OF LAND AND SEA

Our dear penguins, seals, sea lions, walruses, whales, crocodiles and sea turtles were once entirely terrestrial. Yes, they lived mostly or entirely on land. 

Many of these once land-dwelling animals returned to the sea throughout evolutionary history. We have beautifully documented cases from amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals from over 30 different lineages over the past 250 million years.

Some dipped a toe or two into freshwater ponds, but make no mistake, they were terrestrial. Each of these animals had ancestors that tried out the sea and decided to stay. They evolved and employed a variety of adaptations to meet their new saltwater challenges. Some adapted legs as fins, others became more streamlined, and still, others developed specialized organs to extract dissolved oxygen from the water through their skin or gills. The permutations are endless.

Returning to the sea comes with a whole host of benefits but some serious challenges as well. Life at sea is very different from life on land. Water is denser than air, impacting how an animal moves, sees and hears. More importantly, it impacts an air-breathing animal's movement on a pretty frequent basis. If you need air and haven't evolved gills, you need to surface frequently. Keeping your body temperature at a homeostatic level is also a challenge as water conducts heat much better than air. Even with all of these challenges, the lure of additional food sources and freedom of movement kept those who tried the sea in the sea and they evolved accordingly.

Most major animal groups appear for the first time in the fossil record half a billion years ago. We call this flourishing of species the Cambrian Explosion. While this was a hugely intense period of species radiation, the evolutionary origins of animals are likely to be significantly older. About 700 million years ago the Earth was covered in ice and snow. This was an ice age so intense we refer to this time in our ancient history as Snowball Earth. Once that ice receded, it exposed rocks that contained a variety of weird and wonderful fossils that speak to ancient animals that are only now being studied.

Dr Frankie Dunn, a palaeontologist and an Early Career Research Fellow at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and Merton College is one of the folks who are examining this early history of some of our first animals. Her research focuses on the origin and early evolution of animals and particularly on the fossil record of the late Ediacaran Period (570 – 540 million years ago).  Dr Dunn's research is exploring ancient species like the long-extinct Rangeomorpha to help understand how animal body plans evolved in deep time well before the divergence of the extant (living) animal lineages.

Andy Temple (bless him) sent me a link for an online talk Dr Dunn is giving, The Chronicles of Charnia, Wed, June 17th at 7PM. She's based in Oxford so adjust your timezone accordingly. The talk is free but booking is required. Here's the link: https://event.webinarjam.com/register/59/xyy07flg 

This is an interesting article from Alicia Ault writing for the Smithsonian who interviewed Nick Pysenson and Neil Kelley about some of their research that touches on this area. They published a paper on it in the journal Science. Here's the link: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6232/aaa3716

And Ault's work is definitely worth a read: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/take-deep-dive-reasons-land-animals-moved-seas-180955007/

GRAY WHALES: ESCHRICHTIUS ROBUSTUS

Young Gray Whale, Eschrichtius robustus

The lovely fellow you see here is a young Gray Whale, Eschrichtius robustus, with a wee dusting of barnacles and his mouth ajar just enough to show his baleen.

Two Pacific Ocean populations are known to exist: one of about 200 individuals whose migratory route is presumed to be between the Sea of Okhotsk off Russia's south coast and southern Korea, and a larger one with a population of about 27,000 individuals in the eastern Pacific.

This second group are the ones we see off the shores of British Columbia as they travel the waters from northernmost Alaska down to Baja California. Gray whale mothers make this journey accompanied by their calves, hugging the shore in shallow kelp beds and providing rare but welcome glimpses of this beauty.

The gray whale is traditionally placed as the only living species in its genus and family, Eschrichtius and Eschrichtiidae, but an extinct species was discovered and placed in the genus in 2017 — the Akishima whale, E. akishimaensis. Some recent DNA analyses suggest that certain rorquals of the family Balaenopteridae, such as the humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, and fin whale, Balaenoptera physalus, are more closely related to the gray whale than they are to some other rorquals, such as minke. Still, others place gray whales as outside the rorqual clade, a kissing cousin if you will.

John Edward Gray placed it in its own genus in 1865, naming it in honour of physician and zoologist Daniel Frederik Eschricht. The common name of the whale comes from its colouration. The subfossil remains of now-extinct gray whales from the Atlantic coasts of England and Sweden were used by Gray to make the first scientific description of a species then surviving only in Pacific waters. The living Pacific species was described by American palaeontologist, Edward Drinker Cope as Rhachianectes glaucus in 1869.

Fin Whale, Balaenoptera physalus

Skeletal comparisons showed the Pacific species to be identical to the Atlantic remains in the 1930s, and Gray's naming has been generally accepted since. Although identity between the Atlantic and Pacific populations cannot be proven by anatomical data, its skeleton is distinctive and easy to distinguish from that of all other living whales.

In 1993, a twenty-seven million-year-old specimen was discovered in deposits in Washington state that represents a new species of early baleen whale. It is especially interesting as it is from a stage in the group’s evolutionary history when baleen whales transitioned from having teeth to filtering food with baleen bristles.

Visiting researcher Carlos Mauricio Peredo studied the fossil whale remains, publishing his research to solidify Sitsqwayk cornishorum (pronounced sits-quake) in the annals of history. The earliest baleen whales clearly had teeth, and clearly still used them. Modern baleen whales have no teeth and have instead evolved baleen plates for filter feeding. Look to the rather good close-up of this young Gray Whale here to see his baleen where once there was a toothy grin.

The baleen is the comb-like strainer that sits on the upper jaw of baleen whales and is used to filter food. We have to ponder when this evolutionary change —moving from teeth to baleen — occurred and what factors might have caused it. Traditionally, we have sought answers about the evolution of baleen whales by turning to two extinct groups: the aetiocetids and the eomysticetids.

The aetiocetids are small baleen whales that still have teeth, but they are very small, and it remains uncertain whether or not they used their teeth. In contrast, the eomysticetids are about the size of an adult Minke Whale and seem to have been much more akin to modern baleen whales; though it’s not certain if they had baleen. Baleen typically does not preserve in the fossil record being soft tissue; generally, only hard tissue, bones and teeth are fossilized.

MADAGASCAR GIANT: LOBOLYTOCERAS

This big beastie is a superb specimen of the ammonite Lobolytoceras costellatum showing the intricate fractal pattern of its septa. This lovely measures to a whopping 230 mm and hails from Oxfordian outcrops near Sakara, Madagascar. Lovingly prepped by the supremely talented 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'm sure you know. Ammonites did the equivalent, catching prey in their tentacles. They 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) then they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species.

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.

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 rock to match up to specific geologic time periods, rather the way we use tree-rings to date trees. A handy way to compare fossils and date strata across the globe.

HUMPBACK WHALES: MEGAPTERA NOVAENGLIAE

Look deep into the knowing eye of this magnificent one. He is a Humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, a species of baleen whale for whom I hold a special place in my heart. 

