ETHELDRED'S HOPLITES

Hoplites (Hoplites) bennettiana (Sowerby, 1826)

A beautiful example of the ammonite, Hoplites (Hoplites) bennettiana (Sowerby, 1826), from Early Albian localities in the Carrière de Courcelles Villemoyenne, Région de Troyes, near Champagne in northeastern France.

The species name is a homage to Etheldred Benett, an early English geologist often credited with being the first female geologist — a fossil collector par excellence.

She was also credited with being a man  —  the Natural History Society of Moscow awarding her membership as Master Etheldredus Benett in 1836. The confusion over her name — it did sound masculine — came again with the bestowing of a Doctorate of Civil Law from Tsar Nicholas I.

The Tsar had read Sowerby's Mineral Conchology, a major fossil reference work that contained the second-highest number of contributed fossils of the day, many of the best quality available at the time. Forty-one of those specimens were credited to Benett. Between her name and this wonderous contribution to a growing science, the Russian Tsar awarded the Doctorate to what he believed was a young male scientist on the rise. He believed in education, founding Kyiv University in 1834, just not for women. He was an autocratic military man frozen in time — the thought that this work could have been done by a female unthinkable. Doubly charming is that the honour from the University of St Petersburg was granted at a time when women were not allowed to attend St. Pete's or any higher institutions. That privilege arrived in 1878, twenty years after Nicholas I's death.

Benett took these honours (and social blunders) with grace. She devoted her life to collecting and studying fossils from the southwest of England, amassing an impressive personal collection she openly shared with geologist friends, colleagues and visitors to her home. Her speciality was fossils from the Middle Cretaceous, Upper Greensand in the Vale of Wardour — a valley in the county of Wiltshire near the River Nadder.

Etheldred Benett was born on 22 July 1775 at Pyt House, Tisbury, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of the local squire Thomas Benett.

Etheldred's interest was cultivated by the botanist Aylmer Bourke Lambert (1761-1842), a founding member of the Linnean Society. Benett's brother had married Lucy Lambert, Aylmer's half-sister. Aylmer was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Society of the Arts. He was also an avid fossil collector and member of the Geological Society of London. The two met and got on famously.

Aylmer kindled an interest in natural history in both of Benett's daughters. Etheldred had a great fondness for geology, stratigraphy and all things paleo, whilst her sister concentrated on botany. Etheldred had a distinct advantage over her near contemporary, the working-class Mary Anning (1799-1847), in that Benett was a woman of independent wealth who never married — and didn't need to — who could pursue the acquisition and study of fossils for her own interest.

While Anning was the marine reptile darling of the age, she was also greatly hindered by her finances. "She sells, seashells by the seashore..." while chanted in a playful spirit today, was not meant kindly at the time.

Aylmer's encouragement emboldened Etheldred to go into the field to collect for herself — and collect she did. Profusely.

Benett’s contribution to the early history of Wiltshire geology is significant. She corresponded extensively with the coterie of gentlemen scientists of the day —  Gideon Mantell, William Buckland, James Sowerby, George Bellas Greenough and, Samuel Woodward. She also consorted with the lay folk and had an ongoing correspondence with William Smith, whose stratigraphy work had made a favourable impression on her brother-in-law, Aylmer.

Her collections and collaboration with geologists of the day were instrumental in helping to form the field of geology as a science. One colleague and friend, Gideon Mantell, British physician, geologist and palaeontologist, who discovered four of the five genera of dinosaurs and Iguanadon, was so inspired by Benett's work he named this Cretaceous ammonite after her — Hoplites bennettiana.

Benett's fossil assemblage was a valuable resource for her contemporaries and remains so today. It contains thousands of Jurassic and Cretaceous fossil specimens from the Wiltshire area and the Dorset Coast, including a myriad of first recorded finds. The scientific name of every taxon is usually based on one particular specimen, or in some cases multiple specimens. Many of the specimens she collected serve as the Type Specimen for new species.

Fossil Sponge, Polypothecia quadriloba, Warminster, Wiltshire

Her particular interest was the collection and study of fossil sponges. Alcyonia caught her eye early on. She collected and recorded her findings with the hope that one of her colleagues might share her enthusiasm and publish her work as a contribution to their own. Alas, no one took up the helm — those interested were busy with other pursuits (or passed away) and others were less than enthusiastic or never seemed to get around to it.

To ensure the knowledge was shared in a timely fashion, she finally wrote them up and published them herself. You can read her findings in her publication, ‘A Catalogue of Organic Remains of the County of Wiltshire’ (1831), where she shares observations on the fossil sponge specimens and other invert goodies from the outcrops west of town.

She shared her ideas freely and donated many specimens to local museums. It was through her exchange of observations, new ideas and open sharing of fossils with Gideon Mantell and others that we gained a clearer understanding of the Lower Cretaceous sedimentary rocks of Southern England.

In many ways, Mantell was drawn to Benett as his ideas went against majority opinion. At a time when marine reptiles were dominating scientific discoveries and discussions, he pushed the view that dinosaurs were terrestrial, not amphibious, and sometimes bipedal. Mantell's life's work established the now-familiar idea that the Age of Reptiles preceded the Age of Mammals. Mantell kept a journal from 1819-1852, that remained unpublished until 1940 when E. Cecil Curwen published an abridged version. (Oxford University Press 1940). John A. Cooper, Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton and Hove, published the work in its entirety in 2010.

