FOSSIL OR ROCK? 10 CLUES TO HELP YOU INVESTIGATE

You spot a curl in a stone. Or a row of tiny bumps. Or something that looks wonderfully like a dinosaur footprint. Your brain shouts, “Fossil!” But what should your eyes look for next?

Welcome to a little fossil detective work. You do not need to know every scientific name to begin. Start with what you can see, collect a few clues and let your questions lead the way.

FIRST, WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

A fossil is preserved evidence of past life. It might be part of an animal or plant, an impression left behind, or a trace of something an animal did, such as a footprint or burrow. A fossil can be preserved within rock, so “fossil or rock?” is not always an either-or question.

1. START WITH THE WHOLE SHAPE

Before zooming in, look at the outline. Is it coiled, cone-shaped, branching, leaf-like or made of repeated segments? Describe it before naming it. “A curved shape with regular ridges” is a useful observation, even if you have no idea what made it.

2. FOLLOW A REPEATING PATTERN

Look for evenly repeated ribs, chambers or segments. Where do they begin? Do they change as you follow them? A pattern can be a clue to growth or body structure, but one pattern alone is not an identification.

3. LOOK FOR SYMMETRY

Imagine a line down the middle. Do the two sides look similar? Some fossils preserve a clear arrangement of matching parts. Others are broken, worn or squashed, so the original shape may be harder to recognise.

4. NOTICE HOW IT GREW

Can you follow a spiral outwards? See growth lines sweeping around a shell? Or spot chambers exposed inside it? These details can tell us more than a familiar-looking outline. For a closer look at ammonite shells, explore Ammonites: Chambered Beauty.

5. EXPLORE THE SURFACE

Look for ridges, grooves, pits and other textures. Use a magnifying glass if you have one. Sketch what you notice, including where a texture stops or changes. Colour can be interesting, but it is not a reliable identification on its own.

6. EXAMINE A NATURALLY EXPOSED EDGE

A broken edge that is already visible may show a shell layer, chambers or other internal details. There is no need to break the specimen to investigate it. Photograph the visible surfaces and keep the evidence together.

7. INCLUDE THE SURROUNDING ROCK

The material around a fossil is part of its story. Are there other shells nearby? Thin layers? Grains of sand? Record these details. Some ammonites are preserved inside concretions—rounded bodies of cemented sediment. Read Ammonites in Concretion to explore these stone time capsules.

8. RECORD WHERE IT WAS FOUND

A fossil without its location has lost an important clue. Note the place and, if possible, photograph the rock layer or loose material it came from. A loose beach pebble may have travelled, so its finding place is not always its original home. Keep precise locality records privately, especially for sensitive sites.

9. COMPARE SEVERAL FEATURES

Try comparing your observations with an identified museum specimen. Match the shape, structure and geological context, rather than choosing the first photograph with a similar outline. Here are five fossil groups to practise observing:

AMMONITE

Look for a coiled shell, ribs and, where exposed, chambers or suture lines. Not every ammonite formed a neat spiral. Start your exploration with ten ammonite questions answered.

BIVALVE

Clams and their relatives have two shell halves, called valves. A fossil may preserve one half or both. Notice the outline, growth lines and hinge area where visible.

GASTROPOD

Snails belong to this group. In a coiled fossil shell, look for the turns, called whorls, and the opening. Some shells have a tall spire; others are low and rounded.

TRILOBITE

Look for the head, a segmented middle section and the tail. Many finds preserve only part of the animal’s outer covering, so a fragment can still hold useful clues.

CRINOID STEM

A crinoid stem is built from stacked pieces. Separated pieces may look like tiny discs, sometimes with a central opening. Crinoids are animals related to sea stars, despite their flower-like appearance.

10. LEAVE ROOM FOR “I DON’T KNOW YET”

A careful question is more useful than a confident guess. If the clues do not fit, record what you see and ask a museum or palaeontological society for guidance. Photographs may help narrow the possibilities without settling the exact identity.

YOUR FOSSIL DETECTIVE NOTES

• Where did I find it?
• How big is it?
• What shape and patterns can I see?
• Which features have I photographed or sketched?
• What do I still want to find out?

Try this with a museum specimen or a fossil photograph, too. No collecting required—just curious eyes, a pencil and one good question after another.

For more background, visit the Natural History Museum’s guide to what fossils are and how they form.