Baleens are toothless whales who feed on plankton and other wee oceanic tasties that they consume through their baleens, a specialised filter of flexible keratin plates that frame their mouth and fit within their robust jaws.

Baleen whales, the mysticetes, split from toothed whales, the Odontoceti, around 34 million years ago. The split allowed our toothless friends to enjoy a new feeding niche and make their way in a sea with limited food resources. There are fifteen species of baleen whales who inhabit all major oceans. Their number include our humbacks, grays, right whales and the massive blue whale. Their territory runs as a wide band running from the Antarctic ice edge to 81°N latitude. These filter feeders

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, and my cousins on my father's side, whales are known as g̱wa̱'ya̱m. Both the California grey and the Humpback whale live on the coast. Only a small number of individuals in First Nation society had the right to harpoon a whale. This is a practice from many years ago. It was generally only the Chief who was bestowed this great honour. Humpback whales like to feed close to shore and enter the local inlets. Around Vancouver Island and along the coast of British Columbia, this made them a welcome food source as the long days of winter passed into Spring.

Humpback whales are rorquals, members of the Balaenopteridae family that includes the blue, fin, Bryde's, sei and minke whales. The rorquals are believed to have diverged from the other families of the suborder Mysticeti during the middle Miocene. 

While cetaceans were historically thought to have descended from mesonychids—which would place them outside the order Artiodactyla—molecular evidence supports them as a clade of even-toed ungulates—our dear Artiodactyla. 

It is one of the larger rorqual species, with adults ranging in length from 12–16 m (39–52 ft) and weighing around 25–30 metric tons (28–33 short tons). The humpback has a distinctive body shape, with long pectoral fins and a knobbly head. It is known for breaching and other distinctive surface behaviours, making it popular with whale watchers and the lucky few who see them from the decks of our local ferries.

Both male and female humpback whales vocalize, but only males produce the long, loud, complex "song" for which the species is famous. Males produce a complex soulful song lasting 10 to 20 minutes, which they repeat for hours at a time. I imagine Gregorian Monks vocalizing their chant with each individual melody strengthening and complimenting that of their peers. All the males in a group produce the same song, which differed in each season. Its purpose is not clear, though it may help induce estrus in females and bonding amongst the males.

Humpback Whale, Megaptera novaeangliae

Found in oceans and seas around the world, humpback whales typically migrate up to 25,000 km (16,000 mi) each year. 

They feed in polar waters and migrate to tropical or subtropical waters to breed and give birth, fasting and living off their fat reserves. Their diet consists mostly of krill and small fish. 

Humpbacks have a diverse repertoire of feeding methods, including the bubble net technique.

Humpbacks are a friendly species that interact with other cetaceans such as bottlenose dolphins. They are also friendly and oddly protective of humans. You may recall hearing about an incident off the Cook Islands a few years back. Nan Hauser was snorkelling and ran into a tiger shark. Two adult humpback whales rushed to her aid, blocking the shark from reaching her and pushing her back towards the shore. We could learn a thing or two from their kindness. We have not been as good to them as they have been to us.

Like other large whales, the humpback was a tasty and profitable target for the whaling industry. My grandfather and uncle participated in that industry out of Coal Harbour on northern Vancouver Island back in the 1950s. So did many of my First Nation cousins. My cousin John Lyon has told me tales of those days and the slippery stench of that work.

Six whaling stations operated on the coast of British Columbia between 1905 and 1976. Two of these stations were located at Haida Gwaii, one at Rose Harbour and the other at Naden Harbour. Over 9,400 large whales were taken from the waters around Haida Gwaii. The catch included blue whales, fin whales, sei whales, humpback whales, sperm whales and right whales. In the early years of the century, primarily humpback whales were taken. In later years, fin whales and sperm whales dominated the catch. 

Whales were hunted off South Moresby in Haida Gwaii, on the north side of Holberg Inlet in the Quatsino Sound region. It was the norm at the time and a way to make a living, especially for those who had hoped to work in the local coal mine but lost their employment when it shut down. 

While my First Nations relatives hunted whales in small numbers and many years ago, my Norwegian relatives participated in the hunt on a scale that nearly led to their extinction before the process was banned. The Coal Harbour Whaling Station closed in 1967. Once it had closed, my grandfather Einar Eikanger, my mother's father, took to fishing and my uncle Harry lost his life the year before when he slipped and fell over the side of the boat. He was crushed between the hull and a Humpback in rough seas. 

Humpback populations have partially recovered since that time to build their population up to 80,000 animals worldwide—but entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with ships, and noise pollution continue to negatively impact the species. So be kind if you see them. Turn your engine off and see if you can hear their soulful cries echoing in the water.

I did up a video on Humpback Whales over on YouTube so you could see them in all their majesty. Here is the link: https://youtu.be/_Vbta7kQNoM

DINOFLAGELLATES: TEENSY OCEAN STARS

This showy Christmas Cracker is a Dinoflagellate

The showy royal blue Christmas cracker looking fellow you see here is a dinoflagellate. 

Bioluminescent dinoflagellates are a type of plankton — teensy marine organisms that make the seaways shimmer as you swim through them or the tide crashes them against the shore. 

The first modern dinoflagellate was described by Baker in 1753, the first species was formally named by Muller in 1773. 

The first fossil forms were described by Ehrenberg in the 1830s from Cretaceous outcrops. More dinoflagellates have lived, died and gone extinct than there are living today. We know them mainly from fossil dinocysts dating back to the Triassic. They are one of the most primitive of the eukaryotic group with a fossil record that may extend into the Precambrian. They combine primitive characteristics of prokaryotes and advanced eukaryotic features.

The luciferase found in dinoflagellates is related to the green chemical chlorophyll found in plants. Their twinkling lights are brief, each containing about 100 million photons that shine for only a tenth of a second. While each individual flicker is here and gone in the wink of an eye, en masse they are breathtaking. I have spent several wondrous evenings scuba diving amongst these glittering denizens off our shores. What you know about light above the surface does not hold true for the light you see as bioluminescence. Its energy and luminosity come from a chemical reaction. 

In a luminescent reaction, two types of chemicals — luciferin and luciferase — combine together. Together, they produce cold light — light that generates less than 20% thermal radiation or heat. 

The light you see is produced by a compound called Luciferin. It is the shiny, showy bit in this chemical show. Luciferase acts as an enzyme, the substance that acts as a catalyst controlling the rate of chemical reactions, allowing the luciferin to release energy as it is oxidized. 

The colour of the light depends on the chemical structures of the chemicals. There are more than a dozen known chemical luminescent systems, indicating that bioluminescence evolved independently in different groups of organisms.

