Living Fossil / Comb Jelly / Ctenophore |
Saturday 5 July 2014
LIVING FOSSIL: COMB JELLY
Saturday 14 June 2014
FIERCE WARRIORS: CRABS
Look how epic this little guy is!
He is a crab — and if you asked him, the fiercest warrior that ever lived. While that may not be strictly true, crabs do have the heart of a warrior and will raise their claws, sometimes only millimetres into the air, to assert dominance over their world.
Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the Phylum Arthropoda.Crabs build their shells from highly mineralized chitin — and chitin gets around. It is the main structural component of the exoskeletons of many of our crustacean and insect friends. Shrimp, crab, and lobster all use it to build their exoskeletons.
Chitin is a polysaccharide — a large molecule made of many smaller monosaccharides or simple sugars, like glucose.
It is handy stuff, forming crystalline nanofibrils or whiskers. Chitin is actually the second most abundant polysaccharide after cellulose. It is interesting as we usually think of these molecules in the context of their sugary context but they build many other very useful things in nature — not the least of these are the hard shells or exoskeletons of our crustacean friends.
Crabs in the Fossil Record
The earliest unambiguous crab fossils date from the Early Jurassic, with the oldest being Eocarcinus from the early Pliensbachian of Britain, which likely represents a stem-group lineage, as it lacks several key morphological features that define modern crabs.
Most Jurassic crabs are only known from dorsal — or top half of the body — carapaces, making it difficult to determine their relationships. Crabs radiated in the Late Jurassic, corresponding with an increase in reef habitats, though they would decline at the end of the Jurassic as the result of the decline of reef ecosystems. Crabs increased in diversity through the Cretaceous and represented the dominant group of decapods by the end.
We find wonderful fossil crab specimens on Vancouver Island. The first I ever collected was at Shelter Point, then again on Hornby Island, down on the Olympic Peninsula and along Vancouver Island's west coast near Nootka Sound. They are, of course, found globally and are one of the most pleasing fossils to find and aggravating to prep of all the specimens you will ever have in your collection. Bless them.
Sunday 1 June 2014
CANADODUS SUNTOKI: 25-MILLION YEAR OLD FOSSIL FISH FROM SOOKE
The species named the Canadodus suntoki by Russian researcher Evgeny Popov is named after collector Steve Suntok who donated the fossil to the Royal BC Museum in 2014.
The name roughly translates to “tooth from Canada,” as the fossil is part of a fish dental plate.
Popov, who is one of the world’s leading experts on fossil holocephalian fishes, says that the fossil that Suntok found is an entirely new fish compared to anything found before.
“I knew it was something significant. Not necessarily a new species but something significant,” Suntok told CTV News Thursday.
The fossil dental plate indicates that the fish was likely a type of Chimaeridae, which is a species of fish that feeds on invertebrates by crushing their shells on its hard flat dental plates, before eating the animal inside, according to researchers.
Suntok found the fossil in a northwest portion of Sooke. Researchers say that Sooke is an excellent area for paleontological discoveries, with a variety of fossils at the Royal BC Museum coming from the region.
Ancient whale vertebrae and rib specimens have been found in Sooke and donated to the museum, as well as a potential terrestrial mammal bone, fossil leaves, and many invertebrate fossils, such as oysters, barnacles and snails.
The Suntok family has experience finding and preserving fossils on Vancouver Island. Many fossils discovered by the family have been donated to the Royal BC Museum, including a new waterbird coracoid bone which was named after Steve Suntok’s daughter, Leah, in 2015, named the Stemec suntokum.“Because of erosion, every time we go there there’s something new,” said Suntok.
“New things get exposed so from time to time I go back just to check out the site. On this occasion, I found something I’d never seen before, which was pretty exciting.”
Researchers say that cliff faces near Muir Creek and beaches near Kirby Creek in Sooke “easily contain the richest exposures of fossils near Victoria.” Fossils in the area tend to date back approximately 25 million years.
Vancouver Island palaeontologist Marji Johns, who is a co-author of research on the Canadodus suntoki, says that she was thrilled by the discovery.
Sooke, British Columbia and Juan de Fuca Strait |
Johns says that very few palaeontologists in B.C. and Canada are able to do fieldwork while conducting research and that volunteer collectors like the Suntok family are largely responsible for finding rare and usual fossils..
Suntok says that having the Canadodus suntoki named after him is a dream come true.
“I’m ecstatic about it. It’s the dream of every amateur collector,” he said.
“It’s an honour. I don’t deserve it, but I’m extremely appreciative of it.”
Reference:
https://www.iheartradio.ca/580-cfra/it-s-an-honour-newly-discovered-fossil-fish-species-named-after-vancouver-island-collector-1.13515837
Wednesday 21 May 2014
Saturday 3 May 2014
ISOGRAPTUS MAXIMUS
Graptolites (Graptolita) are colonial animals. The biological affinities of the graptolites have always been debatable. Originally regarded as being related to the hydrozoans, graptolites are now considered to be related to the pterobranchs, a rare group of modern marine animals.
The graptolites are now classed as hemichordates (phylum Hemichordata), a primitive group which probably shares a common ancestry with the vertebrates.
In life, many graptolites appear to have been planktonic, drifting freely on the surface of ancient seas or attached to floating seaweed by means of a slender thread. Some forms of graptolite lived attached to the sea-floor by a root-like base. Graptolite fossils are often found in shales and slates. The deceased planktonic graptolites would sink down to and settle on the sea floor, eventually becoming entombed in the sediment and are thus well preserved.