I was elated to get a copy, both to untangle the history of the time and to better learn about the relationship between Mantell and Benett. So much of our geologic past has been revealed since Mantell's first entry two hundred years ago. The first encounter we share with the two of them is a short note from March 8, 1819. "This morning I received a letter from Miss Bennett of Norton House near Warminster Wilts, informing me of her having sent a packet of fossils for me, to the Waggon Office..." The diary records his life and the social interactions of the small connected community of the scientific social elite — pure delight.

Though a woman in a newly evolving field, her work, dedication and ideas were recognized and appreciated by her colleagues. Gideon Mantell described her as, "a lady of great talent and indefatigable research," whilst the Sowerbys noted her, "labours in the pursuit of geological information have been as useful as they have been incessant."

Benett produced the first measured sections of the Upper Chicksgrove quarry near Tisbury in 1819, published and shared with local colleagues as, "the measure of different beds of stone in Chicksgrove Quarry in the Parish of Tisbury.” The stratigraphic section was later published by naturalist James Sowerby without her knowledge. Her research contradicted many of Sowerby’s conclusions.

She wrote and privately published a monograph in 1831, containing many of her drawings and sketches of molluscs and sponges. Her work included sketches of fossil Alcyonia (1816) from the Green Sand Formation at Warminster Common and the immediate vicinity of Warminster in Wiltshire.

Echinoids and Bivalves. Collection of Etheldred Benett (1775-1845)

The Society holds two copies, one was given to George Bellas Greenough, and another copy was given to her friend Gideon Mantell. This work established her as a true, pioneering biostratigrapher following but not always agreeing with the work of William Smith.

If you'd like to read a lovely tale on William's work, check out the Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester. It narrates the intellectual context of the time, the development of Smith's ideas and how they contributed to the theory of evolution and more generally to a dawning realization of the true age of the earth.

The book describes the social, economic or industrial context for Smith's insights and work, such as the importance of coal mining and the transport of coal by means of canals, both of which were a stimulus to the study of geology and the means whereby Smith supported his research. Benett debated many of the ideas Smith put forward. She was luckier than Smith financially, coming from a wealthy family, a financial perk that allowed her the freedom to add fossils to her curiosity cabinet at will.

Most of her impressive collection was assumed lost in the early 20th century. It was later found and purchased by an American, Thomas Bellerby Wilson, who donated it to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Bits of her collection made their way into British museums. Leeds City Museum, the British Museum in London, Bristol Museum and the University of St. Petersburg all house her specimens. These collections contain many of the first fossils found of their kind — some with the soft tissues preserved. When Benett died in 1845, it was Mantell who penned her obituary for the London Geological Journal.

Etheldred Benett (1776-1845)

In 1989, almost a hundred and fifty years after her death, a review of her collection had Arthur Bogen and Hugh Torrens remark that her work has significantly impacted our modern understanding of Porifera, Coelenterata, Echinodermata, and the molluscan classes, Cephalopoda, Gastropoda, and Bivalvia. A worthy legacy, indeed.

Her renown lives on through her collections, her collaborations and through the beautiful 110 million-year-old ammonite you see here, Hoplites bennettiana. The lovely example you see here is in the collection of the deeply awesome Christophe Marot.

Spamer, Earle E.; Bogan, Arthur E.; Torrens, Hugh S. (1989). "Recovery of the Etheldred Benett Collection of fossils mostly from Jurassic-Cretaceous strata of Wiltshire, England, analysis of the taxonomic nomenclature of Benett (1831), and notes and figures of type specimens contained in the collection". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 141. pp. 115–180. JSTOR 4064955.

Torrens, H. S.; Benamy, Elana; Daeschler, E.; Spamer, E.; Bogan, A. (2000). "Etheldred Benett of Wiltshire, England, the First Lady Geologist: Her Fossil Collection in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and the Rediscovery of "Lost" Specimens of Jurassic Trigoniidae (Mollusca: Bivalvia) with Their Soft Anatomy Preserved.". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 150. pp. 59–123. JSTOR 4064955.

Photo credit: Fossils from Wiltshire.  In the foreground are three examples of the echinoid, Cidaris crenularis, from Calne, a town in Wiltshire, southwestern England, with bivalves behind. Caroline Lam, Archivist at the Geological Society, London, UK. http://britgeodata.blogspot.com/2016/03/etheldred-benett-first-female-geologist_30.html

Photo credit: Fossil sponges Polypothecia quadriloba, from Warminster, Wiltshire. The genus labels are Benett’s, as is the handwriting indicating the species. The small number, 20812, is the Society’s original accession label from which we can tell that the specimen was received in April 1824. The tablet onto which the fossils were glued is from the Society’s old Museum.

https://www.strangescience.net/ebenett.htm

GOLDEN DALMANITES

Dalmanites is a genus of trilobite in the order Phacopida. These extinct arthropods lived from the Late Ordovician to Middle Devonian. 

Trilobites of this genus have slightly convex exoskeletons with an average length of 4–7 cm. The cephalon is semicircular or parabolic.

This fellow has lost his distinctive tail spine that is the signature characteristic of this genus. 