Coelenterazine is the type of luciferin we find in shrimp, fish and jellyfish. Dinoflagellates and krill share another class of unique luciferins, while ostracods or firefleas and some fish have a completely different luciferin — but all produce lights of various colours to great effect.  

JELLYFISH: GAGISAMA

These festive lovelies are jellyfish. Jellyfish are found all over the world, from surface waters to our deepest seas — and they are old. They are some of the oldest animals in the fossil record.

Sea jellies and jellyfish are the common names for the medusa-phase or adult phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria — more closely related to anemones and corals.

Jellyfish are not fish at all. Jellyfish evolved millions of years before true fish. 

The oldest conulariid scyphozoans — picture an ice-cream cone with fourfold symmetry — appeared between 635 and 577 million years ago in the Neoproterozoic of the Lantian Formation a 150-meter-thick sequence of rocks deposited in southern China. 

Others are found in the youngest Ediacaran rocks of the Tamengo Formation of Brazil, c. 505 mya, through to the Triassic. Cubozoans and hydrozoans appeared in the Cambrian of the Marjum Formation in Utah, USA, c. 540 mya. Like other soft-bodied organisms, ctenophores (comb jellies), sea jellies and jellyfish only produce fossils only under exceptional taphonomic conditions — think rare.

I have seen all sorts of their brethren growing up on the west coast of Canada. I have seen them in tide pools, washed up on the beach and swam amongst thousands of Moon Jellyfish while scuba diving in the Salish Sea. Their movement in the water is marvellous.  

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, jellyfish are known as ǥaǥisama.

The watercolour ǥaǥisama you see here is a bit of fancy. While I chose blue, purple and pink for these lovelies, they also come in bright yellow, orange and relatively clear — and are often luminescent.

Jellyfish such as comb jellies produce bright flashes to startle a predator, others such as siphonophores can produce a chain of light or release thousands of glowing particles into the water as a mimic of small plankton to confuse the predator.

For most jellyfish bioluminescence is used for defence against predators — and about half of all jellyfish are bioluminescent. Some produce a glowing sticky slime that clings to predators making them vulnerable to other predators. Some jellyfish can release their tentacles as glowing decoys. So you see that there are many strategies for using bioluminescence by jellyfish.

All bioluminescence comes from energy released from a chemical reaction. This is very different from other sources of light, such as from the sun or a light bulb, where the energy comes from heat. In a luminescent reaction, two types of chemicals, called luciferin and luciferase, combine together. The luciferase acts as an enzyme, allowing the luciferin to release energy as it is oxidized. The colour of the light depends on the chemical structures of the chemicals. 

There are more than a dozen known chemical luminescent systems, indicating that bioluminescence evolved independently in different groups of organisms. One type of luciferin is called coelenterazine, found in jellyfish, shrimp, and fish. Dinoflagellates and krill share another class of unique luciferins, while ostracods (firefleas) and some fish have a completely different luciferin. The occurrence of identical luciferins for different types of organisms suggests a dietary source for some groups. Organisms such as bacteria and fireflies have unique luminescent chemistries. In many other groups, the chemistry is still unknown

Some of the most amazing deep-sea jellyfish are the comb jellies, which can get as large as a basketball, and are in some cases so fragile that they are almost impossible to collect intact.

Also spectacular are the siphonophores, some of which can reach several meters in length. Siphonophores deploy many tentacles like a gill net casting for small fish.

BIOLUMINESCENCE: CHEMICAL POETRY

Light in the oceans? It is chemistry, my friends. 

In the inky blackness of the deep sea, more than 90% of the animals are luminescent. It is quite a startling number but makes good sense when you think of the edge bioluminescence provides. 

The ability to generate light helps umpteen animals find mates, attract prey and avoid predation. Handy stuff, light. 

What you know about light above the surface does not hold true for the light you see as bioluminescence. Its energy and luminosity come from a chemical reaction. 

In a luminescent reaction, two types of chemicals — luciferin and luciferase — combine together. Together, they produce cold light — light that generates less than 20% thermal radiation or heat. 

The light you see is produced by a compound called Luciferin. It is the shiny, showy bit in this chemical show. Luciferase acts as an enzyme, the substance that acts as a catalyst controlling the rate of chemical reactions, allowing the luciferin to release energy as it is oxidized. The colour of the light depends on the chemical structures of the chemicals. There are more than a dozen known chemical luminescent systems, meaning that bioluminescence evolved independently in different groups of organisms.

Coelenterazine is the type of luciferin we find in shrimp, fish and jellyfish. Dinoflagellates and krill share another class of unique luciferins, while ostracods or firefleas and some fish have a completely different luciferin. 

The luciferase found in dinoflagellates is related to the green chemical chlorophyll found in plants. Bioluminescent dinoflagellates are a type of plankton — teensy marine organisms that make the seaways shimmer like the Milky Way as you swim through them. 

Their twinkling lights are brief, each containing about 100 million photons that shine for a tenth of a second. While each individual flicker is here and gone in the wink of an eye, en masse they are awe-inspiring. I have spent many wondrous evenings scuba diving amongst these glittering denizens off our shores. 

Cotylorhiza Tuberculata Jellyfish

In this close up of a Cotylorhiza Tuberculata Jellyfish, you can see the luminosity of her blue and white tentacles. The occurrence of identical luciferins for different types of organisms may suggest a dietary source for some groups strengthening the adage, you are what you eat, or perhaps you glow how you eat. 

Bacteria and fireflies have unique luminescent chemistries. Fireflies light up when oxygen combines with calcium, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and luciferin in the presence of luciferase. 

For bacteria, the world stage of luminosity is quite small — and a bit gormless. Just how much light they emit and when is a free-for-all. Not so for the rest of our bioluminescent friends who have very precise control over when they shine and just how bright. 

Bioluminescence comes in a variety of colours, from blue through red. The colour is based on the chemistry, which involves a substrate molecule called luciferin, the source of energy that goes into light, and an enzyme called luciferase or photoprotein. 

Most of this lighting up of our world happens on land or in saltwater. There are almost no bioluminescent organisms native to freshwater.

In terrestrial plants and animals — fireflies, beetles and fungi like this Ghost Fungus, Omphalotus nidiformis, a gilled basidiomycete mushroom — we commonly find green, yellow, and sometimes red. 

In the ocean, bioluminescence is mostly blue-green or green. You would think that blues and green would not show up all that well in our seas but, surprisingly, they do. While sound travels better through saltwater than air, it is the reverse for light. 

Various colours of light do not transmit equally through saltwater. Once we move deeper than the top layer of the ocean warmed by the sun and brimming with nutrients, the epipelagic zone, and move deeper through the mesopelagic, deeper and deeper still to the bathypelagic, frigid abyssalpelagic and finally the deep trenches of the icy pressure and all but inhospitable hadalpelagic, less and less light — until no light — gets through.