AMMONITE TIME KEEPERS

Argonauticeras besairei, José Juárez Ruiz

An exceptional example of the fractal building of an ammonite septum, in this clytoceratid Argonauticeras besairei from the awesome José Juárez Ruiz.

Ammonites were predatory, squidlike creatures that lived inside coil-shaped shells.

Like other cephalopods, ammonites had sharp, beak-like jaws inside a ring of squid-like tentacles that extended from their shells. 

They used these tentacles to snare prey, — plankton, vegetation, fish and crustaceans — similar to the way a squid or octopus hunt today.

Catching a fish with your hands is no easy feat, as I am sure you know. But the Ammonites were skilled and successful hunters. They caught their prey while swimming and floating in the water column. 

Within their shells, they had a number of chambers, called septa, filled with gas or fluid that were interconnected by a wee air tube. By pushing air in or out, they were able to control their buoyancy in the water column.

They lived in the last chamber of their shells, continuously building new shell material as they grew. As each new chamber was added, the squid-like body of the ammonite would move down to occupy the final outside chamber.

They were a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. 

These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids — octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish) than they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species.

The Ammonoidea can be divided into six orders:

• Agoniatitida, Lower Devonian - Middle Devonian
• Clymeniida, Upper Devonian
• Goniatitida, Middle Devonian - Upper Permian
• Prolecanitida, Upper Devonian - Upper Triassic
• Ceratitida, Upper Permian - Upper Triassic
• Ammonitida, Lower Jurassic - Upper Cretaceous

Ammonites have intricate and complex patterns on their shells called sutures. The suture patterns differ across species and tell us what time period the ammonite is from. If they are geometric with numerous undivided lobes and saddles and eight lobes around the conch, we refer to their pattern as goniatitic, a characteristic of Paleozoic ammonites.

If they are ceratitic with lobes that have subdivided tips; giving them a saw-toothed appearance and rounded undivided saddles, they are likely Triassic. For some lovely Triassic ammonites, take a look at the specimens that come out of Hallstatt, Austria and from the outcrops in the Humboldt Mountains of Nevada.

Hoplites bennettiana (Sowby, 1826) Christophe Marot

If they have lobes and saddles that are fluted, with rounded subdivisions instead of saw-toothed, they are likely Jurassic or Cretaceous. If you'd like to see a particularly beautiful Lower Jurassic ammonite, take a peek at Apodoceras. Wonderful ridging in that species.

One of my favourite Cretaceous ammonites is the ammonite, Hoplites bennettiana (Sowby, 1826). This beauty is from Albian deposits near Carrière de Courcelles, Villemoyenne, near la région de Troyes (Aube) Champagne in northeastern France.

At the time that this fellow was swimming in our oceans, ankylosaurs were strolling about Mongolia and stomping through the foliage in Utah, Kansas and Texas. Bony fish were swimming over what would become the strata making up Canada, the Czech Republic and Australia. Cartilaginous fish were prowling the western interior seaway of North America and a strange extinct herbivorous mammal, Eobaatar, was snuffling through Mongolia, Spain and England.

In some classifications, these are left as suborders, included in only three orders: Goniatitida, Ceratitida, and Ammonitida. Once you get to know them, ammonites in their various shapes and suturing patterns make it much easier to date an ammonite and the rock formation where it is found.

Ammonites first appeared about 240 million years ago, though they descended from straight-shelled cephalopods called bacrites that date back to the Devonian, about 415 million years ago, and the last species vanished in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

They were prolific breeders that evolved rapidly. If you could cast a fishing line into our ancient seas, it is likely that you would hook an ammonite, not a fish. They were prolific back in the day, living (and sometimes dying) in schools in oceans around the globe. We find ammonite fossils (and plenty of them) in sedimentary rock from all over the world.

In some cases, we find rock beds where we can see evidence of a new species that evolved, lived and died out in such a short time span that we can walk through time, following the course of evolution using ammonites as a window into the past.

For this reason, they make excellent index fossils. An index fossil is a species that allows us to link a particular rock formation, layered in time with a particular species or genus found there. 

Generally, deeper is older, so we use the sedimentary layers of rock to match up to specific geologic time periods, rather like the way we use tree rings to date trees. A handy way to compare fossils and date strata across the globe.

