FOSSIL SALMON OF SKOKOMISH

This toothy specimen is an Oncorhynchus nerka, a Pleistocene Sockeye Salmon from outcrops along the South Fork Skokomish River, Olympic Peninsula, Washington State, USA.

The area is home to the Skokomish — one of nine tribes of the Twana, Coast Salish First Nations in the northern-mid Puget Sound area of western Washington state in the United States. 

Each of the Tribal Nations are known by their locations — Dabop, Quilcene or salt-water people, Dosewallips, Duckabush, Hoodsport, Skokomish or Skoko'bsh, Vance Creek, Tahuya, and Duhlelap or Tule'lalap. The name Skokomish means river people or people of the river in the language of the Twana, sqʷuqʷóbəš or sqWuqWu'b3sH.

Closer to my home farther north in the Pacific Northwest on northern Vancouver Island are the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala. Here, sockeye salmon are known as ma̱łik. You would likely recognize these fossils' modern counterparts from their distinctive red bodies and greenish heads. 

Their descendants had been absent from the Skokomish River for more than a decade up to 2014 when construction to augment the negative impact of the Cushman Reservoir was undertaken to restore their natural habitat.

The fossil specimens include individuals with enlarged breeding teeth and worn caudal fins. It is likely that these salmon acted very similar to their modern counterparts with males partaking in competitive and sneaky tactics to gain access to the sexiest (large and red) females who were ready to mate. These ancient salmon had migrated, dug their nests, spawned and defended their eggs prior to their death. For now, we're referring to the species found here as Oncorhynchus nerka, as they have many of the characteristics of sockeye salmon, but also several minor traits of the Pink Salmon, Oncorhynchus gorbuscha.

I had expected to learn that the locality contained a single or just a few partial specimens, but the fossils beds are abundant with large, 45–70 cm, four-year-old adult salmon concentrated in a beautiful sequence of death assemblages.

Oncorhynchus nerka, Pleistocene Sockeye Salmon

Gerald Smith, a retired University of Michigan professor was shown the specimens and recognized them as Pleistocene, a time when the northern part of North America was undergoing a series of glacial advances and retreats that carved their distinctive signature into the Pacific Northwest.

It looks as though this population diverged from the original species about one million years ago, possibly when the salmon were deposited at the head of a proglacial lake impounded by the Salmon Springs advancement of a great glacier known as the Puget lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. 

Around 17,000 years ago, this 3,000 foot-thick hunk of glacial ice had made its way down from Canada, sculpting a path south and pushing its way between the Cascade and Olympic Mountains. The ice touched down as far south as Olympia, stilled for a few hundred years, then began to melt.

After the ice began melting and retreating north, the landscape slowly changed —  both the land and sea levels rising — and great freshwater lakes forming in the lowlands filled with glacial waters from the melting ice. The sea levels rose quite considerably, about one and a half centimetres per year between 18,000 and 13,000 years ago. The isostatic rebound (rising) of the land rose even higher with an elevation gain of about ten centimetres per year from 16,000 to 12,500 years ago.

Around 14,900 years ago, sea levels had risen to a point where the salty waters of Puget Sound began to slowly fill the lowlands. Both the land and sea continued to rise and by 5,000 years ago, the sea level was about just over 3 meters lower than it is today. The years following were an interesting time in the geologic history of the Pacific Northwest. The geology of the South Fork Skokomish River continued to shift, undergoing a complicated series of glacial damming and river diversions after these salmon remains were deposited.

Today, we find their remains near the head of a former glacial lake at an elevation of 115 metres on land owned by the Green Diamond Company. The first fossil specimens were found back in 2001 by locals fishing for trout along the South Fork Skokomish River.

Upon seeing the fossil specimens, Smith teamed up with David Montgomery of the University of Washington, Seattle, along with N. Phil Peterson and Bruce Crowley, a Late Oligocene Mysticete specialist from the Burke Museum, to complete fieldwork and author a paper.

The fossil specimen you see here is housed in the Burke Museum collection. They opened the doors to their new building and exhibitions in the Fall of 2019. These photos are by the deeply awesome John Fam from a trip to see the newly opened exhibits this year. If you fancy a visit to the Burke Museum, check out their website here: https://www.burkemuseum.org/.