It is the twilight of the mesopelagic, 200 - 1000 metres below the surface, that is the sweet spot for most of our bioluminescent friends. Here, only very faint sunlight gets through. The water pressure is higher than at the surface but still lacks the crushing intensity of the lower zones. It is here that bioluminescence becomes a real advantage — good real estate and the showmanship of light pays gold.

We know that the deeper you go in our oceans, less and less sunlight gets through, so if the purpose of bioluminescence is to provide a signal that is noticed by prey, potential mates and predators alike, it is important that the light moves through the seawater, and not be absorbed or scattered — and this plays out in the colours evolved to be seen here. 

If you have spent any time underwater, you will know that blue-green light transmits best through seawater. The deeper you go, the colours fade. Gone are the reds and yellows until everything looks brown or blue-green. Because of this, it is no surprise that blue-green is the most common colouring of bioluminescence in our oceans. 

There are some exceptions to the blue-green/green colour rule — minuscule planktonic polychaete worms, Tomopteris helgolandica, emit yellow light, and deep-sea fish Malacosteus niger in the family Stomiidae, the barbeled dragonfishes, produce both red and blue. 

Malacosteus niger's unique adaptation of producing red bioluminescence is only found in two other deep-sea dwelling creatures, Aristostomias and Pachystomias. 

This rare form of bioluminescence can reach up to 700 nm in the deep-sea and cannot be perceived by green and blue bioluminescent organisms — granting M. niger a considerable advantage while hunting at depth.

The red light may function as an invisible searchlight of sorts because most animals in the ocean cannot see red light, while the eyes of M. niger are red-sensitive. It is much easier to find and eat something that cannot see you, particularly if it is lit up like a tasty red holiday snack.

Reference: https://latzlab.ucsd.edu/bioluminescence/

SEA ANEMONES: CNIDARIA

These colourful beauties are sea anemones. They are familiar inhabitants of rocky shores and coral reefs around the world — with some of their brethren found at very low depths in our oceans. They are one of the wonderful examples of the diversity that radiated out of the Cambrian Explosion.

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, sea anemones are known as 'mis'ma̱t̕sa. 

These beautiful predatory animals are a common site in tide pools all along the Pacific Coast. They form a large part of many special memories of exploring the tide pools along Storey's Beach on the east side of Vancouver Island as a child. 

Touching their soft tentacles is hypnotic and highly entertaining but our human skin is coated in oils and bacteria that may damage these delicate organisms. 

We sometimes see them turn up in First Nation's art — particularly in association with Kumugwe' or the Copper-Maker, Chief of the undersea world and the one to thank for the rising and ebbing of the tides.

At first glance, they look like beautiful and delicate marine flowers. If you have discovered them in tidepools, you will know that they retract or pull into themselves with the lightest touch. These would-be flowers are predatory marine animals of the order Actiniaria that have graced our oceans for over half a billion years. 

They are named after anemones — Anemonastrum, a genus of flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae — because of their colourful flower-like appearance. Sea anemones are classified in the phylum Cnidaria, class Anthozoa, subclass Hexacorallia. 

As cnidarians, sea anemones are related to corals, jellyfish, tube-dwelling anemones, and Hydra. Jellyfish have a complex life cycle that includes both sexual and asexual phases, with the medusa being the sexual stage in most instances. 

A typical sea anemone is a single polyp attached to a hard surface by its base, but some species live in soft sediment and a few float near the surface of the water. The polyp has a columnar trunk topped by an oral disc with a ring of sticky tentacles that fold in towards its central mouth. If they have stung and paralyzed a tasty snack, it is pulled towards the gaping mouth to be consumed. 

The tentacles can be retracted or pulled back inside the body cavity or stretched out and expanded to catch passing prey. They are armed with cnidocytes or stinging cells. In many species, nourishment comes from a symbiotic relationship with single-celled dinoflagellates — zooxanthellae or with green algae, zoochlorellae, that live within the cells. Some species of sea anemone live in association with hermit crabs, small fish or other animals to their mutual benefit.

Most actinarians are sessile — that is, they live attached to rocks or other substrates and do not move, or move only very slowly by contractions of the pedal disk. 

A number of anemones burrow into sand, and a few can even swim short distances, by bending the column back and forth or by "flapping" their tentacles. In all, there are about 1000 species of sea anemone in the world's oceans — including those who live amongst the mythic sea lions that form the posts and beams of Kumugwe''s undersea home.

Sea anemones breed by releasing sperm and eggs through their mouth into the surrounding ocean. The fertilized eggs develop into wee planula larvae that live as tiny planktonic bits floating in the sea. Eventually, they settle on the seafloor and develop directly into juvenile polyps. Sea anemones can also breed asexually. They do this by breaking in half or into smaller pieces that regenerate into polyps.

We sometimes see these beauties kept in saltwater aquariums. I can understand the appeal but it comes with a price. The global trade in marine ornamentals threatens our lovely sea anemone populations. 

Most Actiniaria do not form hard parts that can be recognized as fossils, but a few fossils of sea anemones have been found. The bag-like — almost sea cucumber-like — Mackenzia, from the Middle Cambrian, Stephen Formation in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia and Alberta, is the oldest fossil identified as a sea anemone. These ancient sea anemones attached themselves to hard surfaces, such as brachiopod shells in a similar fashion to their modern sessile cousins. 

Mackenzia costalis, Walcott 1911

Fourteen specimens of Mackenzia costalis are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they make up less than <0.1% of the fossil community. Mackenzia was originally described by Charles Walcott in 1911 — but as a holothurian echinoderm, which was a reasonable assumption at the time. Once additional specimens had been found and studied, Mackenzia costalis was reclassified as a cnidarian and the great grandparent of our modern sea anemones.

Some fossil sea anemones have also been found from the Lower Cambrian of China. The new find lends support to genetic data that suggests anthozoans — anemones, corals, octocorals and their kin — were one the first Cnidarian groups to diversify. We will likely find more of these rare fossils over time and perhaps get a better view of their long lineage.

Photo: Charles Doolittle Walcott - Charles D. Walcott: Middle Cambrian Holothurians and Medusae. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections Volume 57, Number 3 (Publication 2011). City of Washington. Published by the Smithsonian Institution. June 13, 1911. 

References:  

Caron, Jean-Bernard; Jackson, Donald A. (October 2006). "Taphonomy of the Greater Phyllopod Bed community, Burgess Shale". PALAIOS. 21 (5): 451–65. doi:10.2110/palo.2003.P05-070R. JSTOR 20173022.

 Durham, J. W. (1974). "Systematic Position of Eldonia ludwigi Walcott". Journal of Paleontology. 48 (4): 750–755. JSTOR 1303225.

Conway Morris, S. (1993). "Ediacaran-like fossils in Cambrian Burgess Shale–type faunas of North America". Palaeontology. 36 (31–0239): 593–635.

