GENAL SPINES A GO GO

Cibelella Coronata / Photo: Alexei Molchanov

A spectacular creamy toned specimen of the trilobite Cibelella Coronata striking a very animated pose. 

The Genal spines give this fellow a bit of a starship look as though taking off in flight. 

This beauty is from upper Ordovician deposits along the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Coast, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

OH MEDUSA

Mesmerizing, delicate and seemingly impossible — this lovely luminescent denizen of the sea has been living in our oceans for more than half a billion years.

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.

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

Jellyfish and sea jellies are the informal common names given to 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.

The oldest conulariid scyphozoans appeared between 635 and 577 mya in the Neoproterozoic of the Lantian Formation in 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.

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

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

The dreamy blue and purple ǥaǥisama you see here is but one of a large variety of colours and designs. Jellyfish come in bright yellow, orange, clear with pink spots and are often luminescent.

ERNEST SHACKLETON'S GREAT ADVENTURE

Stromness Whaling Station

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BANFF NATIONAL PARK

Banff National Park is breathtaking from any angle, but from the air it feels otherworldly—an alpine tapestry of turquoise lakes, braided rivers, and peaks stitched with glacier-light. 

Flying above it, you see the Rockies as the early surveyors must have: raw, immense, and defiantly ancient.

The town of Banff itself began humbly in the 1880s, growing from a railway stop on the new transcontinental line into Canada’s first national park. Railroad workers stumbled upon the Cave and Basin hot springs, sparking a cascade of interest in the area’s geology, wildlife, and deep-time history.

That same geology would soon draw paleontologists into the region’s wild backcountry. Just west of Banff, high on a ridge in Yoho National Park, lies the legendary Burgess Shale—one of the most important fossil sites on Earth. 

Discovered in 1909 by Charles Doolittle Walcott of the Smithsonian, the Burgess Shale preserves exquisitely detailed soft-bodied creatures from over 500 million years ago, offering a rare window into early animal evolution. 

Banff became the nearest hub—its hotels, trails, and later its research community supporting generations of scientists, students, and fossil-hungry adventurers heading into the high passes.

Seen from the sky today, Banff is a quiet modern town nestled among mountains that have been sculpted for hundreds of millions of years. Its story—of hot springs, railways, and extraordinary fossils—is always a delight to explore nestled in Canada's glorious Rockies.

FOSSIL CRAB AT SHELTER POINT VANCOUVER ISLAND

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, rain and sun appropriate clothing, hardy footwear 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

FOSSIL AMPHIBIANS OF NOVA SCOTIA

Dendrerpeton acadianum, an extinct amphibian

One of the best Canadian fossil finds stems from a random boulder picked up on the beach near the town of Joggins, Nova Scotia. Inside were the bones of a fully articulated skeleton of Dendrerpeton acadianum, a Temnospondyli from the Lower Pennsylvanian. 

These little cuties belong to an extinct genus of amphibians who loved wet, swampy wetlands similar to those we find in the bayous of Mississippi today.   

Dendrerpeton is the primitive sister-group to a clade of Temnospondyls that includes Trimerorhachoids, the Eryopoids — Ervops, Parioxys, & Sclerocephalus — Zatracheids & Dissorophoids. 

This little guy along with finding the first true reptile, Hylonomus lyelli, ancestor of all dinosaurs that would rule the Earth 100 million years later serve as the reference point where animals finally broke free of the water to live on land. This evolutionary milestone recorded at Joggins remains pivotal to understanding the origins of all vertebrate life on land, including our own species. 

Joggins records life in a once a wet, swampy wetland

Sir Charles Lyell, the author of Principles of Geology, first noted the exceptional natural heritage value of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. He described them as: 

“...the finest example in the world of a natural exposure in a continuous section ten miles long, occurs in the sea cliffs bordering a branch of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.” 

Indeed, the world-famous Bay of Fundy with its impressive tides, the highest in the world, and stormy nature exposed much of this outcrop. 

SUNSETS AND SUPERNOVAE

Sunsets — pure visual poetry: peaceful, meditative, mesmerizing. Thoughts to fill the first days of life and the calendar year.

What is sunlight, actually? Yes, it's light from the Sun but so much more than that. Sunlight is both light and energy. 