David B. Williams did up a nice piece on historylink.org on the Salmon of the Puget lowland. You can find his work here: https://www.historylink.org/File/20263

If you'd like to read more of the papers on the topic, check out:

• Smith, G., Montgomery, D., Peterson, N., and Crowley, B. (2007). Spawning sockeye salmon fossils in Pleistocene lake beds of Skokomish Valley, Washington. Quaternary Research, 68(2), 227-238. doi:10.1016/j.yqres.2007.03.007.
• Easterbrook, D.J., Briggs, N.D., Westgate, J.A., and Gorton, M.P. (1981). Age of the Salmon Springs Glaciation in Washington. Geology 9, 87–93.
• Hikita, T. (1962). Ecological and morphological studies of the genus Oncorhynchus (Salmonidae) with particular consideration on phylogeny. Scientific Reports of the Hokkaido Salmon Hatchery 17, 1–97.

If you fancy a read of Crowley's work on Late Oligocene Mysticete from Washington State, you can check out:  Crowley, B., & Barnes, L. (1996). A New Late Oligocene Mysticete from Washington State. The Paleontological Society Special Publications, 8, 90-90. doi:10.1017/S2475262200000927

BUNBLEBEES AND THEIR HAMZAT'SI

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.

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of 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 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 also signal those heading out to join them as they head back to the particularly good patch of wildflowers. 

Bumblebees are quite passive and usually sting in defence 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 focussed on their work. Bumblebees collect and carry pollen and nectar back to the nest that 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 of 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 fertilised 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.

VISITING BERLIN-ICHTHYOSAUR STATE PARK

At least 37 incomplete fossil specimens of the marine reptile have been found in hard limestone deposits of the Luning Formation, in far northwestern Nye County of Nevada. 

This formation dates to the late Carnian age of the late Triassic period when present-day Nevada and parts of the west were covered by an ancient ocean.

The first researcher to recognize the Nevada fossil specimens as ichthyosaurs was Siemon W. Muller of Stanford University. 

Muller had the work of Sir Richard Owen to build upon from Owen's 1840 publications. That being said, there are very few contenders for a species that boasts vertebrae over a foot wide and weighing in at almost 10 kg or 21 lbs. 

Muller contacted the University of California Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley. Surface collecting by locals continued at the site but no major excavation was planned.

Almost a quarter of a century after Muller's initial correspondence to the UCMP, Dr. Charles L. Camp received correspondence further detailing the finds from a lovely Mrs. Margaret Wheat of Fallon. She wrote to Camp in September of 1928 to say that she'd been giving the quarry section a bit of a sweep, as you do, and had uncovered a nice aligned section of vertebrae with her broom. The following year, Dr. Charles L. Camp went out to survey the finds and began working on the specimens, his first field season of many, in 1954.

Back in the 1950s, these large marine reptiles were rumoured to be "marine monsters," as the concept of an ichthyosaur was not well understood by the local townsfolk. Excitement soon hit West Union Canyon as the quarry began to reveal the sheer size of these mighty beasts. In the end, the ichthyosaur bones were left in situ to better understand how they were laid down over 200 million years ago.

Camp continued to work with Wheat at the site and brought on Sam Welles to help with excavations. The team understood the need for protection at the site. They canvassed the Nevada Legislature to establish the Ichthyosaur Paleontological State Monument. You can one of the Park Rangers above giving a tour within the lovely building they built on the site to protect the fossils.

In 1957, the site was incorporated into the State Park System and Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park was born. The park Twenty years later, in 1977, the population of Nevada weighed in and the Legislature designated Shonisaurus popularis as the State Fossil of Nevada.

Know Before You Go — Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park

This is a wonderful place to explore for a very reasonable sum of $5.00 US. Open year-round (though check regarding accessibility during Covid). They have accessible outcrops just outside the park boundary where you can collect ammonoid fossils. 

Contact information: Tel: 775-964-2440 / Email: bisp@parks.nv.gov. 

Address: State Route 844, Austin, NV 89310, United States. Area: 4.58 km². Elevation: 6,975 ft (2,126 m); Tel: +1 775-964-2440; http://parks.nv.gov/parks/berlin-ichthyosaur

NOOTKA FOSSILS & FIRST NATIONS HISTORY

Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam

The rugged west coast of Vancouver Island offers spectacular views of a wild British Columbia. Here the seas heave along the shores slowly eroding the magnificent deposits that often contain fossils. 

Just off the shores of Vancouver Island, east of Gold River and south of Tahsis is the picturesque and remote Nootka Island.

This is the land of the proud and thriving Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations who have lived here always. 

Always is a long time, but we know from oral history and archaeological evidence that the Mowachaht and Muchalaht peoples lived here, along with many others, for many thousands of years — a time span much like always. 