ANCIENT SNOW PLOW: WOOLLY MAMMOTHS

Woolly Mammoths, Mammuthus primigenius,  have always held wonder for me. These massive, hairy — and likely very smelly beasts — lived alongside us for a time. 

If you stood beside him and reached way up, you might be able to touch his tusks but likely not reach up to his mouth or even his eyes. 

He had a shaggy coat of light or dark coloured hair with long outer hair strands covering a dense thick undercoat. His oil glands would have worked overtime to secrete oils, giving him natural waterproofing. Some of the hair strands we have recovered are more than a meter in length. These behemoth proboscideans boasted long, curved tusks, little ears, short tails and grazed on leaves, shrubs and grasses that would have been hard work to get at as much of his world was covered in ice and snow during his reign.

We first see Woolly Mammoths in northeastern Siberia dating back 700,000 years. We find them in East Asia as far back as 800,000 years ago. They arose from the massive steppe mammoths, Mammuthus trogontherii, slowly evolving traits we see in this older species to the mammoths we think of today. 

Over time, their body size shrank and their teeth and tusks evolved to take advantage of the tough vegetation available to those few animals who could chew their way through ice and snow and work these tundra grasses into a digestible form. 

The enamel plates of their cheek teeth multiplied while the enamel itself became thinner. Tusks slowly took on more of a curved to act as ploughs for the snow. 

Those smaller than their predecessors, they were still formidable. Their size offered protection against predators once full grown. Sadly for the juveniles, they offered tasty prey to big cats like Homotherium who roamed these ancient grasslands alongside them.

The Mammoths of the Steppe spread to the northern areas of Eurasia, down through Europe, into the British Isles to Spain and crossed over to populate North America via the Bering Isthmus. It was the lowered sea levels during the last Ice Age that exposed dry land between Asia and the Americas. Here in this flat, grassy treeless plain known as the Bering Land Bridge or Isthmus, animals, including humans, could migrate from Europe west into North America.

The woolly mammoth coexisted with our ancestors who made good use of their bones and tusks for tools, housing, art and food. The last of their lineage died out relatively recently on Wrangel Island until 4,000 years ago — a time when we were making our first harps and flutes in Egypt, dams, canals and stone sculptures in Sumer, using numbers for the first time and using tin to make tools.

KAZAKHSTAN ANAHOPLITES

This tasty block of Semenovites (Anahoplites) cf. michalskii ammonites hails from Cretaceous, Albian deposits that outcrop on the Tupqaraghan — Mangyshlak Peninsula on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan. 

Present-day Kazakhstan is made up of several micro continental blocks that were broken up in the Cambrian and then crushed back together then smashed up against Siberia and came to rest where we find them today. 

Mangyshlak or Mangghyshlaq Peninsula is a large peninsula located in western Kazakhstan. It borders on the Caspian Sea in the west and with the Buzachi Peninsula, a marshy sub-feature of the main peninsula, in the northeast. The Tyuleniy Archipelago lies off the northern shores of the peninsula.

Lowlands make up one-third of Kazakhstan’s huge expanse, hilly plateaus and plains account for nearly half, and low mountainous regions about one-fifth. Kazakhstan’s highest point, Mount Khan-Tengri (Han-t’eng-ko-li Peak) at 22,949 feet (6,995 metres), in the Tien Shan range on the border between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and China, contrasts with the flat or rolling terrain of most of the republic. 

The western and southwestern parts of Kazakhstan are dominated by the low-lying Caspian Depression, which at its lowest point lies some 95 feet below sea level. South of the Caspian Depression are the Ustyurt Plateau and the Tupqaraghan (formerly Mangyshlak) Peninsula jutting into the Caspian Sea. 

Vast amounts of sand formed the Greater Barsuki and Aral Karakum deserts near the Aral Sea, the broad Betpaqdala Desert of the interior, and the Muyunkum and Kyzylkum deserts in the south. Most of these desert regions have slight vegetative cover eeking out a slim existence fed by subterranean groundwater.

Depressions filled by salt lakes — whose water has largely evaporated — dot the undulating uplands of central Kazakhstan. 

In the north, the mountains reach about 5,000 feet, and there are similar high areas among the Ulutau Mountains in the west and the Chingiz-Tau Range in the east. In the east and southeast, massifs — enormous blocks of crystalline rock — are furrowed by valleys. 

The Altai mountain complex to the east sends three ridges into the republic, and, farther south, the Tarbagatay Range is an offshoot of the Naryn-Kolbin complex. Another range, the Dzungarian Alatau, penetrates the country to the south of the depression containing the icy waters of Lake Balkhash. The beautiful Tien Shan peaks rise along the southern frontier with Kyrgyzstan. 

As well as lovely ammonite outcrops, dinosaurian material and pterosaur remains are also found in Kazakhstan. The ammonites you see here are in the collections of the deeply awesome Emil Black.

Paleo Coordinates: 44 ° 35'46 ″ 51 ° 52'53″ 

SVALBARD: ICE, SNOW AND ICHTHYOSAURS

Reindeer, Rangifer tarandus 

Ho Ho Ho. Ice, Snow, Reindeer & Ichthyosaurs — Svalbard is just what I imagine my version of Valhalla to be like, without all the mead, murder and mayhem. 

This Norwegian archipelago sits between mainland Norway and the North Pole. 

One of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas, it is known for its rugged, remote terrain of glaciers and frozen tundra sheltering polar bears, reindeer and Arctic fox. 

It is also known for reindeer. The lovelies you see here are all females as the males lose their antlers in the winter. So Rudolf and the rest of Santa's crew who pull his sleigh for him would have all been females as they are pictured with antlers. They are also shown flying across the sky, so the science gets a bit creative.

The Northern Lights or Nordlys are visible during winter, and summer brings the Midnight Sun — sunlight 24 hours a day. Norway or Norge is one of the very few locations where sunset merges into the sunrise, with no darkness in between, creating a soft, captivating twilight in which to view the world. 

The Botneheia Formation is made up of dark grey, laminated shales coarsening upwards to laminated siltstones and sandstones. South of the type area, the formation shows four coarsening-upward units. 

The formation is named for Botneheia Mountain, a mountain in Nordenskiöld Land at Spitsbergen, Svalbard. It has a height of 522 m.a.s.l., and is located south of Sassenfjorden, east of the valley of De Geerdalen. 

Svalbard, Norway

I was asked recently if folk head out in the torrential rain or ice and snow to fossil collect. I would generally say yes for those where the potential prize always outweighs the weather. For Svalbard, it is a resounding yes. 

You have to remove the snow cover — or ice if you are impatient or unlucky — to get to the outcrops here. It is well worth the effort. Beneath the icy cover, you find lovely ammonoids and bivalves. 

Tastier still, ichthyosaur remains are found here. The first Triassic ichthyosaurs from Svalbard were found in the early 20th century. Now there are quite a few Triassic and Jurassic ichthyosaur species from this archipelago.