References: Inoue, S., Kondo, S. Suture pattern formation in ammonites and the unknown rear mantle structure. Sci Rep 6, 33689 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep33689

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep33689?fbclid=IwAR1BhBrDqhv8LDjqF60EXdfLR7wPE4zDivwGORTUEgCd2GghD5W7KOfg6Co#citeas

Photos: Argonauticeras besairei from the awesome José Juárez Ruiz.

Photo: Hoplites bennettiana from near Troyes, France. Collection de Christophe Marot

FRANZ BOAS WITH THE HUNT FAMILY, FORT RUPERT 1894

 

DRAGONFLIES: ODONATA

Dragonflies, from the order Odonata, have been around for over 250 million years. The most conspicuous difference in their evolution over time is the steady shrinking of their wingspan from well over two and a half feet down to a few inches.

Voracious predators, today they dine on bees, wasps, butterflies and avoid the attentions of birds and wee lizards -- but back in the day, they had a much larger selection of meals within their grasp.

Time has turned the tables. Small lizards and birds who today choose dragonflies as a tasty snack used to be their preferred prey.

LOWER CRETACEOUS ACANTHOHOPLITES

A very pleasing example of the Ammonite Acanthohoplites bigoureti (Seunes, 1887). Lower Cretaceous, Upper Aptian, from a riverbed concretion, Kurdzhips River, North Caucasus Mountains, Republic of Adygea, Russia. 

Geologically, the Caucasus Mountains belong to a system that extends from southeastern Europe into Asia and is considered a border between them. The Greater Caucasus Mountains are mainly composed of Cretaceous and Jurassic rocks with the Paleozoic and Precambrian rocks in the higher regions. 

Some volcanic formations are found throughout the range. On the other hand, the Lesser Caucasus Mountains are formed predominantly of the Paleogene rocks with a much smaller portion of the Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks. 

The evolution of the Caucasus began from the Late Triassic to the Late Jurassic during the Cimmerian orogeny at the active margin of the Tethys Ocean while the uplift of the Greater Caucasus is dated to the Miocene during the Alpine orogeny.

The Caucasus Mountains formed largely as the result of a tectonic plate collision between the Arabian plate moving northwards with respect to the Eurasian plate. As the Tethys Sea was closed and the Arabian Plate collided with the Iranian Plate and was pushed against it and with the clockwise movement of the Eurasian Plate towards the Iranian Plate and their final collision, the Iranian Plate was pressed against the Eurasian Plate. 

As this happened, the entire rocks that had been deposited in this basin from the Jurassic to the Miocene were folded to form the Greater Caucasus Mountains. This collision also caused the uplift and the Cenozoic volcanic activity in the Lesser Caucasus Mountains.

The preservation of this Russian specimen is outstanding. Acanthohoplites bigoureti are also found in Madagascar, Mozambique, in the Rhone-Alps of France and the Western High Atlas Mountains and near Marrakech in Morocco. This specimen measures 55mm and is in the collection of the deeply awesome Emil Black.

MUSEO NACIONAL DE CIENCIAS NATURALES

HALL OF GIANTS NEW MEXICO

Carlsbad Caverns National Park is in the Chihuahuan Desert of southern New Mexico. 

It features more than 100 caves. The Natural Entrance is a path into the namesake Carlsbad Cavern. Stalactites cling to the roof of the Big Room, a huge underground chamber in the cavern. Walnut Canyon Desert Loop is a drive with desert views. 

Rattlesnake Springs, a desert wetland, attracts reptiles and hundreds of bird species. If you find yourself down in New Mexico it is well worth a visit. 

Definitely bring your camera and some hiking boots with good ankle support and grip for the slippery rock you will need to traverse to explore these beauties in all their glory.

EAGLE SOARING

 

PALEONTOLOGY MUSEUM, FLORENCE, ITALY

CARNOTAURUS SASTREI

Carnotaurus sastrei, a genus of large theropod dinosaur that roamed, Argentina, South America during the Late Cretaceous period, 72 to 69.9 million years ago.

This fellow (or at least his skull) is on display at the Natural History Museum in Madrid, Spain. For now, he is the only known genus of this species of bipedal predator.

The skull is quite unusual. Initially, it has a very marine reptile feel (but make no mistake this guy is clearly a terrestrial theropod). Once you look closer you see his bull-like horns (from whence he gets his name) that imply battle between rivals for the best meal, sexual partner and to be the one who leads the herd.

I'll be interested to see his cousins once more specimens of the genus are unearthed.