While we know this area as Nootka Sound and the land we explore for fossils as Nootka Island, these names stem from a wee misunderstanding. 

Just four years after the 1774 visit by Spanish explorer Juan Pérez — and only a year before the Spanish established a military and fur trading post on the site of Yuquot — the Nuu-chah-nulth met the Englishman, James Cook.  

Captain Cook sailed to the village of Yuquot just west of Vancouver Island to a very warm welcome. He and his crew stayed on for a month of storytelling, trading and ship repairs. Friendly, but not familiar with the local language, he misunderstood the name for both the people and land to be Nootka. In actual fact, Nootka means, go around, go around. 

Two hundred years later, in 1978, the Nuu-chah-nulth chose the collective term Nuu-chah-nulth — nuučaan̓uł, meaning all along the mountains and sea or along the outside (of Vancouver Island) — to describe themselves. 

It is a term now used to describe several First Nations people living along western Vancouver Island, British Columbia. 

It is similar in a way to the use of the United Kingdom to refer to the lands of England, Scotland and Wales — though using United Kingdom-ers would be odd. Bless the Nuu-chah-nulth for their grace in choosing this collective name.  

An older term for this group of peoples was Aht, which means people in their language and is a component in all the names of their subgroups, and of beautiful locations in this region  — Yuquot, Mowachaht, Kyuquot, Opitsaht. While collectively, they are the Nuu-chah-nulth, be interested in their more regional name should you meet them. 

But why does it matter? If you have ever mistakenly referred to someone from New Zealand as an Aussie or someone from Scotland as English, you have likely been schooled by an immediate — sometimes forceful, sometimes gracious — correction of your ways. The best answer to why it matters is because it matters.

Each of the subgroups of the Nuu-chah-nulth viewed their lands and seasonal migration within them (though not outside of them) from a viewpoint of inside and outside. Kla'a or outside is the term for their coastal environment and hilstis for their inside or inland environment.

It is to their kla'a that I was most keen to explore. Here, the lovely Late Eocene and Early Miocene exposures offer up fossil crab, mostly the species Raninid, along with fossil gastropods, bivalves, pine cones and spectacularly — a singular seed pod. These wonderfully preserved specimens are found in concretion along the foreshore where time and tide erode them out each year.

Five years after Spanish explorer Juan Pérez's first visit, the Spanish built and maintained a military post at Yuquot where they tore down the local houses to build their own structures and set up what would become a significant fur trade port for the Northwest Coast — with the local Chief Maquinna's blessing and his warriors acting as middlemen to other First Nations. 

Following reports of Cook's exploration British traders began to use the harbour of Nootka (Friendly Cove) as a base for a promising trade with China in sea-otter pelts but became embroiled with the Spanish who claimed (albeit erroneously) sovereignty over the Pacific Ocean. 

Dan Bowen searching an outcrop. Photo: John Fam

The ensuing Nootka Incident of 1790 nearly led to war between Britain and Spain (over lands neither could actually claim) but talk of war settled and the dispute was settled diplomatically. 

George Vancouver on his subsequent exploration in 1792 circumnavigated the island and charted much of the coastline. His meeting with the Spanish captain Bodega y Quadra at Nootka was friendly but did not accomplish the expected formal ceding of land by the Spanish to the British. 

It resulted however in his vain naming the island "Vancouver and Quadra." The Spanish captain's name was later dropped and given to the island on the east side of Discovery Strait. Again, another vain and unearned title that persists to this day.

Early settlement of the island was carried out mainly under the sponsorship of the Hudson's Bay Company whose lease from the Crown amounted to 7 shillings per year — that's roughly equal to £100.00 or $174 CDN today. Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, was founded in 1843 as Fort Victoria on the southern end of Vancouver Island by the Hudson's Bay Company's Chief Factor, Sir James Douglas. 

With Douglas's help, the Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Rupert on the north end of Vancouver Island in 1849. Both became centres of fur trade and trade between First Nations and solidified the Hudson's Bay Company's trading monopoly in the Pacific Northwest.

The settlement of Fort Victoria on the southern tip of Vancouver Island — handily south of the 49th parallel — greatly aided British negotiators to retain all of the islands when a line was finally set to mark the northern boundary of the United States with the signing of the Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846. Vancouver Island became a separate British colony in 1858. British Columbia, exclusive of the island, was made a colony in 1858 and in 1866 the two colonies were joined into one — becoming a province of Canada in 1871 with Victoria as the capital.