Trilobites — in all their many wonderful forms — lived in our ancient oceans for more than 270 million years. The last of their lineage went extinct at the end of the Permian, 252 million years ago.

FOSSIL HUNTRESS PODCAST

The first episode of the Fossil Huntress Podcast was October 12, 2020. It started with a bang of 47 episodes in the first season. 

Since then, I have slowed down a bit to deliver 85 episodes over the course of this past year. 

The podcast has gained a broad audience globally with over 10,000 listens from 65 countries. It attracts those who love the realm of palaeontology with its sexy ammonites, trilobites and dinosaurs, but also a general science audience of those who love the natural world. 

The podcast has changed the way I interact with those who read my work and made me a better storyteller — though, in truth, I am still learning. 

With a large part of my listeners speaking English as their second, third or fourth language, it has made me aware of the many idioms and gambits so common in our English tongue. I have added a translate button to the ARCHEA blog so folk can read it in their language of choice as much of what I share on the podcast is also shared via the blog — only with pictures instead of descriptions.  

HOLLARDOPS: LE MAÎTRE

Hollardops sp. Devonian Trilobite

Hollardops is a genus of trilobite in the order Phacopida that lived during the Eifelian of the Middle Devonian. It was described by Le Maître in 1952 under type species Metacanthina mesocristata. 

The genus underwent reclassification in 1997 and emerged as Hollardops. We find this extinct arthropod in present-day Morocco. They share similarities with Greenops of New York and Canada but are generally larger than most Greenops species.

Hollardops have schizochroal eyes and a glabella that is slightly raised on the surface of the cephalon. Genal spines extend from the cephalon and extend to approximately the 6th thoracic segment.

Hollardops has eleven thoracic segments and also has five pairs of spines extending from the segments of the pygidium. Length ranges from approximately 3 to 9 cm.

Palaeo Coordinates — If you are a keen bean to head out in search of this lovely yourself, head to the Tazoulait Formation at Jbel (Jebel) Oufatène 30.8374368°N 4.9018067°W and Issimour 30.9669834°N 5.0373266°W SE of Alnif, western of Oued Alnif, Ma'ider region, Morocco.

HEROES, VILLAINS AND TYRANTS: HORNBY ISLAND HISTORY

Villains, tyrants and heroes alike are immortalized in the scientific literature as researchers don each new species a unique scientific name — and rename geographic sites with a settlers' mindset. 

If you pick through the literature, it is a whose who of monied European explorers literally making a name for themselves, sometimes at great cost to their rivals. 

This truth plays out on British Columbia's West Coast and gulf islands and on Hornby Island, in particular. 

The beautiful island of Hornby is in the traditional territory of the Pentlatch or K’ómoks First Nation, who call it Ja-dai-aich, which means the outer island — a reference to Hornby being on the outside of Denman Island off the east coast of Vancouver Island. 

The island is a mix of beach and meadow, forest and stream. While I often walk the lower beachfront, this island boasts a lovely and very walkable mixed forest that covers its higher ground. 

If you explore here, off the beaten path, you will see a mix of large conifers — Western Hemlock, Grand Fir and Lodgepole Pine on the island. Of these, the Western Red Cedar, Thuja plicata, is the most prized by First Nations. It is the Tree of Life that provides bountiful raw materials for creating everything from art to homes to totems and canoes. 

If you explore these forests further, you will also see wonderful examples of the smaller Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia, a wee evergreen that holds a special place in the hearts of First Nations whose carvers use this wood for bows and paddles for canoes.

Many spectacular specimens of arbutus, Arbutus menziesii, grow along the water's edge. These lovely evergreens have a rich orange-red bark that peels away in thin sheets, leaving a greenish, silvery smooth appearance and a satiny sheen. Arbutus, the broadleaf evergreen species is the tree I most strongly associate with Hornby. Hornby has its fair share of broadleaf deciduous trees. Bigleaf maple, red alder, black cottonwood, Pacific flowering dogwood, cascara and several species of willow thrive here.

There are populations of Garry oak, Quercus garryana, with their deeply lobed leaves, on the southern end of the island and at Helliwell Provincial Park on a rocky headland at the northeast end of Hornby. 

Local First Nations fire-managed these stands of Garry oak, burning away shrubs and other woody plants so that the thick-barked oaks and nutritious starch-rich plants like great camas, Camassia leichtlinii, could thrive without any nutrient competitors. 

Only about 260 acres (1.1 km2) of undisturbed stands of older forests have been identified on Hornby. They amount to roughly 3.5% of the island's surface area. There are roughly 1,330 acres (540 ha) of older second-growth stands on the island, roughly 19% of the island.

Most of the trees you see on the island are Douglas fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii, an evergreen conifer species in the pine family. My Uncle Doug recognized this tree species because of how much the bark looks like bacon — a food he loved. The common name is a nod to the Scottish botanist, David Douglas, who collected and first reported on this large evergreen.

Captain George Vancouver's Commission to Lieutenant

Sadly for Douglas, it is Archibald Menzies, a Scottish physician, botanist, naturalist — and David's arch-rival, whose name is commemorated for science. 

He is also credited with the scientific naming of our lovely arbutus trees. 