Graptolite fossils are found flattened along the bedding plane of the rocks in which they occur. They vary in shape, but are most commonly dendritic or branching (such as Dictoyonema), saw-blade like, or "tuning fork" shaped (such as Didymograptus murchisoni).
This fellow is pure "Bat Sign" with his showy "wings" looking like something out of a DC Comic. He's also received a nod as the Panem symbol in Hunger Games and been described as having eagle or angel wings. No matter how you interpret his symbolism, there is not doubt that he is spectacular. He is in the collection of the deeply awesome Gilberto Juárez Huarachi from Tarija, Bolivia.
Friday 2 May 2014
Friday 14 February 2014
Tuesday 21 January 2014
Friday 17 January 2014
SUMAS EOCENE SITE
Once the skies cleared, hikers found plant impressions in the rock and alerted the local paleo community. I was invited to tag along on a trip to photograph the site while George Mustoe took moulds of the palm trunks and trackways.
The slide site at Sumas Mountain revealed many large exposures of fossil plants. Some exposures were 10 feet across. There was great excitement at seeing shorebird tracks and trackways of the large flightless bird Diatryma. Many of these finds can now be seen at the Burke Museum in Washington State. While less abundant, evidence of the animals that called this ancient swamp home are also found here. Rare bird, reptile, and mammal tracks have been immortalized in the soft muds along ancient riverways.
Wednesday 15 January 2014
Thursday 9 January 2014
Monday 6 January 2014
NORTHWEST BAY, VANCOUVER ISLAND
Sunday 5 January 2014
Tuesday 31 December 2013
MOON RAVEN TOTEM AT SAXMAN TOTEM PARK
Moon Raven Pole at Saxman Totem Park |
The art of totem pole carving was a luxury that experienced its heyday in the mid-1700s to the late 1800s.
In the late 1800s, Tlingits from the old villages of Cape Fox and Tongass searched out the Saxman site as a place where they could build a school and a church.
Sunday 29 December 2013
OYSTER: TLOXTLOX
While rare today, these are British Columbia’s only native oyster. Had you been dining on their brethren in the 1800s or earlier, it would have been this species you were consuming. Middens from Port Hardy to California are built from Ostrea lurida.
These wonderful invertebrates bare their souls with every bite. Have they lived in cold water, deep beneath the sea away from the suns rays and heat? Are they the rough and tumbled beach denizens whose thick shells have formed to withstand the pounding of the sea?
Is the oyster in your mouth thin and slimy having just done the nasty spurred by the warming waters of Spring? Is this oyster a local or was it shipped to your current local and if asked would greet you with "Kon'nichiwa?" Not if the beauty on your plate is indeed Ostrea lurida.
We have been cultivating, indeed maximizing the influx of invasive species to the cold waters of the Salish Sea. But in the wild waters off the coast of British Columbia is the last natural abundant habitat of the tasty Ostrea lurida in the pristine waters of Nootka Sound. The area is home to the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations who have consumed this species boiled or steamed for thousands of years. Here these ancient oysters not only survive but thrive — building reefs and providing habitat for crab, anemones and small marine animals.
Oysters are in the family Ostreidae — the true oysters. Their lineage evolved in the Early Triassic — 251 - 247 million years ago.
In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, an oyster is known as t̕łox̱t̕łox̱. I am curious to learn if any of the Nuu-chah-nulth have a different word for an oyster. If you happen to know, I would be grateful to learn.
Wednesday 25 December 2013
Tuesday 17 December 2013
PADDLING ICY WATERS
Sunday 17 November 2013
Monday 28 October 2013
Sunday 20 October 2013
MEERKAT: MONGOOSE
The head-and-body length is around 24–35 cm, and the weight is typically between 0.62 and 0.97 kg.
Tuesday 3 September 2013
Sunday 1 September 2013
Sunday 14 July 2013
Saturday 13 July 2013
Tuesday 9 July 2013
Monday 8 July 2013
ELASMOSAURS: GRIT & GASTROLITHS
Gastroliths – round, polished stomach stones – have been found amid their bones. These stones would have been swallowed to help grind down their catch and lower their natural buoyancy. In their selection of these pebbles, elasmosaurs displayed, at times, a remarkable geological discernment.
The Puntledge elasmosaur from Courtenay, British Columbia, for example, had a yen for basalt. When the fossilized skeleton was excavated, the stones in its abdominal cavity were all basalt, an indication that this particular elasmosaur had somehow learned to discriminate between basalt stones and all others.
Basalt, as any geologist will tell you, is harder (and therefore longer lasting as a grinding material) than many other rocks. Yet over time, even basalt will erode, particularly when subjected to the digestive juices of such an enormous creature. From the elasmosaur’s long neck and bulky body, paleontologists have concluded that that their fishing technique was probably a sudden snake-like strike with the head, sweeping the meal into their cage-like mouth long before the tell-tail body loomed in sight through the depths.
Swimming beneath a school of fish, they would have been hidden by their dappled camouflage, allowing them to swing their toothy mouths up into the schools and capture hapless fish to be swallowed whole. Less stealth was probably required to hunt ammonites – free-swimming shellfish that jetted along like armoured squid. During the Jurassic, ammonites, distant relatives of the chambered nautilus, populated the seas.
The ammonites’ heavy protection would have meant that their backward-looking view of the world was no problem when dealing with most predators, but the marine reptiles of the day were a fatal exception to the rule. Ammonite fossils with clear teeth marks have been found, putting both elasmosaurs and mosasaurs at the scene of the crime and solving murder mysteries millions of years old.