Dan Bowen, Chair of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS) did a truly splendid talk on the Fossils of Nootka Sound. With his permission, I have uploaded the talk to the ARCHEA YouTube Channel for all to enjoy. Do take a boo, he is a great presenter. Dan also graciously provided the photos you see here. The last of the photos you see here is from a VIPS Nootka Fossil Field Trip. We head out each year as the people, scenery, wildlife and fossils are amazing. Photo: John Fam, Vice-Chair, Vancouver Paleontological Society (VanPS).

Know Before You Go — Nootka Trail

The Nootka Trail passes through the traditional lands of the Mowachaht/Muchalat First Nations who have lived here since always. They share this area with humpback and Gray whales, orcas, seals, sea lions, black bears, wolves, cougars, eagles, ravens, sea birds, river otters, insects and the many colourful intertidal creatures that you'll want to photograph.

This is a remote West Coast wilderness experience. Getting to Nootka Island requires some planning as you'll need to take a seaplane or water taxi to reach the trailhead. The trail takes 4-8 days to cover the 37 km year-round hike. The peak season is July to September. Permits are not required for the hike. 

Access via: Air Nootka floatplane, water taxi, or MV Uchuck III

• Dan Bowen, VIPS on the Fossils of Nootka: https://youtu.be/rsewBFztxSY
• https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-james-douglas
• file:///C:/Users/tosca/Downloads/186162-Article%20Text-199217-1-10-20151106.pdf
• Nootka Trip Planning: https://mbguiding.ca/nootka-trail-nootka-island/#overview

SQUIRRELS: SHADOW TAILS

One of the little animals I see daily in Kitsilano, Vancouver, are the very busy, highly comic rodents we know as squirrels. 

They spend their days busily gathering and caching food and their nights resting from all that hard work. 

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

These cuties have bushy tails and a spring in their step — racing around gathering nuts, finding secret hiding spots to cache them, 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 Gray squirrels have two breeding seasons in December-January and June-July. This past year was warm. On Vancouver Island, the Eastern Grays 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, Tamiasciurus douglasii (Bachman, 1839), and the nocturnal Northern Flying Squirrels, Glaucomys sabrinus (Shaw, 1801).  

Sciurus, is derived from two Greek words, skia, meaning shadow, and oura, meaning tail. The name choice is poetic, alluding to squirrels sitting in the shadow of their tails. 

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 Gray 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, anachronistic and the first systemic zoology of America by an American. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nation, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, we use the word ta̱minasux̱, to say: "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 the Gagumas ha̱t̕sa̱x̱ste' of Khahtsahlano. 

DIOMORPHODON

This remarkable fellow is Dimorphodon — a genus of medium-sized pterosaur from the Early Jurassic. He is another favourite of mine for his charming awkwardness.

You can see this fellow's interesting teeth within his big, bulky skull. Dimorphodon had two distinct types of teeth in their jaws — an oddity amongst reptiles — and also proportionally short wings for their overall size. 

Just look at him. What an amazing beast. We understand their anatomy quite well today, but can you imagine being the first to study their fossils and try to make sense of them. 

The first fossil remains now attributed to Dimorphodon were found in England by fossil collector Mary Anning, at Lyme Regis in Dorset, United Kingdom in December 1828. While she faced many challenges in her life, she was blessed to live in one of the richest areas in Britain for finding fossils. 

She walked the beaches way back in the early 1800s of what would become the Jurassic Coast UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Jurassic Coast holds some of the most interesting fossils ever found — particularly within the strata of the Blue Lias which date back to the Hettangian-Sinemurian. It is one of the world’s most famous fossil sites. Millions come to explore the eroding coastline looking for treasures that provide delight and inspiration to young and old.

 

These fossil treasures provide us with tremendous insights into our world 185 million years ago when amazing animals like Dimorphodon ruled the skies. 

Mary's specimen was acquired by William Buckland and reported in a meeting of the Geological Society on 5 February 1829. Six years later, in 1835, William Clift and William John Broderip built upon the work by Buckland to publish in the Transactions of the Geological Society, describing and naming the fossil as a new species. 

As was the case with most early pterosaur finds, Buckland classified the remains in the genus Pterodactylus, coining the new species Pterodactylus macronyx. The specific name is derived from Greek makros, "large" and onyx, "claw", in reference to the large claws of the hand. The specimen, presently NHMUK PV R 1034, consisted of a partial and disarticulated skeleton on a slab — notably lacking the skull. Buckland in 1835 also assigned a piece of the jaw from the collection of Elizabeth Philpot to P. macronyx. 