Once it reaches Earth, we call this energy, "insolation," which is a fancy term for solar radiation. 

The amount of energy the Sun gives off changes over time in a never-ending cycle. Solar flares (hotter) and sunspots (cooler) on the Sun's surface impact the amount of radiation headed to Earth. 

These periods of extra heat or extra cold (well, cold by Sun standards...) can last for weeks, sometimes months. The beams that reach us and warm our skin are electromagnetic waves that bring with them heat and radiation, by-products of the nuclear fusion happening as hydrogen nuclei fuse and shift violently to form helium, a process that fires every star in the sky.

Our bodies convert the ultraviolet rays to Vitamin D. Plants use the rays for photosynthesis, a process of converting carbon dioxide to sugar and using it to power their growth (and clean our atmosphere!) That process looks something like this: carbon dioxide + water + light energy — and glucose + oxygen = 6 CO2(g) + 6 H2O + photons → C6H12O6(aq) + 6 O2(g).

Photosynthetic organisms convert about 100–115 thousand million metric tonnes of carbon to biomass each year, about six times more power than used us mighty homo sapien sapiens. Our plants, forests and algae soak up this goodness and much later in time, we harvest this energy from fossil fuels.

We've yet to truly get a handle on the duality between light as waves and light as photons. The duality of the two-in-oneness of light; of their waves and alter-ego, particle photons is a physicists delight. Einstein formulated his special theory of relativity in part by thinking about what it would be like to ride around on these waves. What would space look and feel like? How would time occur? It bends the mind to consider. His wave-particle view helped us to understand that these seemingly different forms change when measured. To put this in plain English, they change when viewed, ie. you look them "in the eye" and they behave as you see them.

Light fills not just our wee bit of the Universe but the cosmos as well, bathing it in the form of cosmic background radiation that is the signature of the Big Bang and the many mini-big bangs of supernovae as they go through cycles of reincarnation and cataclysmic death — exploding outward and shining brighter than a billion stars.

In our solar system, once those electromagnetic waves leave the Sun headed for Earth, they reach us in a surprising eight minutes. We experience them as light mixed with the prism of beautiful colours. But what we see is actually a trick of the light. As rays of white sunlight travel through the atmosphere they collide with airborne particles and water droplets causing the rays to scatter.

We see mostly the yellow, orange and red hues (the longer wavelengths) as the blues and greens (the shorter wavelengths) scatter more easily and get bounced out of the game rather early.

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/

VANCOUVER'S HISTORIC STANLEY PARK

Totem, Welcome & Mortuary Poles at Stanley Park

If you visit Brockton Point in Stanley Park, there are many carved red cedar First Nation poles for you to admire.  

What you are viewing are replicas of First Nation welcome and totem poles that once stood in the park but have been returned to their homes within the province's diverse First Nation communities — or held within museum collections. 

Some of the original totems came from Alert Bay on Cormorant Island, near the Port McNeill on the north coast of Vancouver Island. 

Others came from communities in Haida Gwaii — and still more from the Wuikinuxv First Nations at Rivers Inlet on British Columbia's central west coast — home of the Great Bear Rainforest with her Spirit Bears.

The exception is the most recent addition carved by Robert Yelton in 2009. Robert is a First Nation carver from the Squamish Nation and his original welcome pole graces Brockton Point, the original settlement site of a group of Squamish-Portuguese settlers.  

If you look at the photo above, the lovely chocolate, red and turquoise pole on the right is a replica of the mortuary pole raised to honour the Raven Chief of Skedans or Gida'nsta, the Haida phrase for from his daughter, the title of respect used when addressing a person of high rank. Early fur traders often took the name of the local Chief and used it synonymously as the place names for the sites they visited — hence Skedans from Gida'nsta.

Chief Skedans Mortuary Pole

Chief Skedans, or Qa'gials qe'gawa-i, to his children, lived in Ḵ’uuna Llnagaay, or village at the edge, in Xaayda Kil — a village on the exposed coast of Louise Island — now a Haida Heritage Site.  

There are some paintings you may have seen by Emily Carr of her visits to the site in 1912, She used the phonetic Q'una from Q:o'na to describe both the place name and title of her work. 

