt are also professional carvers.

LANDLOCKED SOCKEYE SALMON: MALIK

Salmon permeate First Nations mythology and have been a prized food source for thousands of years — fresh, dried, boiled, steamed or smoked — the bones carefully returned to the river or sea to continue the lifecycle of these immortal beings. 

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakiutl First Nations of the Pacific Northwest — or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala — sockeye salmon are known as ma̱łik. 

For the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, people of the confluence, of the Interior of British Columbia, near Kamloops, salmon was the most important of the local fishing stock and the salmon fishing season was a significant social event that warranted the nomination of a Salmon Chief who directed the construction of the hooks, weirs and traps and the distribution of the catch.

In the Interior of the province, archaeological evidence dates the use of salmon as a food source back a mere 3,500 years. While the First Nation groups have an oral history telling us they have lived here since always, 3,500 years falls short of the mark. 

The truth, it seems, needed to be teased from the rock. Sheri Burton and Catherine Carlson were able to isolate and amplify mitochondrial DNA from the salmon remains at archaeological sites near Kamloops. The DNA came from the species as Oncorhynchus nerka or Sockeye salmon, preserved in concretion and collected along the southern shores of Kamloops Lake.

The concretions were originally dated as Miocene (24 – 5.5 million years old) by the Geological Survey of Canada, based on pollen grain analysis. However, many local experts, including UBC geology professor W.R. (Ted) Danner (my mentor), W.H. Mathews and Richard Hughes, suspected the remains were much more recent, perhaps the Late Pleistocene. It was a topic that provided lively debate for many years and much pounding on tables during dinner. But it was not until the early 1990s that Catherine Carlson and Ken Klein found definitive proof of this.

Oncorhynchus nerka

By good luck, the fish remains in the Kamloops Lake concretions had not been completely replaced by minerals — enough of the original organic bone collagen remained for radiocarbon dating. 

For those on either side of the debate, the results were startling — 18,000 years. It is likely that erosion during the time of deposition had carried pollen down from Miocene layers in surrounding hills, to be deposited around the dead fish, causing the initial over-estimation of the age of the concretions.

This lovely specimen is Oncorhynchus nerka, a Late Pleistocene Fossil Sockeye Salmon, from the fine-grained, silty clays on the south shore of Kamloops Lake, British Columbia, Canada. The site was originally collected in the 1970s by the late geologist and palaeontologist Richard Hughes. I was introduced to the site much later after its rediscovery by Catherine Carlson and Kenneth Klein in the fall of 1991 with the help of local and gracious host, Bill Huxley.

They later wrote up and published a chapter in Rolf Ludvigsen's "Life in Stone: A Natural History of British Columbia's Fossils." It was Huxley who shared its location with John Leahy — a local Kamloops resident and avid fossil hunter — and him with me. 

This specimen was collected by John in the 1990s, his tenth partial salmon from this site and the sole one in my collection.

An age of 18,000 plus years sets the fossils firmly as the only salmonids of the Late Pleistocene in North America, a very significant find. The date also changed our ideas about the early climate of the Interior; the Thompson Valley could not have been covered by glacial ice for as long as originally thought. Indeed, it makes the Interior ice-free only 2,000 years after the Last Glacial Maximum and some 4,000 years before our western continental coastline and the Rocky Mountain Foothills.  

It has long been accepted that the most recent series of ice ages began approximately 1.6 million years ago, beginning as ice accumulations at higher altitudes with the gradual cooling of the climate. Four times the ice advanced and receded, most recently melting away somewhere around 10,000 years ago. Ice retreated from southwestern British Columbia and the Puget Sound area around 15,000 years ago. 

In the southern Interior, ice built up first in the northern Selkirk Mountains, then slowly flowed down into the valleys. Once the valleys were filled, the depth of the ice increased until it began to climb to the highlands and finally covered most of the Interior of British Columbia. Between ice advances, there were times when the Kamloops area was ice-free and the climate warm and hospitable. 

Glacial ice was believed to have initiated its most recent retreat from the South Thompson area around 11,000 to 12,000 years ago, but salmon remains from 18,000 years ago suggest that it may have actually begun its northwest decline much earlier — and presenting the possibility of a much warmer climate in the Interior than archaeologists or geologists had originally thought.