Later, the many putative species assigned to Pterodactylus had become so anatomically diverse that they began to be broken into separate genera.

In 1858, Richard Owen reported finding two new specimens, NHMUK PV OR 41212 and NHMUK PV R 1035, again partial skeletons but this time including the skulls. Having found the skull to be very different from that of Pterodactylus, Owen assigned Pterodactylus macronyx its own genus, which he named Dimorphodon. 

His first report contained no description and the name remained a nomen nudum. In 1859, however, a subsequent publication by Owen provided a description. After several studies highlighting aspects of Dimorphodon's anatomy, Owen finally made NHMUK PV R 1034 the holotype in 1874  — 185 million years after cruising our skies the Dimorphodon had finally fully arrived.

KILLER WHALES OF THE PACIFIC: KEET MAX'INUX

One of the iconic animals of the Pacific Northwest are Orca or Killer Whales — Keet in Lingit. Keet-Shaa-gooon' — our ancestors. These playful giants hunt and play in our local waters and all the oceans of the world.

This past week, there has been a pod hunting and playing in the waters near Maple Bay on Vancouver Island. It is wonderful and a wee bit unusual to see them so long in the same hunting grounds. This partially due to their normal hunting behaviour but definitely impacted by the relentless roar of the motors of whale-watching boats.

I do like folk taking an interest in our wildlife. We are more likely to work to protect them if we get to know them. But hunting down a decent meal, courting a mate and rearing your young are challenging with all that racket going on. Imagine trying to cook dinner, play catch with your kid or make love to your partner with half a dozen looky-loos on a hovercraft watching your every move. A bit of attention is flattering but at some point that becomes creepy. 

And yes, whale watchers are meant to keep a healthy distance but that was certainly not the case with the crowd of boats this week. 

Not surprising then that the whales try to dodge the relentless spectators — expending energy on avoiding us instead of on the business of being whales... hunting, eating, rearing, mating. I share this so we do not forget ourselves and enjoy wildlife to our own amusement not realizing the impact we have.

Orca are toothed whales who hunt our waters for fish, squid, birds and aquatic mammals. They are the largest member of the Dolphin family who hunt and live amongst their family groups or pods. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, orca are known as max̱'inux̱. I do not know the word for orca in the language of the Quw'utsun Cowichan First Nation whose shores they are swimming near this week. 

These large marine mammals are easily distinguished by their black-and-white colouration, large dorsal fin and a sleek, streamlined body. You can often get a peek at their top fin and just enough of their distinctive white eye patch to identify them from a distance.

Up close, their colouring is equally lovely. When I was little, a few resident orcas would come up to our float house and rub up against the side to give themselves a good scritch. We used to offer to help them with this by lowering a deck broom and rubbing it along them. They would roll around playfully and seemed to enjoy it much the same way dogs and cats appreciate a good scratch. 

They show curiosity and intelligence when they look at you and understand that your intention was to help not hurt when the broom was offered. One of them did give the broom a gentle nibble and carried it off a ways but very politely returned it a few minutes later. 

Across their back and along their pectoral flippers is a nice glossy black, The exception is their saddle, a wee patch of greyish white just behind their dorsal fin.  

Whales breathe through their nostril or blowhole that sits in the centre of their forehead. The blow of mist you see in the photo above is this fellow breathing and pushing air out through his blowhole and some seawater along with it. 

Killer whales have a white patch under their heads (lower jaw), under each fluke and a patch along their rear edge as you move towards the tail. While these patches of white make them easier for us to see and identify them, they act as camouflage to those they are hunting in the water.

Their large bodies are streamlined (hydrodynamic), like a submarine, for moving through the water. Whales have flukes or a tail used for swimming. The flukes are moved in an up-and-down motion to accelerate. The dorsal fin acts like the keel of a boat; it keeps the whale from rolling side to side while swimming. They have pectoral flippers just behind the head. These pectoral flippers are used for steering, turning, and stopping.

Live in coastal and offshore waters; resident pods may frequent localized waterways (bays, sounds, etc.) whereas transient pods tend to cover more extensive, varied areas.

An extended clan of orcas, known as the Southern Resident Orca community, socialize and forage in the inland waters of Washington State and British Columbia. The population grows and lessens in relation to the overall Chinook salmon abundance. It may have been this pod that were playing off our shores this week. They are certainly in the neighborhood on and off.

Females (cows) reach reproductive maturity quite late in life at around 14 to 15 years. They give birth every three to ten years, following a 17-month pregnancy. In our local waters, these young join the pod and stay together their whole lives.