Two ichthyosaur specimens have been recovered that are of particular interest. They comprise part of the trunk and the caudal vertebral column respectively. 

Some features, such as the very high and narrow caudal and posterior thoracic neural spines, the relatively elongate posterior thoracic vertebrae and the long and slender haemapophyses indicate that they probably represent a member of the family Toretocnemidae. 

Ichthyosaur Bones

Numerous ichthyosaur finds are known from the underlying Lower Triassic Vikinghøgda Formation and the overlying Middle to Upper Triassic Tschermakfjellet Formation, the new specimens help to close a huge gap in the fossil record of the Triassic ichthyosaurs from Svalbard. 

There is a resident research group working on the Triassic ichthyosaur fauna, the Spitsbergen Mesozoic Research Group. 

Lucky for them, they often find the fossil remains fully articulated — the bones having retained their spatial relationship to one another. 

Most of their finds are of the tail sections of primitive Triassic ichthyosaurs. In later ichthyosaurs, the tail vertebrae bend steeply downwards and have more of a fish-like look. 

In these primitive ancestors, the tail looks more eel-like — bending slightly so that the spines on the vertebrae form more of the tail. 

Maisch, Michael W. and Blomeier, Dierk published on these finds back in 2009: Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen Band 254 Heft 3 (2009), p. 379 - 384. Nov 1, 2009.

Svalbard, Norway (Norge)

Svalbard was so remote that there were no Inuit or First Nation settlements. It is certainly possible an earlier people came through these islands, but they did not leave any trace of their travels. 

The first documented travellers to explore Spitsbergen arrived in 1795 as part of a hunting expedition. They included people from the arctic town of Hammerfest in Norway's far north. They were an excellent choice as they were used to barren, inhospitable lands and sailed to discover more. 

We know them as the Coast Sámi — a hearty, rugged people probably best known in history for their chieftain, Ottar. He left Hammerfest in the 9th century to visit then join King Alfred the Great's court in a newly forming England. 

Expeditions to the remote islands of Svalbard continued into the early 1800s and finally, a settlement was eked out of the cold landscape and slowly expanded to the rest of the islands. While today the islands are called Svalbard, I would have named them for the Norwegian word for remote — fjernkontroll.

Aristoptychites euglyphus and Daonella sp.

This marvellous block is filled with Aristoptychites (syn = Arctoptychites) euglyphus (Mojsisovics, 1886) and Daonella sp., oyster-like clams or bivalves from the Middle Triassic, Ladinian, rugged windswept outcrops at the top of the Daonella Shales, Botneheia Formation, Spitzbergen, Edgeøya and Barentsøya, eastern Svalbard, Norway. 

Daonella and Monotis are important species for our understanding of biostratigraphy in the Triassic and are useful as Index fossils. 

Index fossils are fossils used to define and identify geologic periods or faunal stages. To be truly useful, they need to have a short vertical range, wide geographic distribution and rapid evolutionary development.

Daonellids preferred soft, soupy substrates and we tend to find them in massive shell beds. Generally, if you find one, you find a whole bunch cemented together in coquina. The lovely block you see here is in the collections of the deeply awesome John Fam. 

Learning Languages

The Sámi languages (/ˈsɑːmi/ SAH-mee), Sami or Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sámi people in Northern Europe in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwestern Russia. Of the world's languages, I find them the most difficult for my mind and tongue to wrap around. The Uralic languages will be familiar to you as Hungarian (Magyar nyelv), Finnish and Estonian. 

Since my Sámi is terrible, I will share a few words of Norwegian that may come in handy if you visit Svalbard and have a hankering for their tasty fossils or fossiler. To say, ice, snow, reindeer and ichthyosaurs in Norwegian, you would say: is, snø, reinsdyr og ikthyosaurer. 

To say, "hello, where can I find fossils?" Use, "Hei, hvor kan jeg finne fossiler?" An expression you may not need but circumstances being what they are, "That is a big polar bear," is "Det er en stor isbjørn." A solid follow-up would be, "nice bear, run..." as "Fin bjørn, løp..." Good luck with that.

Wishing you and yours the very best of the holidays however you celebrate. 

GOD JUL: TRILACINOCERAS NORVEGICUM

Trilacinoceras norvegicum

A lovely example of Trilacinoceras norvegicum (Sweet, 1958), a nektonic carnivorous cephalopod from Ordovician outcrops on Helgö Island, Hovindsholm, Helgøya, Lake Mjosa, Norway.

This has been a site of human habitation for more than 5,000 years. Vikings, kings, traders, farmers —  and geologists have walked these fields.

To give that timeframe a bit of context, that's about the age of Skara Brae, the Neolithic settlement in Orkney, Scotland — and older than Stonehenge which clocks in at 3000 BC to 2000 BC and the Great Pyramids — built around 2560 BC.

For my friend, Gale Bishop, that's about 469 km west or a good 7-hour drive from your ancestral home in Ask, just north of Bergen and just south of Knarvik where many of my relatives live — Hei du!

The fossils found here are part of the Engervik Member, Elnes Formation, Aseri, and date back to the Middle Ordovician, 463.5 - 460.9 million years ago. W. C. Sweet did fossil fieldwork here in the 1950s and published a paper on the Middle Ordovician of the Oslo Region, Norway 10. Nautiloid Cephalopods. Norsk Geologisk Tidsskrift 38:1-178.

Deservedly, Sweetoceras boreale is named for him and is one of the most delightful species names of all time. In the 1960s, Yochelson picked up where Sweet left off, continuing the survey of the Middle Ordovician of the Oslo region. I chose this Trilacinoceras for a holiday post because their curly tops remind me of a wee Norwegian gnome, or Nisse from the Norse niðsi, a dear little relative. My Swedish relatives call them Tomte, a throwback to Saint Birgitta of Sweden in the 1300s.

Helgøya is an island in Mjøsa located in the Ringsaker municipality of Hedmark county, Norway. It was formerly a part of the Nes municipality. 

Long before that, it was the ruling centre for the Kings in Hedmark, where bold men and women held great blót celebrations to Odin and planned raids and expansion into Europe and Russia — roughly A.D. 793 — the beginning of the Viking Age.

Today, it is lush and green and easy to explore — or fish. Mjøsa is Norway's largest lake, as well as one of the deepest lakes in Norway and in Europe. 

Battles have been fought on its waters and its depths hold interesting archaeological and paleontological secrets. They also hold a goodly amount of large and tasty trout, pike, perch, burbot and graylings.