Eighteen thousand-year-old salmon also challenge the archaeological notion that the First Nation people of the Interior have had access to salmon as a significant protein source for only a few thousand years. 

In the popular view, people living in the Okanagan and Thompson Valleys were felt to have moved to settlements that were semi-permanent about 4,500 years ago. By that time they would have had a seasonally regulated diet composed primarily of salmon and supplemented by local game — deer, elk, small mammals — and available shellfish, birds and plant foods, roots and berries. If salmon were present much earlier, it is possible that this pattern of food utilization may have arisen earlier than thought.

Richard Hughes had originally identified the fossilized Kamloops salmon as Oncorhynchus nerka or Sockeye salmon, the same species found in the 3,500-year-old archaeological sites. But, using the carbon-13 isotope ratio, Klein and Carlson were able to determine that these salmon did not feed on protein from a marine source and relied solely on a freshwater diet. 

In other words, they could not have spent part of their life in the ocean, as modern Sockeye salmon do. Based on the specimens’ smaller heads and stunted bodies, the longest measuring in at a pint-sized 11.5 cm, Klein and Carlson feel that the fossils are likely Kokanee — a modern landlocked variety of Sockeye.

If you are wondering about the traditional First Nation use of salmon, this McGill University link is outstanding:http://traditionalanimalfoods.org/fish/searun-fish/page.aspx?id=6446

SQUIRREL: TAMINASUX

Eastern Grey Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis

One of the little animals I see daily are the very busy, highly comic rodents we know as squirrels. They spend their days gathering food and their nights resting from all their hard work. 

My neighbourhood has mostly Eastern grey squirrels, Sciurus carolinensis (Gmelin, 1788) who come in a colour palette of reddish-brown, grey and black. 

These cuties have bushy tails and a spring in their step — racing around gathering nuts, teasing dogs and generally exuding cuteness.

We find the first fossil evidence of tree squirrels in the Pleistocene. 

At least twenty specimens have been found of Sciurus carolinensis in Pleistocene outcrops in Florida on the eastern coast of the United States. Over time, their body size grew larger then shrunk down to the 400 to 600 g (14 to 21 oz) weight we see them today.  

Eastern grey squirrels have two breeding seasons in December-January and June-July. This year has been unseasonably warm. On Vancouver Island, the Eastern Greys bred again in early September. One wonders if the heat dome killed off the July litter, and with the return of more favourable weather, the parents have been induced to breed again.

While they are not native to Vancouver, they are plentiful. They were introduced to the region over a hundred years ago and have been happily multiplying year upon year. 

Our native species are the smaller, reddish-brown rather shy Douglas squirrels and the nocturnal Northern Flying Squirrels.  

Shadow tails — Sciurus, is derived from two Greek words, skia, meaning shadow, and oura, meaning tail. The name choice has a certain poetic appeal. It alludes to squirrels sitting in the shadow of their tails. I prefer to think of it as meaning something closer to stealth ninja — but that's just me. 

The specific epithet, carolinensis, refers to the Carolinas on the eastern seaboard of the United States, an area that includes both North and South Carolina. It was here that the species was first recorded and still rather common. In the United Kingdom and Canada, Sciurus carolinensis is referred to as the Eastern grey or grey squirrel — and though adorable is an invasive species. In the United States, eastern is used to differentiate the species from the Western Gray or Silver-Gray squirrel, Sciurus griseus, (Ord, 1818). 

The Ord here, of course, is George Ord, the American zoologist who named the species based on notes recorded by Lewis and Clark in the early 1800s. If you fancy a read, check out his article from 1815, "Zoology of North America." It is charming and anachronistic in equal parts and the first systemic zoology of America by an American. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, use the word ta̱minasux̱, to point out that "that is a squirrel." 

The word for shadow in Kwak'wala is gagumas and tail is ha̱t̕sa̱x̱ste' — so I will think of these wee wonders of the Order Rodentia in the family Sciuridae as Gagumas ha̱t̕sa̱x̱ste' of Khahtsahlano. 