At birth, the 2.6 m long calves arrive able to swim and dive and grow quickly feasting on their mothers' milk for the first year of their lives. 

The newborns stay close to mamma, feeding and learning from her and from the close-knit members of the pod. Over the course of their lives, these newborns will grow from 120 to 160 kg up to 3,600 to 7,250 kg.

Like all dolphins, orcas use sophisticated biological sonar, called echolocation. Echolocation enables them to locate and discriminate objects underwater. The vocalizations within whale communities vary and each are different from those in other communities. The calls also bring the pods together over large areas of water when it is not possible for the whales to see each other.

When all goes well, orcas live to be a ripe old age. Some males have been known to live into their 40s and perhaps up to 60+ years old. Females have been known to live up to 90+ years old.

ARTURIA OF THE OLYMPIC PENINSULA

This lovely Lower Miocene nautiloid is Aturia angustata collected on the foreshore near Clallam Bay, Olympic Peninsula, northwestern Washington. 

I have been exploring Washington State for many years. It is rugged, windswept and has amazing fossil exposures all along its northern edge. The area goes by the name of the Olympic Peninsula and it is a wilderness playground. The sites I usually visit are Majestic Beach for its rare but prized fossil whale bone.

Further west are the beach exposures that have fossil echinoids in matrix and Ghost shrimp claws in concretion. There is a clay mine that holds wonderful nautiloids like the creamy Aturia you see here. Sometimes they are cemented together and come out whole. Sometimes calcified and show yellow, brown and white when you hold them to the light. Further up are the beach exposures along Clallam Bay.

Aturia is an extinct genus of Paleocene to Miocene nautilids within Aturiidae, a monotypic family, established by Campman in 1857 for Aturia Bronn, 1838, and is included in the superfamily Nautilaceae in Kümmel, 1964.

Aturia is characterized by a smooth, highly involute, discoidal shell with a complex suture and subdorsal siphuncle. 

Their shells are rounded ventrally and flattened laterally; the dorsum is deeply impressed. The suture is one of the most complex within Nautiloidea. It has a broad flattened ventral saddle, narrow pointed lateral lobes, broad rounded lateral saddles, broad lobes on the dorso-umbilical slopes, and a broad dorsal saddle divided by a deep, narrow median lobe. 

The siphuncle is moderate in size and located subdorsally in the adapical dorsal flexure of the septum. Based on the feeding and hunting behaviours of living nautiluses, Aturia most likely preyed upon small fish and crustaceans. It is well worth exploring the exposures at Clallam Bay. The local clay quarry is on private land so you would need to seek permission. I have also seen calcified beauties of this species collected from river sites within the Olympic Peninsula range, though I have not explored these myself.

PTEROSAURS AND SARODONTID FISH OF HORNBY ISLAND

Quetzalcoatlus

If you could travel through time and go back to observe our ancient skies, you would see massive pterosaurs — huge, winged flying reptiles of the extinct order Pterosauria — cruising along with you.

They soared our skies during most of the Mesozoic — from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 to 66 million years ago). 

By the end of the Cretaceous, they had grown to giants and one of their brethren, Quetzalcoatlus, a member of the family Azhdarchidae, boasts being the largest known flying animal that ever lived. They were the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight. Their wings were formed by a membrane of skin, muscle, and other tissues stretching from the ankles to a dramatically lengthened fourth finger.

We divide their lineage into two major types: basal pterosaurs and pterodactyloids. Basal pterosaurs — also called 'non-pterodactyloid pterosaurs' or ‘rhamphorhynchoids’ — were smaller with fully toothed jaws and longish tails. Their wide wing membranes connected to their hind legs giving them some maneuverability on the ground, but with an awkward sprawling posture. Picture a bat trying to walk or crawl along — doable but painful to watch. They were better climbers with flexible joint anatomy and strong claws. Basal pterosaurs preferred to dine on insects and small vertebrates.

Later pterosaurs (pterodactyloids) evolved many sizes, shapes, and lifestyles. Pterodactyloids had narrower wings with free hind limbs, highly reduced tails, and long necks with large heads. On the ground, pterodactyloids walked better than their earlier counterparts, maneuvering all four limbs smoothly with an upright posture. 

They walked standing plantigrade on the hind feet and folding the wing finger upward to walk on the three-fingered "hand." These later pterosaurs were more nimble. They could take off from the ground, run and wade and swim. Their jaws had horny beaks and some of these later groups lacked the teeth of earlier lineages. Some groups developed elaborate head crests that were likely used to attract mates' sexy-pterosaur style.