Carr's paintings of the totems have always looked to me to be a mash-up — imagine if painter Tamara de Lempicka and photographer Edward Curtis had a baby — not pretty, but interesting.

Some called this area, Huadju-lanas or Xu'adji la'nas, which means Grizzly-Bear-Town, in reference to resident grizzly bear population and their adornment of many totems and artwork by the local artists.

Upon Chief Skedan's death, the mortuary pole was carved both to honour him and provide his final resting place. Dates are a bit fuzzy, but local accounts have this as sometime between 1870-1878 — and at a cost of 290 blankets or roughly $600 in today's currency. 

The great artistry of the pole was much admired by those in the community and those organizing the celebrations for the 1936 Vancouver Golden Jubilee — witnessed by  350,000 newly arrived residents.

Negotiations were pursued and the pole made its way down from Haida Gwaii to Stanley Park in time for the celebrations. The original totem graced Stanley Park for a little over twenty years before eventually making its way back to Haida Gwaii. It was returned to the community with bits of plaster and shoddy paint marring the original. These bits were scraped off and the pole welcomed back with due ceremony. 

In 1964, respected and renowned Northwest Coast master carver, Bill Reid, from the Kaadaas gaah Kiiguwaay, Raven/Wolf Clan of T'anuu, Haida Gwaii and Scottish-German descent, was asked to carve this colourful replica. 

Mountain Goat Detail, Skedans Mortuary Pole

Reid carved the totem onsite in Stanley Park with the help of German carver Werner True. Interestingly, though I looked at length for information on Werner True, all I can find is that he aided Bill Reid on the carving for a payment of $1000.

Don Yeomans, Haida master carver, meticulously recarved the moon crest in 1998. If you have admired the totem pole in the Vancouver Airport, you will have seen some of Yeoman's incredible work. 

The crest is Moon with the face, wings, legs and claws of a mighty and proud Thunderbird with a fairly smallish hooked beak in a split design. We have Moon to thank for the tides and for illuminating our darkest nights. As a crest, Moon is associated with transformation and acts as both guardian and protector.

The original pole had a mortuary box that held the Chief's remains. The crest sits atop a very charming mountain goat. I have included a nice close-up here of the replica for you to enjoy. 

Mountain Goats live in the high peaks of British Columbia and being so close to the sky, they have the supernatural ability to cross over to the sky world. They are also credited as being spirit guardians and guides to First Nation shamans.

I love his horns and tucked-in cloven hooves. There is another pole being carved on Vancouver Island that I hope to see during its creation that also depicts a Mountain Goat. With permission and in time, I hope to share some of those photos with you. 

Mountain Goat is sitting atop Grizzly Bear or Huaji or Xhuwaji’ with little human figures placed in his ears to represent the Chief's daughter and son-in-law, who raised the pole and held a potlatch in his honour. 

Beneath the great bear is Seal or Killer Whale in his grasp. The inscription in the park says it is a Killer Whale but I am not sure about that interpretation — both the look and lore make Seal more likely. Perhaps if Killer Whale were within Thunderbird's grasp — maybe. 

Though it is always a pleasure to see Killer Whale carved in red cedar, as the first whales came into being when they were carved in wood by a human — or by Raven — then magically infused with the gift of life.

Siwash Rock on the northern end of Third Beach, Stanley Park

The ground these totems sit upon is composed of plutonic, volcanic and sedimentary layers of rock and exhibits the profound influences of glaciation and glacial retreat from the last ice age. 

Glacial deposits sit atop a mix of clay, sand, cobbles and larger boulders of glacial till. 

There are a few areas of exposed volcanics within the park that speak to the scraping of the glaciers as they retreated about 12,500 years ago. 

The iconic moss and lichen-coated Siwash Rock on the northern end of Third Beach is one of the more picturesque of these. It is a basaltic and andesitic volcanic rock — a blend of black phenocrysts of augite cemented together with plagioclase, hornblende and volcanic glass that holds a special place in the oral history of the First Nations of this area. The Squamish First Nation, or Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim, hold the word Slhx̱i7lsh for this rock. 