DIPLODOCUS CARNEGIEI

Craneo Diplodocus carnegiei, Morrison Formation, Jurassic

OLD HABITS IN CORDOBA SPAIN

Nuns stepping out from the palace, Cordoba, Spain

A group of nuns stepping out in Cordoba, Spain. The nuns earn their living selling sweets and confections using recipes handed down from the Romans and Moors. Many convents are closing because they have fewer nuns so this art may one day be lost.

The procedure for buying the sweets is archaic but charming. You enter the convent into a very small room with a lazy Susan installed on the wall. 

While we did see some nuns in the street, many do not leave the cloister or appear in public. You never see the nun with whom you do the transaction since these are cloistered nuns who avoid direct contact with the public.

On the wall beside the lazy Susan will be a price list. You look it over and decide which sweets you want to buy. Then you ring a buzzer on the wall. After a while, you will hear the voice of a nun greet you and ask you what you want to purchase. 

You share your order and after a few minutes the lazy Susan will turn and you will find your order on it. You then put your money on the lazy Susan and turn it so that the nun can get it. If there is change, the nun puts it on the lazy Susan and you then can get your change.

GRANADA, ANDALUSIA, SPAIN

SHARKS: ELASMOBRANCH FISH

Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven-gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. 

Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimorpha and are the sister group to the rays.

While we often fear them — yes, they can eat you — they should fear us as we dine on them with shocking regularity. In lieu of Shark Fin Soup, a better choice would be investing money and time into their conservation. 

ALHAMBRA PALACE: GRANADA, SPAIN

40 DEGREES OF LATITUDE: THE ROCKIES

Images of darkened valleys, golden late summer light, icy-blue glaciers, white caps on an endless Pacific, small, hardy, yet perfect alpine flowers, spring to mind and each carries a small element but doesn't quite capture it. Heck, even our dog parks are ruggedly beautiful and by the sheer number of visits, would certainly define a large part of my west coast experience.

But the niggling thought is still there. Is there one a single element I could name that epitomizes this vast, diverse landscape? Sea to Sky, lakes to mountains, I've kayaked, hiked, sailed and lovingly explored a great deal of it. Through 40 degrees of latitude, from Yukon to Mexico, the Rocky Mountains are North America's geographic backbone.

This is the Great Continental Divide, where the interminable flatness of the interior collides with the Western Cordillera, a major mountain system of the world. From the highest ridges of the Rockies, the rivers flow to opposite corners of the land, north to the Beaufort Sea, south to the Gulf of Mexico, east to Hudson Bay and west to the Pacific.

KWAS'KWAS: OUR BEAUTIFUL BLUE JAYS

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. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest and my family, 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. Both their songs and cries are quite helpful if you are an animal living nearby and concerned about predators. 

FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DINOSAURS

Dinosaur Track, Tumbler Ridge

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

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

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

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

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

Theropod Track

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the summer of 2000, two curious boys exploring a creek bed near Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, made a discovery that would put their small northern town on the paleontological map. While splashing along Flatbed Creek, Mark Turner and Daniel Helm noticed a series of large, three-toed impressions pressed deep into the sandstone—too regular to be random. 

They had stumbled upon the fossilized footprints of dinosaurs that had walked there some 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous. Their find sparked scientific interest that led to the establishment of the Tumbler Ridge Museum and later the Tumbler Ridge Global Geopark. 

Since then, paleontologists have uncovered thousands of tracks in the area—from nimble theropods to massive sauropods—etched into the ancient riverbeds and preserving a vivid record of dinosaurs on the move in what was once a lush coastal plain. I'll share more on that amazing story in a future post!

FOSSIL FIELD TRIP VIA JET RANGER

AMMONITES OF THE ARNIOCERAS BEDS

Ammonites (and two gastropods) from the Arnioceras beds near Last Creek in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The fossils found here are from the Lower Jurassic, Lower Sinemurian, Little Paradise Member of the Last Creek formation. This site is part of the research area for Dr. Howard Tipper, GSC (who is hugely missed) and Dr. Louise Longridge, University of British Columbia.

Several ammonites species can be found here including Arnioceras semicostatum & Arnioceras miserable. The two gastropods you see in the central block have yet to be identified to species. Here's hoping a nice grad student takes an interest. The rare but lovely gastros from this area would make an excellent thesis. Perhaps comparing their distribution to their counterparts in Europe.

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