So can we or have we found pterosaurs on Hornby Island? The short answer is yes.

Collishaw Point, known locally as Boulder Point, Hornby Island

Hornby Island is a lovely lush, island in British Columbia's northern Gulf Islands. It was formed from sediments of the upper Nanaimo Group which are also widely exposed on adjacent Denman Island and the southern Gulf Islands.

Peter Mustard, a geologist from the Geologic Survey of Canada, did considerable work on the geology of the island. It has a total stratigraphic thickness of 1350 m of upper Nanaimo Group marine sandstone, conglomerate and shale. 

These are partially exposed in the Campanian to the lower Maastrichtian outcrops at Collishaw Point on the northwest side of Hornby Island. Four formations underlie the island from oldest to youngest, and from west to east: the Northumberland, Geoffrey, Spray and Gabriola.

During the upper Cretaceous, between ~90 to 65 Ma, sediments derived from the Coast Belt to the east and the Cascades to the southeast poured seaward to the west and northwest into what was the large ancestral Georgia Basin. This major forearc basin was situated between Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia. The rocks you find here originated far to the south in Baja California and are the right age and type of sediment for a pterosaur find. But are we California dreaming?

Upper Cretaceous Nanaimo Group Fossil Concretion

Well, truth be told, we were with one of the potential pterosaur finds from Hornby. 

It wasn't just hopeful thinking that had the west coast in a paleo uproar many ago when Sharon Hubbard of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society found what looked very much like a pterosaur.

Right time period. Right location. And, we have found them here in the past. Sandy McLachlan found the first definitive pterosaur, an azhdarchid, back in 2008.

But was Sharon's find a pterosaur?

Victoria Arbour, a Canadian evolutionary biologist and palaeontologist working as a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto and Royal Ontario Museum, certainly thought so. 

While Arbour is an expert on ankylosaurs, our lumbering armoured dinosaurs friends, she has studied pterosaurs and participated in the naming of Gwawinapterus from Hornby Island. But here's the thing — bony material encased in stone and let to cement for millions of years can be tricky.

While this fossil find was initially described as a very late-surviving member of the pterosaur group Istiodactylidae, further examination cast doubt on the identification. Once more detail was revealed the remains were published as being those of a saurodontid fish, an ambush predator with very sharp serrated teeth and elongate, torpedo-like bodies that grew up to two meters. 

Not a pterosaur but still a massively exciting find. Arbour was very gracious at the renaming, taking it in stride. She has since gone on to name a partial ornithischian dinosaur from Sustut Basin, as well as the ankylosaurs Zuul, Zaraapelta, Crichtonpelta, and Ziapelta. But she may have another shot at a pterosaur.

Dan Bowen, Chair, VIPS. Photo: Deanna Steptoe Graham

In 2019, Dan Bowen, Chair of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society and a truly awesome possum, found some very interesting bones in concretion on Hornby. 

The concretion was nestled amongst the 72 million-year-old grey shales of the Northumberland Formation, Campanian to the lower Maastrichtian, part of the Cretaceous Nanaimo Group from Collishaw Point.

The site is known as Boulder Point to the locals and it has been a popular fossil destination for many years. It is the same site where Sharon made her find years earlier.

The concretion contains four articulated vertebrae that looked to be fish at first glance. Jay Hawley, a local fossil enthusiast was asked to prep the block to reveal more details. Once the matrix was largely removed the vertebrae inside were revealed to be bird bones, not fish and not another saurodontid as originally thought. Palaeontologist Victoria Arbour was called back in to put her keen lens on the discovery. 

You will appreciate that she took a good long look at the specimen and confirmed it to be a bird or a pterosaur. We still do not have confirmation on which it is as yet. The delicate bony material is very flattened with a very shallow u-shape on the bottom but will need additional study to confirm if the skies above California were once home to a great pterosaur who died, was fossilized then rode our tectonic plates to now call Hornby home. It is a great story and one that I am keen to follow.

References: To learn more about the azhdarchid remains found by Sandy McLachlan, check out the paper by Martin-Silverston et al. 2016.

ETHELDRED BENNETT: ENGLISH PALAEONTOLOGIST

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.

If you happened to join us for today's VIPS talk with Phil Hadland, Collections & Engagement Curator of Natural Sciences at the Hastings Museum & Art Gallery, UK, on 101 Fossils of Folkstone, you will have heard him mention her in his talk.