They tell a story of a man fishing by the shore who was transformed by the spirit-being X̱áays into this iconic rock near the northern end of Third Beach of Stanley Park. At the time, a permanent First Nation settlement was just a short walk away. The man had his fishing gear with him when he was transformed as he had been fishing near the shore. The hole in the rock is not from the erosion of the tides but the cubby hole where Slhx̱i7lsh, now a rocky sentinel, kept his fishing tackle. And as you know, fishing tackle is valuable. One does not simply throw it away simply because you have been turned to stone.

Images not shown: 

Do check out the work of Emily Carr and her paintings of Q:o'na from the 1940s. I'll share a link here but do not have permission to post her works. http://www.emilycarr.org/totems/exhibit/haida/ssintro.htm

LA BREA TAR PITS: DIRE WOLVES, MAMMOTHS, HORSE, BISON AND MORE

Smilodon Skull at La Brea Tar Pits

In the heart of Los Angeles, surrounded by traffic, office towers and people carrying coffees of improbable complexity, the Earth is still bubbling. 

Dark pools of natural asphalt rise through the ground at Hancock Park, methane breaks at the surface and the air carries the unmistakable scent of petroleum. 

Beneath the lawns and walkways lies one of the richest Late Pleistocene fossil deposits on Earth.

Mammoths are here. Dire wolves are here. Sabre-toothed cats, enormous bison, ancient horses, camels, ground sloths, coyotes, birds, beetles, seeds, pollen and the delicate bones of tiny rodents are all here. 

Not alive, mercifully, but preserved in extraordinary numbers beneath modern Los Angeles, where natural asphalt seeps have been trapping plants and animals for tens of thousands of years.

The La Brea Tar Pits do not record one terrible day. They contain the accumulated evidence of countless separate accidents repeated across millennia. One animal became trapped, another arrived to investigate and several more approached because the Ice Age had not yet developed adequate warning signage.

FIRST, THEY ARE NOT ACTUALLY TAR PITS

The substance at La Brea is more accurately called natural asphalt, asphaltum or bitumen. Tar is generally produced by heating organic materials such as wood or coal, while asphalt is a naturally occurring petroleum substance. The familiar name has nevertheless stuck, which seems appropriate under the circumstances.

There is also a pleasing redundancy in “La Brea Tar Pits.” La brea means “the tar” in Spanish, making the full name roughly “the Tar Tar Pits.” We could insist upon calling them the La Brea Asphalt Seeps, but that would deprive palaeontology of a perfectly good geological tongue-twister.

Beneath the Los Angeles Basin are thick, oil-rich marine deposits laid down millions of years ago. Petroleum migrated upward through faults and fractures until it reached the surface. There, lighter components evaporated or were degraded by microorganisms, leaving the heavier and remarkably sticky asphalt behind.

This material did not necessarily form the enormous open pools often depicted in paintings and museum dioramas. Asphalt could seep into shallow depressions and spread across the ground, sometimes hidden beneath water, dust, leaves or sediment. To an approaching animal, the surface may have looked like ordinary damp soil or a harmless watering place.

The mistake would become apparent with the first step.

THE MAKING OF A PREDATOR TRAP

An asphalt seep did not need to be deep enough to swallow a mammoth whole. It needed only to be sticky enough to hold a foot. Once a hoof sank into the asphalt, the animal’s attempts to pull free could trap another limb. Struggling pressed the feet deeper, spread asphalt across hair and skin and rapidly exhausted the victim.

Large herbivores such as bison, horses, camels, mammoths and ground sloths occasionally became immobilized in this way. Their distress calls and movements attracted predators and scavengers. 

A trapped bison represented a large meal that had already been thoughtfully restrained, and predators approached the opportunity with understandable enthusiasm and insufficient caution.

Dire wolves gathered. Sabre-toothed cats moved closer. Coyotes and scavenging birds arrived. Some fed from firmer ground, while others stepped onto the same deceptive surface and became trapped themselves.

This process is known as the predator-trap hypothesis, and it helps explain the remarkable abundance of carnivores in the La Brea deposits. One struggling herbivore could attract several predators and scavengers, producing a fossil assemblage in which carnivores greatly outnumber herbivores.

Roughly 70 to 80 per cent of the site’s larger mammal specimens are carnivores. That is almost the reverse of what we would expect in a living ecosystem, where herbivores generally outnumber large predators. The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County notes that this carnivore-heavy composition distinguishes La Brea from most other fossil deposits.