PEARLS: BEAUTY FROM A GRAIN OF SAND

One of my favourite pairs of earrings are a simple set of pearls. I have worn them pretty much every day since 2016 when I received them as a gift. What is it about pearls that makes them so appealing? I am certainly not alone in this. 

A simple search will show you a vast array of pearls being used for their ornamental value in cultures from all over the world. I suppose the best answer to why they are appealing is just that they are. 

If you make your way to Paris, France and happen to visit the Louvre's Persian Gallery, do take a boo at one of the oldest pearl necklaces in existence — the Susa necklace. It hails from a 2,400-year-old tomb of long lost Syrian Queen. It is a showy piece with three rows of 72 pearls per strand strung upon a bronze wire. 

That queen knew how to accessorize. 

I imagine her putting the final touches of her outfit together, donning the pearls and making an entrance to wow the elite of ancient Damascus. The workmanship is superb, intermixing pure gold to offset the lustre of the pearls. It is precious and ancient, crafted one to two hundred years before Christ. Perhaps a gift from an Egyptian Pharaoh or from one of the Sumerians, Eblaites, Akkadians, Assyrians, Hittites, Hurrians, Mitanni, Amorites or Babylonian dignitaries who sued for peace but brought war instead. 

Questions, good questions, but questions without answers. So, what can we say of pearls? We do know what they are and it is not glamorous. Pearls form in shelled molluscs when a wee bit of sand or some other irritant gets trapped inside the shell, injuring the flesh. As a defensive and self-healing tactic, the mollusc wraps it in layer upon layer of mother-of-pearl — that glorious shiny nacre that forms pearls. 

They come in all shapes and sizes from minute to a massive 32 kilograms or 70 pounds. While a wide variety of our mollusc friends respond to injury or irritation by coating the offending intruder with nacre, there are only a few who make the truly gem-y pearls. These are the marine pearl oysters, Pteriidae and a few freshwater mussels. Aside from Pteriidae and freshwater mussels, we sometimes find less gem-y pearls inside conchs, scallops, clams, abalone, giant clams and large marine gastropods.

Pearls are made up mostly of the carbonate mineral aragonite, a polymorphous mineral — same chemical formula but different crystal structure — to calcite and vaterite, sometimes called mu-calcium carbonate. 

These polymorphous carbonates are a bit like Mexican food where it is the same ingredients mixed in different ways. 

Visually, they are easy to tell apart — vaterite has a hexagonal crystal system, calcite is trigonal and aragonite is orthorhombic.

As pearls fossilize, the aragonite usually gets replaced by calcite, though sometimes by vaterite or another mineral. When we are very lucky, that aragonite is preserved with its nacreous lustre — that shimmery mother-of-pearl we know and love.  

Molluscs have likely been making pearls since they first evolved 530 million years ago. The oldest known fossil pearls found to date, however, are 230-210 million years old. 

This was the time when our world's landmass was concentrated into the C-shaped supercontinent of Pangaea and the first dinosaurs were calling it home. In the giant ancient ocean of Panthalassa, ecosystems were recovering from the high carbon dioxide levels that fueled the Permian extinction. Death begets life. With 95% of marine life wiped out, new species evolved to fill each niche.  

While this is where we found the oldest pearl on record, I suspect we will one day find one much older and hopefully with its lovely great-great grandmother-of-pearl intact. 

MIGHTY DOVE CREEK MOSASAUR

Dove Creek Mosasaur (Tylosaur) found by Rick Ross, VIPS

This specimen of the teeth and lower jawbone of a large marine reptile was discovered by Rick Ross, Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society, during the construction of the Inland Highway, near the Dove Creek intersection, Vancouver Island, British Columbia on Canada's west coast.

If you look closely, you can see several smaller disc-shaped objects to the upper right. These are part of this fellow's sclerotic eye-ring.

These bony plates allowed for safe hunting in deeper waters as the structures protected the delicate eye tissue from the intense water pressure. Diving birds have these same bony plates to aid them in the same way.