Menzies was part of the Vancouver Expedition (1791–1795) a four-and-a-half-year voyage of exploration commanded by Captain George Vancouver of the British Royal Navy.

Their voyage was built on the work of James Cook. Cook was arguably the first ship's captain to ensure his crew remained scurvy free by implementing a practice of nutritious meals — those containing ascorbic acid also known as Vitamin C — and meticulous standards for onboard hygiene. 

Though he did much to lower the mortality rate amongst his crew, he made some terrible decisions that led to his early demise. Cook was attacked and killed in 1779 during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific while attempting to kidnap the Island of Hawaii's monarch, Kalaniʻōpuʻu. 

During the four and a half year Vancouver Expedition voyage, the crew and officers bickered amongst themselves, circumnavigated the globe, touching down on five continents. Little did they know, for many of them it would be the last voyage they would ever take. 

The expedition returned to a Britain more interested in its ongoing war than in Pacific explorations. Vancouver was attacked by the politically well-connected Menzies for various slights, then challenged to a duel by Thomas Pitt, the 2nd Baron of Camelford. 

The fellow for whom the fair city of Vancouver is named never did complete his massive cartographical work. With health failing and nerves eroded, he lost the dual and his life. It was Peter Puget, whose name adorns Puget Sound, who completed Vancouver's — and arguably Cook's work on the mapping of our world.

And while it is now called Vancouver the city has many names as it falls within the traditional territory of three Coast Salish peoples — the Squamish (Sḵwxwú7mesh), Tsleil-waututh and Xwméthkwyiem ("Musqueam"—from masqui "an edible grass that grows in the sea"), and on the southern shores of Vancouver along the Fraser River, the Xwméthkwyiem.

If you would like to explore more of the history of eponymous naming from Linnaeus to Darwin, to Bowie himself, take a boo at a new book from Stephen B. Heard, "Charles Darwin's Barnacle and David Bowie's Spider. It is fresh off the press and chock full of historical and pop-culture icons.

References: The City of Vancouver Archives has three George Vancouver documents of note:

• The Commission, dated July 10, 1783, appointing him fourth Lieutenant of the HMS Fame (this is the official document confirming a field commission given to him May 7, 1782)
• A letter to James Sykes (a Navy Agent in London) written from the ship Discovery (not the same Discovery used by Cook) while in Nootka Sound near the end of Vancouver’s exploration of the West Coast, October 2, 1794. Vancouver states that they have determined that the Northwest Passage does not exist, which was one of the main goals of his voyage
• A letter to James Sykes written from Vancouver’s home in Petersham, England, after his voyage, October 26, 1797 

HORNBY ISLAND FOSSIL COLLECTING

Pachydiscus suchiaensis ID: 18-08-CP-002

Hornby is a glorious place to collect. It is family and dog friendly. You need to dress for beach collecting preferably with rubber boots, eye protection and clothing for both sun and rain. 

I like to bring a 5-gallon bucket or hard plastic bottomed backpack for my finds. Whatever you bring is going to get wet, muddy and laced with sand. 

As well as a rock hammer, I bring a 2-4 pound sledgehammer and rock pick for collecting and cracking open the concretions here. If you are lucky, when you split them you see a fossil hidden within. 

While that is not always the case, the rewards are well-worth. One such beauty from a glorious day of collecting on Hornby is the beautiful ammonite you see here.

It is nestled amongst the seaweed and modern oysters clinging to the grey shales of the Northumberland Formation is the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) ammonite Pachydiscus suchiaensis. This is one of my favourite species and is treasured both for its beauty and the fossil site it hails from. 

This darling was found in situ in the 72 million-year-old sediments at Collishaw Point on the northwest side of Hornby Island, southwestern British Columbia.

The island is beautiful in its own right and the fossils from here often keep some of their original shell or nacre which makes them quite fetching. This fellow is found amongst gastropods, shark teeth, fossil crabs, baculites and other bivalve fossils. 

Many of the fossils found at this locality are found in concretions rolled smooth by time and tide. The concretions you find on the beach are generally round or oval in shape and are made up of hard, compacted sedimentary rock. 

These past few years, many new and wonderful specimens have been unearthed — particularly by members of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS). 

Two particular finds are jaw-droppers — a Diploceras (think one-metre long paperclip, except it is a heteromorph ammonite) longer than your arm and Actinosepia gladius — internal hard body part found in many cephalopods — of a Vampyropod, a member of the proposed group Vampyropoda — equivalent to the superorder Octopodiformes — which includes vampire squid and octopus. 

Not all of these beauties come out in one piece and as well as amazing collecting skill, the VIPS boasts some of the best Fossil Preparators in British Columbia. A nod of respect to both Jason Hawley and Rick Ross in this regard. Rick is a skilled collector and found a rather nice and rare pachydiscid ammonite at Hornby this past year that I had never seen before. It has been a good year for collecting at Collishaw Point. Another notable find was the decapod, Archaeopus vancouverensis (Woodward 1896), found by Adam Melzak this past summer. If you are looking to get out and about, fossil collecting on Hornby Island is the perfect day trip or weekend getaway.