This does not mean Ice Age Los Angeles was carpeted in dire wolves with the occasional bison squeezed between them. It means the asphalt seeps selectively trapped animals attracted to struggling prey. The deposit records not only which species lived in the region, but also how their behaviour influenced their likelihood of preservation.

The fossil record is rarely an impartial census. At La Brea, it is closer to a list of everyone who approached the buffet without first inspecting the floor.

DIRE WOLVES, SABRE-TOOTHED CATS AND ANCIENT COYOTES

Dire wolves were among the most frequently trapped large mammals. Known scientifically as Aenocyon dirus, they were heavily built canids that lived across the Americas during the Late Pleistocene. They had robust jaws and teeth suited to feeding on large prey, although, like living wolves, they probably scavenged when a meal presented itself.

Their abundance at La Brea may provide indirect evidence of social behaviour. If dire wolves hunted or scavenged in groups, one trapped herbivore might attract several pack members. A single incident could therefore add multiple wolves to the deposit. One meal, several hopeful carnivores and a deeply regrettable group decision.

The large collection allows researchers to study dire wolves as a population rather than as a scattering of isolated specimens. Individual animals can be compared for age, body size, tooth wear, injury and disease. Changes in anatomy and diet can also be tracked through time.

The most famous predator at La Brea is Smilodon fatalis, the sabre-toothed cat. If you have seen the skull and teeth of this kitty, you will agree the name is apt. 

A fun fact and wee aside, Canada's first Smilodon was found in a drawer in a museum by Dr. Rufus Churcher when he was poking about an old collection in Alberta. A wonderful storyteller with a keen eye, we owe that man a lot.

It was not a tiger, despite the enduring popularity of the name “sabre-toothed tiger.” Smilodon belonged to an extinct branch of the cat family and had a body built quite differently from that of modern lions or tigers.

It possessed enormous upper canine teeth, exceptionally powerful forelimbs, a deep chest and a relatively short tail. Its jaw could open extraordinarily wide, allowing those elongated canines to be used without colliding with the lower jaw. Rather than pursuing prey over long distances, Smilodon was likely an ambush predator. Its muscular forelimbs may have helped restrain large prey while it delivered a carefully positioned bite.

This was important because the famous canine teeth, though formidable, were not indestructible. They were effective weapons but poor candidates for being driven casually into struggling bone. Even the Ice Age’s most dramatic dental arrangement required responsible handling.

La Brea specimens preserve evidence of arthritis, fractures, tooth damage and healing. Some animals survived serious injuries long enough for their bones to repair. This has raised intriguing questions about whether sabre-toothed cats lived socially and whether impaired individuals may have received food or protection from others.

Healing proves survival, but it does not automatically prove social care. An injured animal might have scavenged, selected smaller prey or simply endured. We must distinguish what a bone demonstrates from what it merely suggests. Still, the injuries reveal that these cats had individual histories. They aged, suffered accidents, recovered and continued living in a landscape filled with large prey, competing carnivores and treacherously sticky patches of ground.

Coyotes, Canis latrans, also occur abundantly at La Brea, but unlike dire wolves and sabre-toothed cats, they survived the end-Pleistocene extinction. Their ecological flexibility may have given them an advantage. Coyotes can eat mammals, insects, fruit, carrion and an impressive assortment of whatever else becomes available. They can occupy deserts, grasslands, woodlands, agricultural areas and cities.

Large specialists often thrive when their preferred prey and habitats are stable, but they can struggle when ecosystems change rapidly. Coyotes appear to have regarded climatic upheaval, megafaunal extinction and the eventual construction of Los Angeles as challenges requiring only minor adjustments.

They still live in the city today.

MAMMOTHS, MASTODONS AND CAMELS IN CALIFORNIA

The herbivores preserved at La Brea include ancient bison, horses, camels, deer, pronghorn, mammoths and mastodons. Together, they reveal a Southern California landscape quite different from the one we know today.

Columbian mammoths, Mammuthus columbi, were enormous members of the elephant family. They possessed long, curving tusks and high-crowned ridged teeth suited to processing abrasive vegetation. Their diets varied across environments and could include both grasses and other plants.