Helgøya is the largest freshwater island in Norway at 18.3 km². The island is delightful to explore and home to 32 farms. One of the most beautiful of these is the Hovinsholm manor. You can visit the farm in both summer and winter — both equally beautiful — and enjoy a café, workshop or their Christmas market. They have lush gardens and some very friendly horses you can pet — or spoil with apples, as you do. The property is massive at 2012 acres, divided into grain, potatoes and forest. It has been home to kings and court. It was a monastery in the Middle Ages from the 5th to the 15th century. Today, Tolle Hoel Slotnæs and his wife, Charlotte Holberg Sveinsen own and run the manor with their three daughters.

Hovinsholm, Helgøya, Lake Mjosa, Norway

Helgøya means holy island, in Norwegian. There is a lovely double meaning here and such layered history. The manor, in its various iterations, has been on this site since the 1500s. They had their own Christian manor church until 1612.

On the southern tip of the island, there is an old pagan temple to the Norse Gods, Thor, Frigg, Loki, Hod, Heimdall, Tyr, and Baldur.

Here, farmers of the area would gather at four blót sacrifices a year that followed the seasons — one for each of the winter solstice, spring equinox, summer solstice and autumn equinox. Animals would be sacrificed, their blood splattered on altars, walls and folk around them. Toasts were made. The first was in honour of Thor or Odin, “to the king and victory.” 

Odin, although nominally chief of the gods, was more the god of aristocrats. If a king were toasting, particularly a Danish King, it would be for Odin. If you look at place names in Scandinavia, you'll see him conspicuously absent in favour of Thor, the god of the common man.

When the farmers at Helgøya were shouting Skål, it was likely for Thor. The toasting and drinking continued with cups emptied for Njörd and Freyr and Freyja in the hope of securing a prosperous future. 

Finally, personal pledges (and beer-soaked boasts) would be made to undertake great exploits, Valknut — to die well in battle — and finally to kinsmen laid to rest now drinking with the gods in Valhalla. Weapons, jewellery and tools were thrown into the lake as offerings.

If they were gathering for Jol (Old Norse), Jul (Norwegian) or the Yule blót, they'd also make a large sun wheel (picture a circle with a cross in the middle), carve it up with runes, set it on fire and roll it down a hill. 

It was quite a celebration with the festivities going on for three days and nights. With the formalities over, people did as people do  — drink, sing, boast, play games and find someone to bed down with — Gods be good.

Thor and Odin are still going strong nearly 1,000 years after the end of the Viking Age. You'd think that the old Nordic religion — the belief in the Norse gods — disappeared with the introduction of Christianity. That is not the case. There are still folk in Denmark (Odin-lovers) and Norway (Thor's their guy) who follow the old Norse religion and worship its ancient gods — right down to the splatter.

If you visit Norway at Christmas, Jul (Yule), you'll find much more of the pagan than the Christian in the festivities. King Haakon, old Haakon the Good, Hákon Góði or Håkon den Gode,  moved the Winter Solstice or Yule, Jul, Jol blót over to match up with the Christian holiday on December 25th in his attempts to introduce Christianity in the 10th century. Both traditions are still celebrated but without an overtly religious tone.

Old traditions run deep, animals are still sacrificed (but without all the splatter), bread is baked, houses cleaned, beer is abundant and fires warmth the hearth.

After all the drinking, toasting and feasting at the Jul blót, leftover food was not cleaned up but left overnight for the little relatives. Though shy, Nisse like a good feast and failing to offer them their tithe brings ill-fortune.

But we started this journey together admiring a lovely (and oddly festive) Ordovician cephalopod. Go on, picture him in red and white with a little beard. If you fancy a visit to the Ordovician outcrops, you can find them at Nes-Hamar, Norway. 60.0° N, 11.2° E: paleo-coordinates 33.7° S, 10.3° W. Look for gastropods (five known species) and cephalopods (at least 15 species).

If you'd like to visit the burial mound of Haakon the Good, you'll want to head to Seim, Hordaland, about 10 km north of Knarvik. Good 'ol Haakon may have tried to bring Christianity to Norway but he died full Viking — taking an arrow at the Battle of Fitjar. Many of my rellies live in Knarvik. 

We have enjoyed many a sunny afternoon feasting at the Håkonarspelet summer festivals and exploring Haakon's burial mound at Håkonhaugen in Seim.

If you're more of the manor type, you can stop by Hovinsholm gård, Helgøyvegen 850, 2350 Nes på Hedmarken, Norway. 

If you're curious and want to see the farmstead, head on over to: https://www.skafferiet.no/about. 

If you need to square things up with Odin, you're on your own.

E. L. Yochelson. 1963. The Middle Ordovician of the Oslo Region, Norway. 15. Monoplacophora and Gastropoda. Norsk Geologisk Tidsskrift 43 (2):133-213.

LIMESTONE AND SALT: HALLSTATT

Hallstatt Salt Mines, Austria / Permian Salt Diapir

The Hallstatt Limestone is the world's richest Triassic ammonite unit, yielding specimens of more than 500 ammonite species.

Along with diversified cephalopod fauna  — orthoceratids, nautiloids, ammonoids — we also see gastropods, bivalves, especially the late Triassic pteriid bivalve Halobia (the halobiids), brachiopods, crinoids and a few corals. We also see a lovely selection of microfauna represented. 

For microfauna, we see conodonts, foraminifera, sponge spicules, radiolaria, floating crinoids and holothurian sclerites —  polyp-like, soft-bodied invertebrate echinozoans often referred to as sea cucumbers because of their similarities in size, elongate shape, and tough skin over a soft interior. 

Franz von Hauer’s exhaustive 1846 tome describing Hallstatt ammonites inspired renowned Austrian geologist Eduard Suess’s detailed study of the area’s Mesozoic history. That work was instrumental in Suess being the first person to recognize the former existence of the Tethys Sea, which he named in 1893 after the sister of Oceanus, the Greek god of the ocean. As part of the Northern Limestone Alps, the Dachstein rock mass, or Hoher Dachstein, is one of the large karstic mountains of Austria and the second-highest mountain in the Northern Limestone Alps. It borders Upper Austria and Styria in central Austria and is the highest point in each of those states.

Parts of the massif also lie in the state of Salzburg, leading to the mountain being referred to as the Drei-Länder-Berg or three-state mountain. Seen from the north, the Dachstein massif is dominated by the glaciers with the rocky summits rising beyond them. By contrast, to the south, the mountain drops almost vertically to the valley floor. The karst limestones and dolomites were deposited in our Mesozoic seas. The geology of the Dachstein massif is dominated by the Dachstein-Kalk Formation — the Dachstein limestone — which dates back to the Triassic.

Hallstatt and the Hallstatt Sea, Austria

There were several phases of mountain building in this part of the world pushing the limestone deposits 3,000 metres above current sea level. The rock strata were originally deposited horizontally, then shifted, broken up and reshaped by the erosive forces of ice ages and erosion.

The Hallstatt mine exploits a Permian salt diapir that makes up some of this area’s oldest rock. 