Where to View the Fossils:

The Courtenay Museum, Qualicum Museum and Pacific Museum of the Earth have delightful collections of specimens from the Upper Cretaceous of Hornby Island. This lovely heteromorph ammonite, Nostoceras hornbyense (Whiteaves, 1895) is a classic. The photo below is courtesy of John Fam, Vice-Chair of the Vancouver Paleontological Society (VIPS) on a recent visit to poke through the collections at the Pacific Museum of the Earth. 

It is a classic example of the heteromorph specimens found at Hornby. Bob Copeman found the best Nostoceras hornbyense I have ever seen from these outcrops. Lucky for you, a replica of that specimen has been made is available to be purchased from the VIPS. Always a nice addition to the collection — especially if you keep a teaching collection where specimens need to be handled by younger, rougher hands.

Nostoceras hornbyense (Whiteaves, 1895)

The main topographic feature on Hornby Island is an arcuate mountain of the resistant cliff-forming Geoffrey formation. Near Shingle Spit about half a mile from the coast is Mt. Geoffrey 920-foot peak; from there the mountain gradually drops in elevation to the southeast and to the north.  

It is 700-feet of conglomerate in a homocline striking N 20° W and dipping to the northeast at a shallow angle of about 6°. 

The apex of the arcuate mountain belt points to the southwest. The coast of Hornby is probably a rising shoreline, as indicated by the almost perpendicular cliffs along its periphery. A hundred (100) foot cliffs of Lambert shale extends from Shingle Spit to Phipps Point, while from the latter to Boulder Point, the cliffs are not as steep and are covered in many places by vegetation.

Behind the mountain and almost enclosed by it is the fertile, green Strachan Valley. On the large peninsula which extends in a southeast direction from the north of the island towards St. John’s Point, the Hornby Formation outcrops form the cliffs on the east side of Tribune Bay. The highest of these is about 200 feet. The argillaceous Lambert and Spray formations form the subdued lowlands of the island.

HARRISON LAKE FOSSIL COLLECTING

Cadoceras (Paracadoceras) tonniense

Most folk headed to Harrison Lake are venturing the three hours east of Vancouver to enjoy the hot springs, play out on the lake or take in the rugged scenery. A few also come to look for the elusive Sasquatch reported to live here.

But there are some who come and miss the town completely, instead favouring the upper west side of the lake and their fossiliferous bounty.

It is here that many wonderful marine fossil specimens can be found. When you look through the outcrops, what you will find embedded in the rock are their often warped or partially crushed fossilized, mineralized shells — millions of years old. 

It is truly amazing that we find them at all. These beauties are from the Lower Callovian — meaning, they swam our ancient oceans 164.7 - 161.2 million years ago. 

A wee handful — This lovely partially crushed ammonite is Cadoceras (Paracadoceras) tonniense (Imlay, 1953). 

These small, often incomplete brown and grey ammonites can be found at one of my favourite outcrops in the Jurassic macrocephalites macrocephalus ammonoid zone of the Mysterious Creek Formation near Harrison Lake, British Columbia. 

It is interesting that almost all of the ammonite specimens found here have well preserved outer whorls but flattened inner whorls. It makes one suspect if it is related to what was filled with sediment and what was open space within the shell at the time of burial. 

Elliptical specimens are found here, too — showing evidence for the depth and tectonic strain the rocks were subjected to. Take a good look at the photos to set your search image. You are looking for the dark grey rock with the fossils showing up either dark grey, grey-brown or black.

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.

Harrison Lake, Forestry Road #17

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.

Interestingly, the ammonites from the Harrison Lake locality are quite similar to the ones found within the lower part of the Chinitna Formation, near Cook Inlet (Tanaina: Tikahtnu; Sugpiaq: Cungaaciq) Alaska and Jurassic Point, Kyuquot, on the west coast of Vancouver Island — some of the most beautiful places on Earth. 

Geologic Hammer for Harrison's Hard Matrix

Most folk visiting Harrison are here for the hot springs or to kayak the crisp waters of the lake. I venture the three-hours east of Vancouver for the rock and the fossils they contain. 

The area you are exploring for geology and palaeontology around Harrison Lake has been home to the Xa'xtsa First Nation for thousands of years. 

Theirs is a band government of the In-SHUCK-ch Nation, a subgroup of the larger St'at'imc — also referred to as Lower Stl'atl'imx. Xa'xtsa is made up of two communities: Port Douglas, situated at the northern end of Little Harrison Lake, and Tipella, on the west side of the Lillooet River.

These species are from Callomon's (1984) Cadoceras comma Fauna B8 for the western Cordillera of North America, which is equivalent in part to the Macrocephalus Zone of Europe of the Early Callovian. 

The faunal association at locality #17 near Harrison suggests a more precise correlation to Callomon's zonation; namely, the Cadoceras wosnessenskii Fauna B8(e) found in the Chinitna Formation, southern Alaska (Imlay, 1953b). The type specimen is USNM 108088, from locality USGS Mesozoic 21340, Iniskin Peninsula, found in a Callovian marine siliciclastic in the Chinitna Formation of Alaska.

Exploration of the geology around Harrison Lake has a long history with geologists from the Geological Survey of Canada studying geology and palaeontological exposures as far back as the 1880s. They were probably looking for coal exposures and where to route the planned Canadian Pacific Railway — or perhaps sought a glimpse of the wily but shy local Sasquatch — but happily, they found fossils.