Mosasaurs had a hinged jaw that allowed them to swallow prey larger than themselves. They evolved special pterygoid teeth projecting back into the roof of their mouths that acted as guards against escaping prey. The jawbones Rick found were exposed just up to the hinge. Given the size, this toothy fellow could have been as much as seven (7) metres long and weighed up to a tonne.

Along with the significant find of the mosasaur, Rick Ross collected many ammonites and other marine invertebrates exposed during the construction of the Inland Island Highway. He donated the majority of them to the Royal BC Museum in Victoria. They now adorn a cabinet bearing his name and are tucked lovingly in with stories he wrote about his collecting adventures.

Glyptoxoceras heteromorph found by Rick Ross, VIPS

Science owes a great debt to the keen eye and fast thinking of Rick Ross for his work in recovering the specimen. Rick was out on a Sunday looking through the blocks that were destined to be crushed to finish up the tail end of the new highway construction. The crews had just dropped a pile of massive blocks near the Dove Creek Road crossing.

Each of the blocks was one to five tonnes in size. Rick was looking through them when he spotted a concretion sticking out. 

It did not look all that different from the hundreds he had been found up and down the highway. Interested to see what it might contain, Rick took his geology hammer and struck a blow. Off popped the end and inside was a large perfect mosasaur tooth.

Looking closer, he could see a bone sticking out in several other places within this massive block. Excited about the find and not quite sure how to approach excavating it from an active construction site, Rick searched the highway and finally located a maintenance working greasing up some heavy machinery. Rick excitedly told the field mechanic about the find and inquired who would need to be called to save the block. His answer was disappointing. The block was destined to be bulldozed in the morning. 

Panicked but still hopeful, Rick asked who his supervisor was and how to reach him on a Sunday. While initially hesitant, the urgency and excitement in Rick's voice swayed him. With a warning that the supervisor would likely not be impressed to get his call, he relented and shared the telephone number. Rick dialled the number and received the predicted reaction. Unrelenting, Rick swayed the supervisor who agreed that if Rick could get a truck up to the site first thing in the AM, the block could be lifted onto the truck. The next hour was filled with phone calls and putting together a plan to get the mighty block.

Rick called Pat Trask from the Courtenay Museum. The two are fossil hunting buddies and Rick was sure that Pat would be up for the challenge. The next call was to Doug Embree, another fossil hunting buddy from the Comox Valley. As luck would have it, Doug's brother Sam had a two-tonne flatbed truck that they would be able to use. The struggle now was would it take the weight? Monday morning arrived and the block was lifted onto the flatbed with the aid of a drill hole and chain through one corner.

The truck groaned and leaned heavily all the way into town. They had to come in via the 17th Street Bridge as a safe route to the Courtenay Museum. the local building store lent the use of a large forklift to lift the block from the heavily tilted truckbed down onto the back deck of the museum. Once in place, it was far too big to move. It sat there for almost seven years before finally being shipped to a preparatory lab down in Washington. There it was prepped and whittled down to the still massive block we see today.

This specimen is now housed in the Courtenay and District Museum on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The jaw and associated bones are tagged as a mosasaur, but exactly what kind will need more study. We may be looking at a Tylosaurus, a very large mosasaur with an elongated, cylindrical premaxilla (snout) from which it takes its name. These were the big boys of our ancient seas who snacked on plesiosaurs and other smaller marine reptiles.

T. proriger specimen found with a plesiosaur in its stomach

In 1918, Charles H. Sternberg found a Tylosaurus, with the remains of a plesiosaur in its stomach while collecting in the Smoky Hill Chalk of Logan County, Kansas. You can visit the specimen at the Smithsonian.

Like many other mosasaurs, the early history of this taxon is complex and involves the infamous rivalry between two early American palaeontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. Cope wins the day in terms of longevity in his naming of these mighty beasts.

Though many species of Tylosaurus have been named over the years, only a few are now recognized by scientists as taxonomically valid. They are: Tylosaurus proriger (Cope, 1869), from the Santonian and lower to middle Campanian of North America (Kansas, Alabama, Nebraska) and Tylosaurus nepaeolicus (Cope, 1874), from the Santonian of North America (Kansas). Tylosaurus kansasensis, named by Everhart in 2005 from the late Coniacian of Kansas, has been shown to be based on juvenile specimens of T. nepaeolicus.