American mastodons, Mammut americanum, were shorter and more heavily built, with molar teeth bearing rounded cusps. These teeth were better suited to crushing leaves, twigs and branches. Mammoths and mastodons were related, but they were not interchangeable shaggy elephants wandering through identical habitats.

Their teeth record the difference rather elegantly. Mammoth molars resemble enormous washboards. Mastodon molars carry prominent rounded cusps, which gave the animal its name: “mastodon” refers to the breast-like shape of the tooth projections. Palaeontology occasionally arrives at terminology by routes we might not choose today.

One of the site’s remarkable discoveries is a largely complete Columbian mammoth nicknamed Zed. His remains were uncovered in 2006 during the construction of an underground parking facility beside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Zed is a reminder that major palaeontological discoveries do not always require an expedition to a distant desert. Sometimes they require a construction crew, a parking proposal and someone sensible enough to stop digging.

Ancient camels also lived in Ice Age California. The western camel, Camelops hesternus, was a large North American member of the camel family. This seems surprising only because we associate camels with Africa and Asia today. Camels actually evolved in North America and lived on the continent for tens of millions of years. Some migrated into Eurasia across Beringia, while others moved into South America and eventually gave rise to llamas, alpacas, guanacos and vicuñas.

The disappearance of camels from North America is the unusual part. Their presence at La Brea was perfectly ordinary at the time.

PROJECT 23: PALAEONTOLOGY BY WOODEN BOX

When construction near the Tar Pits encountered fossil deposits in 2006, excavating every specimen individually would have delayed work for an extremely long time. Instead, palaeontologists and engineers built large wooden crates around 23 fossil-bearing deposits. The blocks were lifted intact and moved to La Brea Tar Pits, where they could be excavated under controlled conditions.

The operation became known as Project 23.

Along with the boxed deposits came 327 buckets of fossil-rich sediment. The material contains large mammal bones, but also turtles, fish, snails, insects, seeds, leaves, small vertebrates and other remains essential to reconstructing the wider ecosystem. The museum’s Project 23 overview notes that researchers will be processing this enormous collection for years.

Project 23 demonstrates an important reality of modern palaeontology: fossil discovery frequently occurs during construction. Roads, foundations, mines and parking structures expose geological layers that would otherwise remain hidden. When scientific teams and developers work together, these unexpected discoveries can be recovered without sacrificing either the fossils or the project.

It also proves that if you place 23 enormous crates of asphalt-soaked Ice Age sediment in front of palaeontologists, they will be happily occupied for the foreseeable future.

THE TINY FOSSILS THAT RECONSTRUCT A LANDSCAPE

Mammoths and sabre-toothed cats attract attention, but some of La Brea’s most informative fossils are less than a centimetre long.

The asphalt and surrounding sediments preserve insects, spiders, seeds, leaves, pollen, molluscs, fish, frogs, lizards, bird bones, rodent teeth and tiny skeletal fragments. These remains are recovered from the excavated sediment, or matrix, which is carefully processed and examined under microscopes.

Staff and volunteers sort through it grain by grain. It is patient, meticulous work requiring steady hands and an ability to become sincerely delighted by something resembling a burnt sesame seed.

Microfossils allow researchers to reconstruct details that large mammal bones cannot provide. Pollen and seeds identify ancient vegetation. Beetles and other insects can indicate temperature, moisture and local habitat. Frogs and salamanders reveal the presence of freshwater or damp environments. Rodents can be sensitive indicators of particular ecological conditions.

The La Brea Fossil Lab emphasizes the importance of these small fossils for understanding environmental and climatic change during the Late Pleistocene.

Large mammals tell us who occupied the landscape. Microfossils tell us what the landscape was like.

Ice Age Los Angeles was not buried beneath a continental glacier. The region was generally cooler and wetter than it is today, with streams, grasslands, scrub and woodlands of oak and juniper. Mammoths, bison, horses and camels moved through these habitats while predators followed them.

It was recognizably Southern California, but with more water, fewer freeways and a substantial increase in large mammals capable of overturning your vehicle.