The paleo outcrops were first mentioned in the Geological Survey of Canada's Director's Report in 1888 (Selwyn, 1888), then studied by Whiteaves a year later. Whiteaves identified the prolific bivalve Aucella (now Buchia) from several specimens collected in 1882 by A. Bowman of the Geological Survey of Canada. 

The first detailed geological work in the Harrison Lake area was undertaken in a doctoral study by Crickmay (1925), who compiled a geological map, describing the stratigraphy and establishing the formational names, many of which we still use today. Crickmay went on to interpret the palaeogeography and structure of the region. 

Click to Enlarge

Around Harrison Lake, Callovian beds of the Mysterious Creek Formation are locally overlain disconformably by 3,000 feet of the Early Oxfordian conglomerate. Here we find the cigar-shaped squid-like cephalopod Belemnites, the bivalve Buchia and the ammonite Cadoceras tonniense, as well as others. 

Interestingly, we also find Cadoceras tonniense at nine localities hundreds of kilometres north of here along the Alaska Peninsula and within the Cook Inlet region of the United States.

If you would like to visit the site at Chinitna Bay, you'll want to hike into 59.9° N, 153.0° W: paleo-coordinates 31.6° N, 86.6° W.

If you're a keen bean for the Canadian site, you can drive the 30 km up Forestry Road #17, stopping just past Hale Creek at 49.5° N, 121.9° W: paleo-coordinates 42.5° N, 63.4° W, on the west side of Harrison Lake. You'll see Long Island to your right. 

If you can pre-load the Google Earth map of the area you will thank yourself. This site is a great day trip from Vancouver or the Fraser Valley. 

You will need a vehicle with good tires for travel on gravel roads. Search out the route ahead of time and share your trip plan with someone you trust telling them where you are going and when you plan to be back. 

Access Forestry Road #17 at the northeast end of the parking lot from the Sasquatch Inn at 46001 Lougheed Hwy, Harrison  Mills. Look for signs for the Chehalis River Fish Hatchery to get you started. NTS: 92H/05NW; 92H/05SW; 92H/12NW; 92H/12SW. 

The first of the yummy fossil exposures (that are easily collected) are just north of Hale Creek on the west side of the road. There is active logging here so be very careful with kids and pets on the roadcut. Slides are also fairly common — and you may start a few if you hike the cliffs — so watch out for those below. Wear something brightly coloured so cars and trucks can see you. 

You will want to look both in the bedrock, in the loose material that gathers in the ditches and for large dark grey boulders the size of dishwashers packed with Buchia — sometimes made entirely of these densely packed bivalves. 

Buchia populated our Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous waters like a team sport. When they thrived they really thrived, building up large coquinas of the material that make up much of the rock you will find at Harrison and other sites in the Northern Hemisphere. 

We use them as Index Fossils, fossils helpful for dating the age of rock because of their abundance and relatively short stratigraphic range, ie. they lived well, populated an area en masse then died out quickly — the ideal biostratigraphic index fossil.

What does that mean to you? Well, when you are out and about with friends and discover rocks with Buchia or made entirely of Buchia, you can casually say, "oh, this looks to be Upper Jurassic or Lower Cretaceous. Guys, come take a look. We're likely the first to lay eyes on this little clam for more than 160 million years." You'll impress the pants off them. Very high-five worthy.

And on a geeky language note, know that it gets easier. If you had never seen an apple and overhead folk talking about Granny Smith, Ambrosia, Gala or Honeycrisp, your eyes might glaze over. But consider how much knowledge you have that is specialized. You didn't study for it but just picked it up because you find it interesting. 

Think of your knowledge of sports teams, boats, cars, Star Wars or the Marvel Universe. You know things, so many things. You'll find your inner fossil geek in time — probably with your first find. And that's the tip of the iceberg; first you, then your kids, your friends, your neighbour. Once you start is it easy to get hooked on the goodness. Fossil addiction is real and the only cure is to embrace your geek, get out there and do it. You've got this!

WHAT TO BRING:

As with all trips into British Columbia's wild places, you will want to dress for the weather. This is a good site for hiking boots, raingear, gloves, eye protection and a good geologic hammer and chisel. Fill your gas tank and pack a tasty lunch. You will definitely want to bring your camera for the blocks of Buchia too big to carry. If you take some good photos, I would love to see them. 

Wear bright clothing and keep your head covered. If it is a larger group, those collecting below may want to consider hardhats in case of small rock falls. These are most often chunks of rock the size of your fist up to the size of a grapefruit — and they pack a punch. 

Bring a colourful towel or something to lay your keepers on. Once you set down a rock, it is hard to find that keeper pile again as they often blend into the surroundings. I take the extra precaution of spraying the ends of my hammers and chisels with yellow fluorescent paint as I have set down too many and ended up leaving them in the field. I also always throw one of those lightweight yellow construction vests over whatever I am wearing so my crew and cars can spot me.

When you have finished for the day, you can compare your various treasures to see which ones you would like to keep. In British Columbia, you are a steward of the fossil, meaning these all belong to the province but you can keep them safe though cannot sell them or ship them outside British Columbia without a permit. You should be all set to celebrate a glorious day in the beautiful outdoors.