It is likely that T. proriger evolved as a paedomorphic variety of T. nepaeolicus, retaining juvenile features into adulthood while attaining a much larger adult size.

Along with plesiosaurs, sharks, fish, and other mosasaurs, Tylosaurus was a dominant predator of the Western Interior Seaway during the Late Cretaceous. The genus was among the largest of the mosasaurs — along with Mosasaurus hoffmannii — with the possibly conspecific Hainosaurus bernardi reaching lengths up to 12.2 meters (40 ft), and T. pembinensis reaching comparable sizes. T. proriger, the largest species of Tylosaurus, reached a whopping 14 m (46 ft). While the Dove Creek Mosasaur was half that size, it may be one of T. proriger's smaller cousins.

Photo One: Dove Creek Mosasaur by Heidi Henderson. Courtenay Museum Collection.
Photo Two: Urakawites heteromorph ammonite by Rick Ross. RBCM Collection
Photo Three: T. proriger specimen which was found with a plesiosaur in its stomach. By Ryan Somma - Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9004614

HERMIT CRAB: XALA'IS GUGWIS

This little cutie is a hermit crab and he is wearing a temporary home borrowed from one of our mollusc friends. 

His body is a soft, squishy spiral that he eases into the perfect size shell time and time again as he grows. His first choice is always the empty shell of a marine snail but will get inventive in a pinch — nuts, wood, serpulid worm tubes, aluminium cans or wee plastic caps. 

They are inventive, polite and patient. I think of them as I hunt for elusive parking in Kitsilano and watch friends lining up for scarce apartment rentals. 

You see, a hermit crabs' desire for the perfect bit of real estate will have them queueing beside larger shells — shells too large for them — to wait upon a big hermit crab to come along, discard the perfect home and slip into their new curved abode. This is all done in an orderly fashion with the hermit crabs all lined up, biggest to smallest to see who best fits the newly available shell. 

There are over 800 species of hermit crab — decapod crustaceans of the superfamily Paguroidea. Their lineage dates back to the Jurassic, 200 million years ago. Their soft squishy, weakly calcified bodies do not fossilize all that often but when they do the specimens are spectacular. Think of all the species of molluscs these lovelies have had a chance to try on — including ammonites — and all the shells that were never buried in sediment to become fossils because they were harvested as homes.  

On the shores of British Columbia, the hermit crab I come across the most is the Grainyhand hermit crab, Pagurus granosimanus. These wee fellows have tell-tale orange-brown antennae and olive green legs speckled with blue or white dots. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, a shell is known as x̱ala̱'is and gugwis means house on the beach. I do not know the Kwak’wala word for hermit crab, so I will think of these cuties as x̱ala̱'is gugwis — envisioning them finding the perfect sized shell on the surf worn shores of Tsax̱is, Fort Rupert, Vancouver Island. 

LYTOCERAS OF THE LIAS

A gorgeous Lytoceras sp. from within the Middle Lias, Lower Jurassic Bridport Sands, Margaritatus Zone, near the secluded town of Eype, Dorset, England. 

Eype is a small village that hugs the English Channel in southwest Dorset near the town of Bridport on the infamous Jurassic Coast. Picture creamy rust-coloured sand, a shelved shingle bank backed by a massive cliff-face and the constant rush of waves.

Aside from the surf, this is a quiet hamlet and a wonderful place to explore along the pebble beach. You'll want to stay well away from the cliffs as rock slides happen quickly and the debris field is much wider than you would think.   

Prepping these lovelies is a tricky business as the flanges are very delicate. You can see that many of the ornamental rings are intact. The specimen itself is amazing but the level of patience and skill that went into the preparation of this lovely cephalopod is world-class. 

Photo: Specimen: 16 cm (just over 6 inches) at its widest point. Craig Chivers, Natural Selection Fossils. If you would like to see more of Craig's work, head on over to his website: naturalselection fossils.com or check out his Instagram account @naturalselectionfossils. You will drool over the incredible ammonites, marine reptile material and some bivalves — plus some paleo art thrown in for good measure. 