HOW ASPHALT PRESERVED THE FOSSILS

When animals became trapped, their bodies decayed and their bones sank into asphalt-rich sediment. Petroleum entered the pores of the bones, staining them dark brown or black and helping protect them from weathering and some forms of microbial destruction.

The asphalt also preserved delicate biological materials rarely retained at other fossil sites. These include bone collagen, plant cellulose and chitin from insect exoskeletons. Such materials can be used for radiocarbon dating, stable-isotope analysis and other forms of biochemical research.

La Brea is an exceptional Late Quaternary fossil deposit created by petroleum seepage over approximately the past 60,000 years. Its geoheritage profile notes that the site preserves millions of fossils representing hundreds of species.

The preservative, however, is also a contaminant. Petroleum contains ancient carbon that can distort radiocarbon dates. Researchers must therefore remove the asphalt carefully and isolate original organic material from the fossil.

The substance that protected the bone for tens of thousands of years must be persuaded to leave before the bone will surrender its age.

La Brea likes to keep its secrets sticky.

DATING EXTINCTION

Specialized methods for removing petroleum contamination have allowed researchers to obtain increasingly reliable radiocarbon dates from La Brea specimens.

In a major study of Ice Age extinction, scientists produced approximately 170 new dates for coyotes, horses, camels, bison, sabre-toothed cats, giant ground sloths, American lions and dire wolves. These dates helped establish when each species disappeared from Southern California.

The results suggest that the regional extinction did not occur in one sudden event. Large mammals vanished as the climate warmed, drought intensified, vegetation changed and fire activity increased. Human populations were also becoming established in the region, adding another ecological influence.

These pressures interacted. A warming climate altered habitats. Drought dried vegetation. Fire transformed plant communities. Large herbivores lost forage, while predators lost prey. Species able to change their diets or behaviour had an advantage over those dependent on a narrower range of conditions.

The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County describes La Brea as an exceptional record because some species are represented by hundreds or thousands of individuals. This makes it possible to study not simply their existence, but their decline and disappearance through time.

The Tar Pits preserve extinct animals, but more importantly, they preserve the approach of extinction.

GIANT GROUND SLOTHS AND OTHER UNEXPECTED RESIDENTS

Among the more impressive herbivores at La Brea was Harlan’s ground sloth, Paramylodon harlani. Unlike modern tree sloths, it lived on the ground and possessed a heavily built body, powerful limbs and long claws. Small bony plates called osteoderms were embedded within its skin, providing an additional layer of protection.

It may have used its claws to pull down vegetation, dig for roots or defend itself from predators. When standing partly upright and supported by its tail, it could reach vegetation well above the ground.

Modern sloths give the impression that they would apologize for occupying your chair. Giant ground sloths look as though they might take the chair, the dining table and the adjacent shrubbery.

The deposits also preserve American lions, short-faced bears, pronghorn, peccaries and native horses, alongside reptiles, amphibians and an extraordinary diversity of birds. Asphalt is particularly effective at preserving delicate hollow bird bones, which are easily destroyed at other sites. As a result, La Brea holds one of the world’s largest fossil bird collections.

The birds are not merely background characters. Eagles, vultures, owls, ravens, waterbirds and songbirds occupied different parts of the ecosystem. Their remains help reconstruct habitats and food webs, while changes in bird communities can reflect broader environmental change.

ASPHALT AS A CULTURAL RESOURCE

The La Brea landscape has a human history as well as a palaeontological one. Indigenous peoples knew and used natural asphalt long before scientific excavation or commercial extraction began.

Tongva and Chumash peoples used asphalt to waterproof baskets and canoes, improve tools and create decorative objects. The material was also traded across the region. Educational material from La Brea Tar Pits recognizes this long history of Indigenous knowledge and use.

The asphalt was therefore not simply a dangerous geological substance. In knowledgeable hands, it was a valuable technology.

Commercial mining and extraction followed much later. Asphalt from Rancho La Brea was used for roofing and road construction before the area became protected for its fossils.

The site cannot be understood only as a trap for Ice Age animals. It is a cultural landscape where people observed, understood and worked with a distinctive natural resource for thousands of years.

A COLLECTION OF MILLIONS

Scientific excavation at La Brea began in earnest in 1913, although fossil bones had been encountered earlier. More than 100 excavations have since been conducted.