I have been asked about collecting four seasons. What do we do about the weather? We live in a rainforest so collecting in sun and rain means your field season is longer. Everyone has a preference. I prefer not to collect in the snow, but I have done. While sunny days are lovely, it can be easier to see the fossil specimens at Harrison when the rock is wet. So, do we do this in the rain? Heck, yeah. 

Torrential rain? You, yes, once you're good and hooked. A casual friend or your kids, no. Choose your battles. A solid eight hours in the rain is on the losing end. They may come, but they'll likely never join you again — or speak to you.

Once you get home you can wash and ID your finds. I have put the scientific names here but if they occur as gobblygook, don't worry. Harrison does not have a huge variety of fossil fauna. Essentially, if your find is coiled and round, it is an ammonite. If it is long and straight, it is a belemnite. And if it looks like a wee fat baby oyster, it is Buchia. That is not always true, but it is mostly true. 

If you find something you cannot ID, send me a photo on the Fossil Huntress Facebook page and I will help you to identify it.

Oh, and do be on the lookout for anything that looks like bone. This site is ripe for finding a marine reptile. Think plesiosaur, mosasaur, elasmosaur, you get the idea. Maybe the next Indiana Jones to get a new species named for them is you!

• A. J. Arthur, P. L. Smith, J. W. H. Monger and H. W. Tipper. 1993. Mesozoic stratigraphy and Jurassic palaeontology west of Harrison Lake, southwestern British Columbia. Geological Survey of Canada Bulletin 441:1-62
• R. W. Imlay. 1953. Callovian (Jurassic) ammonites from the United States and Alaska Part 2. The Alaska Peninsula and Cook Inlet regions. United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 249-B:41-108
• An overview of the tectonic history of the southern Coast Mountains, British Columbia; Monger, J W H; in, Field trips to Harrison Lake and Vancouver Island, British Columbia; Haggart, J W (ed.); Smith, P L (ed.). Canadian Paleontology Conference, Field Trip Guidebook 16, 2011 p. 1-11 (ESS Cont.# 20110248).

OH, THOSE RUSSIANS: CHEIRURUS INGRICUS

This glorious rich chocolate showboat is the trilobite Cheirurus ingricus from Middle Ordovician limestone deposits in the Wolchow River Region of Saint Petersburg, Russia. 

We sometimes find these lovelies enrolled or semi-enrolled with their impossibly thin genal spines lifted in the air. The Cheirurids appeared about 500 million years ago and died out about 390 million years ago. They are definitely a favourite!

FURRY KAMIKAZE PILOTS: FLYING TREE SQUIRRELS

Mammals can walk, hop, swim and fly; a few, like marsupial sugar gliders, can even glide. 

With 52 species scattered across the Northern hemisphere, flying squirrels are by far the most successful group that took to the skies.

While not true flyers per se, these wee marsupials know how to skedaddle, coasting from tree to tree one giant leap of faith at a time. 

And they are pretty cute if you look past their teeth and claws. Think adorable kamikaze pilot snugged inside a paper aeroplane with just enough Freddie Kruger to keep it interesting.

Their airborne manoeuvres are made possible by a half-plane, half-parachute body design — a bat-suit style membrane that puffs up into a parachute their feet and hands. They have evolved teensy but sturdy wrists strong enough to support long cartilaginous rods, making their personal brand of flight possible. Their wee specialized wrist bones are a distinctive feature as they do not share them with their non-flying brethren. 

The origin of flying squirrels is a point of contention: while most genetic studies point towards the group splitting from tree squirrels about 23 million years ago, the oldest remains – mostly cheek teeth – suggest the animals were already soaring through forests 36 million years ago. 

Troublesome are the findings from studies that show the dental features used to distinguish between gliding and non-gliding squirrels may actually be shared by the two groups.

In 2002, the digging of a dumpsite in Barcelona, Spain unearthed a peculiar skeleton. As the bones were extracted one by one they found first a tail, then two thigh bones — big enough that they initially thought they might belong to a small primate. 

Once they were all removed and re-articulated, you could see that they belonged to a rodent. 

As the specimen was being prepared and the associated matrix screen-washed for loose bits, they discovered the wee wrist bones. From the mud emerged the minuscule specialized wrist bones that confirmed this was the skeleton of Miopetaurista neogrivensis, an extinct flying squirrel.

Fossil flying squirrel Miopetaurista neogrivensis

Casanovas-Vilar et al. described the 11.6 million years old Spanish fossil — the oldest squirrel ever found. The wrist bones reveal that the animal belongs to the group of flying squirrels that have large sizes. 

Evolutionary analyses — the sexy science combining molecular and paleontological data — told a new story, flying squirrels evolved from tree squirrels as far back as 31 to 25 million years ago, and possibly even earlier. 

We also confirmed that Miopetaurista is closely related to Petaurista, a modern group of giant flying squirrels. 

Their skeletons are so similar, in fact, that the large extant species that inhabit the tropical and subtropical forests of Asia today should be considered living fossils.

Molecular and paleontological data are often at odds, but this fossil shows that they can be reconciled and combined to retrace history. 

There is still more to be done to tease out the lineage of these gliding mammals. Discovering older fossils, or even transitional forms could help to retrace how flying squirrels took a leap from the rest of their evolutionary tree.