DORSET LYTOCERAS

A superbly prepped and extremely rare Lytoceras (Suess, 1865) ammonite found as a green ammonite nodule by Matt Cape in the Lower Lias of Dorset. 

Lytoceras are rare in the Lower Lias of Dorset — apart from the Belemnite Stone horizon — so much so that Paul Davis, whose skilled prep work you see here, initially thought it might be a Becheiceras hidden within the large, lumpy nodule. 

One of the reasons these lovelies are rarely found from here is that they are a Mediterranean Tethyian genus. The fossil fauna we find in the United Kingdom are dominated by Boreal Tethyian genera. 

We do find Lytoceras sp. in the Luridum subzone of the Pliensbachian showing that there was an influx of species from the Mediterranean realm during this time. This is the first occurrence of a Lytoceras that he has ever seen in a green nodule and Paul's seen quite a few. 

This absolutely cracking specimen was found and is in the collections of the awesome Matt Cape. Matt recognized that whatever was hidden in the nodule would take skilled and careful preparation using air scribes. Indeed it did. It took more than five hours of time and skill to unveil the lovely museum-worthy specimen you see here. 

We find Lytoceras in more than 1,000 outcrops around the globe ranging from the Jurassic through to the Cretaceous, some 189.6 to 109.00 million years ago. Once this specimen is fully prepped with the nodule material cut or scraped away, you can see the detailed crinkly growth lines or riblets on the shell and none of the expected coarse ribbing. 

Lytoceras sp. Photo: Craig Chivers

If you imagine running your finger along these, you would be tracing the work of decades of growth of these cephalopods. 

While we cannot know their actual lifespans, but we can make a healthy guess. 

The nautilus, their closest living cousins live upwards of 20 years — gods be good — and less than three years if conditions are poor.

The flanges, projecting flat ribs or collars, develop at the edge of the mouth border on the animal's mantle as they grow each new chamber. 

Each delicate flange grows over the course of the ammonites life, marking various points in time and life stages as the ammonite grew. There is a large variation within Lytoceras with regards to flanges. They provide both ornamentation and strength to the shell to protect it from water pressure as they moved into deeper seas.

The concretion prior to prep

This distinctive genus with its evolute shells are found in the Cretaceous marine deposits of: 

Antarctica (5 collections), Austria (19), Colombia (1), the Czech Republic (3), Egypt (2), France (194), Greenland (16), Hungary (25), Italy (11), Madagascar (2), Mexico (1), Morocco (4), Mozambique (1), Poland (2), Portugal (1), Romania (1), the Russian Federation (2), Slovakia (3), South Africa (1), Spain (24), Tanzania (1), Trinidad and Tobago (1), Tunisia (25); and the United States of America (17: Alaska, California, North Carolina, Oregon).

We also find them in Jurassic marine outcrops in:

Austria (15), Canada (9: British Columbia), Chile (6), France (181), Germany (11), Greenland (1), Hungary (189), India (1), Indonesia (1), Iran (1), Italy (50), Japan (14), Kenya (2), Luxembourg (4), Madagascar (2), Mexico (1), Morocco (43), New Zealand (15), Portugal (1), Romania (5), the Russian Federation (1), Slovakia (1), Spain (6), Switzerland (2), Tunisia (11), Turkey (12), Turkmenistan (1), Ukraine (5), the United Kingdom (12), United States (11: Alaska, California) — in at least 977 known collections. 

References:

Sepkoski, Jack (2002). "A compendium of fossil marine animal genera (Cephalopoda entry)". Bulletins of American Paleontology. 363: 1–560. Archived from the original on 2008-05-07. Retrieved 2017-10-18.

Paleobiology Database - Lytoceras. 2017-10-19.

Systematic descriptions, Mesozoic Ammonoidea, by W.J Arkell, Bernhard Kummel, and C.W. Wright. 1957. Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part L. Geological Society of America and University of Kansas press.

URSIDAE: URSAVUS

Hiking in BC, both grizzly and black bear sightings are common. These majestic beasts live up to 28 years and nearly half the world's population, some 25,000 grizzlies, roam the Canadian wilderness.

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 descendants.