The salt accumulated by evaporation in the newly opened, and hence shallow, Hallstatt-Meliata Ocean. This was one of several small ocean basins that formed in what is now Europe during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic when the world’s landmasses were welded together to form the supercontinent Pangea. 

Pangea was shaped like a crescent moon that cradled the famous Tethys Sea. Subduction of Tethyian oceanic crust caused several slivers of continental crust to separate from Pangea, forming new “back-arc basins” (small oceans formed by rifting that is associated with nearby subduction) between the supercontinent and the newly rifted ribbon continents.

The Hallstatt-Meliata Ocean was one such back-arc basin. As it continued to expand and deepen during the Triassic, evaporation ceased and reefs flourished; thick limestone deposits accumulated atop the salt. When the Hallstatt-Meliata Ocean closed in the Late Jurassic, the compression squeezed the low-density salt into a diapir that rose buoyantly, injecting itself into the Triassic limestones above.

The Hallstatt salt diapir and its overlying limestone cap came to rest in their present position in the northern Austrian Alps when they were shoved northward as nappes (thrust sheets) during two separate collision events, one in the Cretaceous and one in the Eocene, that created the modern Alps. It is from the Hallstatt salt diapir that Hallstatt, like so many cities and towns, gets its name.

Deposits of rock salt or halite, the mineral name of sodium chloride with the chemical formula of NaCl, are found and mined around the globe. These deposits mark the dried remains of ancient oceans and seas. Names of rivers, towns and cities in Europe — Salzburg, Halle, Hallstatt, Hallein, La Salle, Moselle — all pay homage to their connection to halite and salt production. The Greek word for salt is hals and the Latin is sal. The Turkish name for salt is Tuz, which we see in the naming of Tuzla, a salt-producing region of northeastern Bosnia-Herzegovina and in the names of towns that dot the coast of Turkey where it meets the Black Sea. Hallstatt with its salt diapir is no exception.

The salt-named town of Hallstatt sits on the shores of the idyllic Hallstätter Sea at the base of the Dachstein massif. Visiting it today, you experience a quaint traditional fishing village built in the typical upper Austrian style. Tourism drives the economy as much as salt as this area of the world is picture-perfect from every angle.

Space is at a minimum in the town. For centuries, every ten years the local cemetery exhumes the bones of those buried there and moves them to an ossuary to make room for new burials. The Hallstatt Ossuary is called Karner, Charnel House, or simply Beinhaus (Bone House). Karners are places of secondary burials. They were once common in the Eastern Alps, but that custom has largely disappeared.

Hallstatt Beinhaus Ossuary, Hallstatt, Austria

A collection of over 700 elaborately decorated skulls rest inside the ossuary. They are lined up on rows of wooden shelves that grace the walls of the chapel. Another 500 undecorated skulls, bare and without any kind of adornment, are stacked in the corners.

Each is inscribed and attached to a record with the deceased's name, profession and date of death. The Bone House is located in a chapel in the basement of the Church of Saint Michael. The church dates from the 12th century CE. 

Decorating the skulls was traditionally the job of the local gravedigger and an honour granted to very few. At the family's request, garlands of flowers were painted on the skulls of deceased as decorative crowns if they were female. The skulls of men and boys were painted wreaths of oak or ivy.

Every building in Hallstatt looks out over the Hallstätter Sea. This beautiful mountain lake considered one of the finest of Austria's Salzkammergut region. It lies at the northern foot of the Dachstein mountain range, sitting eight-and-a-half kilometres long and two kilometres wide. The shoreline is dotted by the villages of  Obertraun, Steeg, and Hallstatt.

The region is habitat to a variety of diverse flora and fauna, including many rare species such as native orchids, in the wetlands and moors in the south and north.

Linked by road to the cities of Salzburg and Graz, Hallstatt and its lake were declared one of the World Heritage sites in Austria in 1997 and included in the Hallstatt-Dachstein Salzkammergut Alpine UNESCO World Heritage Site. The little market village of Hallstatt takes its name from the local salt mine.

Hallstatt, Salzkammergut region, Austria

The town is a popular tourist destination with its quaint shops and terraced cafes. In the centre of town, the 19th-century Evangelical Church of Hallstatt with its tall, slender spire is a lakeside landmark. You can see it here in the photo on the left.

Above the town are the Hallstatt Salt mines located within the 1,030-meter-tall Salzburg Salt Mountain. They are accessible by cable car or a three-minute journey aboard the funicular railway. There is also a wonderful Subterranean Salt Lake.

In 1734, there was a corpse found here preserved in salt. The fellow became known as the Man in Salt. Though no archaeological analysis was performed at the time — the mummy was respectfully reburied in the Hallstatt cemetery — based on descriptions in the mine records, archaeologists suspect the miner lived during the Iron Age. This Old Father, Senos ph₂tḗr, 'ɸatīr 'father' may have been a local farmer, metal-worker, or both and chatted with his friends and family in Celtic or Proto-Celtic.

Salt mining in the area dates back to the Neolithic period, from the 8th to 5th Centuries BC. This is around the time that Roman legions were withdrawing from Britain and the Goths sacked Rome. In Austria, agricultural settlements were dotting the landscape and the alpine regions were being explored and settled for their easy access to valuable salt, chert and other raw materials.

The salt-rich mountains of Salzkammergut and the upland valley above Hallstatt were attractive for this reason. The area was once home to the Hallstatt culture, an archaeological group linked to Proto-Celtic and early Celtic people of the Early Iron Age in Europe, c.800–450 BC.

Bronze Age vessel with cow and calf

In the 19th century, a burial site was discovered with 2,000 individuals, many of them buried with Bronze Age artefacts of amber and ivory.

It was this find that helped lend the name Hallstatt to this epoch of human history. The Late Iron Age, between around 800 and 400 BC, became known as the Hallstatt Period.

For its rich history, natural beauty and breathtaking mountainous geology, Hallstatt is a truly irresistible corner of the world.

Salzbergstraße 1, 4830 Hallstatt.  https://www.salzwelten.at/en/home/

Photo: Bronze vessel with cow and calf, Hallstatt by Alice Schumacher - Naturhistorisches Museum Wien - A. Kern – K. Kowarik – A. W. Rausch – H. Reschreiter, Salz-Reich. 7000 Jahre Hallstatt, VPA 2 (Wien, 2008) Seite 133 Abbildung 6. Hallstatt Village & Ossuary Photos: P. McClure Photography ca. 2015.

Bernoulli D, Jenkyns HC (1974) Alpine, Mediterranean, and Central Atlantic Mesozoic facies in relation to the early evolution of the Tethys. Soc Econ Paleont Mineral Spec Publ 19:129–160

Bernoulli D, Jenkyns H (2009) Ancient oceans and continental margins of the Alpine-Mediterranean Tethys: deciphering clues from Mesozoic pelagic sediments and ophiolites. Sedimentology 56:149–190