Flying squirrels are the only group of gliding mammals with remarkable diversity and a wide geographical range. However, their evolutionary story is not well known. Thus far, the identification of extinct flying squirrels has been exclusively based on dental features, which, contrary to certain postcranial characters, are not unique to them. 

While best efforts are made, fossils attributed to this clade may indeed belong to other squirrel groups. The oldest fossil skeleton of a flying squirrel (11.6 Ma) displays the gliding-related diagnostic features shared by extant forms and allows for a recalibration of the divergence time between the tree and flying squirrels. 

Phylogenetic analyses combining morphological and molecular data generally support older dates than previous molecular estimates (~23 Ma), being congruent with the inclusion of some of the earliest fossils (~36 Ma) into this clade. They also show that flying squirrels experienced little morphological change for almost 12 million years.

Image: The fossil flying squirrel Miopetaurista neogrivensis

(a) Reconstruction of the skeleton based in the partial skeleton IPS56468 from Abocador de Can Mata. Missing elements are based on extant giant flying squirrel Petaurista petaurista and are coloured in blue. 

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.39270.001 / https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.39270.002

SHACKLETON: STROMNESS WHALING STATION

Stromness Whaling Station

A cautious seal pokes up his head to greet you as you walk the ground of Stromness, an abandoned whaling station on the northern coast of South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic. 

Snuggled at the centre of three harbours on the west side of Stromness Bay, South Georgia, this famous site was the destination of Sir Ernest Shackleton's rescue journey in 1916.

In 1907, a floating factory was built in Stromness Harbour and a land station was added in 1912. 

From 1912 until 1931, Stromness operated as a whaling station — not the proudest moments of our marine overtures. It was later converted into a ship repair yard, machine shop and foundry. From the mid-1930s to 1961, Stromness did minor repairs for a small local customer base then closed down completely, letting nature take back the land and the local animal inhabitants run amock.

The site would gain worldwide recognition with the 1916 landing of Ernest Shackleton and his small crew on the unpopulated southern coast of South Georgia at King Haakon Bay. 

The landing was a Hail Mary moment for the hypothermic men — cold, wet and shivering from an arduous sea voyage in their 22-foot (6.7 m) lifeboat, the James Caird — this was do or die.

Shackleton was on his grandly titled Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, an ambitious and hazardous journey he would embark on in early September 1914, shortly following the outbreak of World War One. This wasn't the ooh-la-la luxurious travel we enjoy today. This was pure rough and tumble — massive ocean swells and bone-shattering storms endured by the hearty. 

Whether or not the aptly named Ernest ever placed his prophetic ad, the words ring true for what the crew endured: "Men Wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success." 

Truth in advertising? Generally, we share only the bright blue sky of possibilities, this was the exception to the rule. The adventure was to be a high-risk manoeuvre that could pay off spectacularly — or kill you dead.

He set sail on the Endurance from South Georgia for the Weddell Sea on 5 December, heading for Vahsel Bay. As the ship moved southward navigating through the ice. Deep in the Weddell Sea, conditions gradually grew worse until, on 19 January 1915, Endurance became frozen fast in an ice floe and was abandoned. 

Shackleton refused to pack supplies for more than four weeks, knowing that if they did not reach South Georgia within that time, the boat and its crew would be lost. Shackleton, along with Tom Crean and Frank Worsley, rowed to Elephant Island. Their small craft, the James Caird, was launched on 24 April 1916; during the next fifteen days, it sailed through the waters of the southern ocean, at the mercy of the stormy seas, in constant peril of capsizing. 

On 8 May, thanks to Frank Worsley's navigational skills, the cliffs of South Georgia came into sight. Hope was within sight. Hurricane-force winds prevented the possibility of landing. The party was forced to ride out the storm offshore, in constant danger of being dashed against the rocks.

Finally able to land, the waterlogged men then trekked across South Georgia's mountainous and glaciated interior in an effort to reach help on the populated northern shore of the island.

After 36 hours of crossing the interior, they arrived at the Stromness administration centre, also was the home of the Norwegian whaling station's manager. This building has been dubbed the Villa at Stromness because it represents relative luxury compared to its surroundings. 

Shackleton immediately sent a boat to pick up the three men from the other side of South Georgia while he set to work to organise the rescue of the Elephant Island men. His first three attempts were foiled by sea ice, which blocked the approaches to the island. 

He appealed to the Chilean government, which offered the use of the Yelcho, a small seagoing tug from its navy. Yelcho, commanded by Captain Luis Pardo, and the British whaler Southern Sky reached Elephant Island on 30 August 1916, at which point the men had been isolated there for four and a half months, and Shackleton quickly evacuated all 22 men.

In the decades following its closure, Stromness has been subject to damage from the elements and many of its buildings have been reduced to ruins. 

However, recent efforts have been made to restore the "Villa" and clean up debris from the rest of the site in order to make it safe for visitors. Outside of Stromness is a small whalers' cemetery with 14 grave markers.

T-REX EXCAVATION

Tyrannosaurus Rex had a large brain for its size and powerful back legs that let it hunt prey or chase off competitors for its kills or scavenged meals. 

T. Rex were big. They were one of the biggest carnivores — meat eating dinosaurs to ever live at 12 metres or 40 feet long. 

But they were not the biggest. Giganotosaurus, Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus were bigger still.

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.