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 and is one of the largest grizzlies ever recorded. This past September, the King of the forest was seen once again in the Washington Cascades -- the first sighting in over 50 years.

Grizzly Bears in First Nation Lore and Language

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakiutl First Nations of the Pacific Northwest — or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala — a grizzly bear is known as na̱n and the ornamental grizzly bear headdress worn by the comic Dluwalakha grizzly bear dancers in the Grizzly Bear Dance, Gaga̱lalał, is known as na̱ng̱a̱mł. 

There is another grizzly bear who features in the Hamatsa dance, known as Nanes Bakbakwalanooksiwae, a high-ranking figure who has no mask — instead, the dancers paint their faces dark red to symbolize a hungry bear mouth and dance in costumes made of bearskin with terrifying long wooden claws.

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION

Indian Residential Schools (Click to Enlarge)

More than 150,000 First Nation, Inuit and Metis children were forced to attend Indian Residential Schools. 

This was not to give them an education but to strip them of their culture. It was not lost as a by-product of attending — it was the sole reason for their attending.

Impossible you say. Well, it happened. And we are reaping the fall out to this day.

The legal term Indian is both political & racist. Canada's Indigenous population are First Nation, Métis & Inuit. 

Today, all Canadians share in a historic time of healing, thoughtful dialogue, and helping to bring forth the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.

BLUE JAY: KWASKWAS

If you live in North American, there is a high probability that you have seen or heard the bird song of the Blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758).

Blue Jays are in the family Corvidae — along with crows, ravens, rooks, magpies and jackdaws. They belong to a lineage of birds first seen in the Miocene — 25 million years ago. 

These beautifully plumed, blue, black and white birds can be found across southern Canada down to Florida. The distinctive blue you see in their feathers is a trick of the light. Their pigment, melanin, is actually a rather dull brown. The blue you see is caused by scattering light through modified cells on the surface of the feather as wee barbs.

Blue jays like to dine on nuts, seeds, suet, arthropods and some small vertebrates. 

If you are attempting to lure them to your yard with a bird feeder, they prefer those mounted on trays or posts versus hanging feeders. They will eat most anything you have on offer but sunflower seeds and peanuts are their favourites. 

They have a fondness for acorns and have been credited with helping expand the range of oak trees as the ice melted after the last glacial period.  

Their Binomial name, Cyanocitta cristata means, crested, blue chattering bird. I might have amended that to something less flattering, working in a Latin word or two for shrieks and screams — voce et gemitu or ululo et quiritor. While their plumage is a visual feast, their bird chatter leaves something to be desired. Their cries are quite helpful if you are an animal living nearby and concerned about predators. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, a Blue Jay is known as kwa̱skwa̱s. The Kwak’wala word for blue is dzasa and cry is ḵ̕was'id. For interest, the word for bird song in Kwak'wala is t̕sa̱sḵwana. 

SHORT-BEAKED ECHIDNA

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.  

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.      

OKANAGAN HIGHLAND LOCALITIES OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Fossils from the Okanagan Highlands, an area centred in the Interior of British Columbia, provide important clues to our ancient climate. 

Okanagan Highlands refers to an arc of Eocene lakebed sites that extend from Smithers in the north, down to the fossil site of Republic Washington. 

The grouping includes the fossil sites of Driftwood Canyon, Quilchena, Allenby, Tranquille, McAbee, Princeton and Republic.

These fossil sites range in time from Early to Middle Eocene, and the fossil they contain give us a snapshot of what was happening in this part of the world because of the varied plant fossils they contain.

We can infer the difference in climates between the sites. McAbee was not as warm as some of the other Middle Eocene sites, a fact inferred by what we see and what is conspicuously missing. In looking at the plant species, it has been suggested that the area of McAbee had a more temperate climate, slightly cooler and wetter than other Eocene sites to the south at Princeton, British Columbia and Republic and Chuckanut, Washington. Missing are the tropical Sabal (palm), seen at Princeton and the impressive Ensete (banana) and Zamiaceae (cycad) found at Republic in north-central Washington, in the Swauk Formation near Skykomish and the Chuckanut Formation of northern Washington state.