She was also credited with being a man  —  the Natural History Society of Moscow awarded 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 which 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 was 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 was a local Wiltshire girl. Born Etheldred Benett 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 in 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 a clearer understanding of the Lower Cretaceous sedimentary rocks of Southern England was gained.

In many ways, Mantell was drawn to Benett as his ideas went against the 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, but also the social interactions of the day and the small connected community of the scientific social elite. It is a 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 the 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. Small parts of it made their way into British museums, including the Leeds City Museum, London, Bristol and to the University of St. Petersburg. These collections contain many type specimens and some of the very first fossils found — some with the soft tissues preserved. When Benett died in 1845, it was Mantell who penned her obituary for the London Geological Journal.

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.

ANCIENT BEAUTIES: FOSSIL PEARLS

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. 

A queen who truly 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 — the 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. 

SHELTER POINT FOSSIL CRAB SITE

This lovely fossil crab is Longusorbis cuniculosus from the Upper Cretaceous ) Late Campanian, Northumberland Formation near Campbell River, British Columbia. This photo was featured in the 2004 BCPA Calendar.

Shelter Point on northern Vancouver Island is a lovely beach site where clastic strata are exposed in the intertidal platform of Oyster Bay. 

The site is located just off the Island Highway, about 10 km south of downtown Campbell River and 4 km farther south along the lower Oyster River. Haggart et al. presented an abstract on this locality at the 12th British Columbia Paleontological Symposium, 2018, Courtenay, abstracts; 2018 p. 28-30. I'll pop a link below if you'd like to give it a read. 

Shelter Point has been collected since the 1970s. No pre-glacial strata were recognized in this area by Muller and Jeletzky (1970). Richards (1975) described an abundant fauna in the beds at Shelter Point, approximately 2 km north of the Oyster Bay exposures, including the crab Longusorbis and associated ammonites and inoceramid bivalves, and he assigned these beds to the Spray Formation of the Nanaimo Group. This information, combined with the very low dip of the Oyster Bay strata and their general lithological similarity with the coarse clastic strata found commonly in the Nanaimo Group, suggested a Late Cretaceous (Campanian) age of the Oyster Bay strata.

Beginning in the 1980s, fossil collectors from the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society began amassing significant collections of fossils from the strata of southern Oyster Bay that are found several hundred metres southeast of the local road called Appian Way, thus providing the informal moniker Appian Way Beds for these localized exposures. 

While these collections included a great diversity of gastropod, bivalve, nautiloid, scaphopod, echinoderm, and coral specimens, as well as impressive collections of plant materials, much previously undescribed, no taxa found commonly in Campanian strata of the Nanaimo Group were noted in these collections; particularly lacking were ammonites and inoceramid bivalves. For this reason, the hypothesis began to emerge that the Appian Way Beds of Oyster Bay were of younger, post-Cretaceous, age than thought previously. 

Just how young, however, has been a source of some controversy, with different parties continuing to favour the traditional Campanian age — based on lithostratigraphy — others a Paleocene age, and still others an Eocene age — based on plant macrofossils.

Fossil Collecting at Shelter Point:

Fossil Collecting at Shelter Point

At the northern end of Shelter Bay, turn east onto Heard Road, which ends at a public access to Shelter Point. 

Low tide is necessary in order to collect from these shales. Some friends are looking to explore this site over the next week. If you see some keen beans on the beach, check to see if they are the New family, Chris and Bonnie. Welcome them — they are lovely folk!

Industrious collectors unwilling to wait for the tide have employed rubber boots to wade through knee-deep water — rubber boots are highly recommended in any case — and even headlamps to capitalize on low tides during the night. Bring eye protection and sunscreen to safely enjoy this lovely family trip.   

The fossils, mainly the crab, Longusorbis and the straight ammonite Baculites, occur only in the gritty concretions that weather out of the shale. You'll need a rock hammer to see the lovelies preserved inside. Best to hold the concretion in your hand and give it one good tap. Aside from the fossils, check out the local tide pools and sea life in the area. Those less interested in the fossils can look for seals and playful otters basking on the beaches.

References:

Haggart, J. et al. 58 million and 25 years in the making: stratigraphy, fauna, age, and correlation of the Paleocene/Eocene sedimentary strata at Oyster Bay and adjacent areas, southeast Vancouver Island, British Columbia; https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/starweb/geoscan/servlet.starweb?path=geoscan/fulle.web&search1=R=308471

AMMONITES: KEEPERS OF ANCIENT TIME

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