At the collection’s last comprehensive census in 1992, it already contained more than 3.5 million specimens. That number includes everything from large mammal bones to insects, seeds and tiny vertebrate remains. The La Brea collections include more than 60 mammal species, along with birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, molluscs, arthropods and plants.

The site remains scientifically active. Asphalt continues to seep, methane continues to bubble and fossil-bearing deposits continue to be excavated. La Brea is not a completed quarry whose discoveries are safely finished and catalogued. It is an active research site in the middle of a major city.

Beneath the lawns, streets and buildings, the Ice Age is still present.

A FOSSIL RECORD WITH A TRAP BUILT INTO IT

La Brea offers a particularly useful lesson in how fossil deposits must be interpreted.

The asphalt did not collect organisms fairly. Large animals were more likely to become immobilized than very small ones. Carnivores and scavengers were disproportionately drawn to trapped herbivores. Birds, insects and plants entered the deposits through different pathways. Individual seeps may also have accumulated remains over hundreds or thousands of years rather than during a single event.

We cannot simply count the fossils and assume the resulting proportions mirror the living community. More dire wolf bones do not prove that dire wolves vastly outnumbered bison across the landscape. 

They may demonstrate that dire wolves were social, attracted to distressed prey and willing to step onto suspicious ground when meat was involved.

Understanding how remains accumulated is the work of taphonomy—the study of everything that happens between an organism’s death and its discovery as a fossil.

La Brea is both a window and a filter. It reveals the Ice Age, but it reveals it through asphalt.

THE STICKY ARCHIVE OF LOS ANGELES

There is something wonderfully improbable about La Brea. A city famous for reinvention sits above an archive of extinction. Traffic moves along Wilshire Boulevard while methane rises from petroleum formed by ancient marine organisms. 

People walk through Hancock Park above the remains of mammoths, dire wolves and sabre-toothed cats. The past is not somewhere else. It is directly beneath the picnic blanket. Oh, how I would love to dig a little but they frown on that sort of thing in parks. Shame. Yes, we can see wonderful examples in the museum, but it is sheer pleasure to excavate yourself.

The Tar Pits preserve death in overwhelming abundance, but their scientific value lies in what they reveal about life. Their fossils tell us what animals ate, how they were injured, which plants grew around them and how ecosystems responded as the climate changed. Tiny seeds document shifting vegetation. Tooth enamel preserves chemical evidence of diet. Bones record growth, disease and survival.

Even the strange abundance of carnivores tells a story. One trapped herbivore could attract several predators. One tempting meal could produce fossils studied tens of thousands of years later.

The asphalt waited. The animals approached, encouraged by hunger and betrayed by optimism.

And the Earth kept every receipt.

Image Credit: Asset id: 2278428163. Prehistoric bones and the skull of saber-tooth cat, Smilodon fatalis, in a block of resin at the La Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles, California

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. 

LOWER LIAS LYTOCERAS

A superbly prepped and extremely rare Lytoceras (Suess, 1865) ammonite found as a green ammonite nodule by Matt Cape in the Lower Lias of Dorset. 

Lytoceras are rare in the Lower Lias of Dorset — apart from the Belemnite Stone horizon — so much so that Paul Davis, whose skilled prep work you see here, initially thought it might be a Becheiceras hidden within the large, lumpy nodule. 

One of the reasons these lovelies are rarely found from here is that they are a Mediterranean Tethyian genus. The fossil fauna we find in the United Kingdom are dominated by Boreal Tethyian genera. 

We do find Lytoceras sp. in the Luridum subzone of the Pliensbachian showing that there was an influx of species from the Mediterranean realm during this time. This is the first occurrence of a Lytoceras that he has ever seen in a green nodule and Paul's seen quite a few. 

This absolutely cracking specimen was found and is in the collections of the awesome Matt Cape. Matt recognized that whatever was hidden in the nodule would take skilled and careful preparation using air scribes. Indeed it did. It took more than five hours of time and skill to unveil the lovely museum-worthy specimen you see here. 

We find Lytoceras in more than 1,000 outcrops around the globe ranging from the Jurassic through to the Cretaceous, some 189.6 to 109.00 million years ago. Once this specimen is fully prepped with the nodule material cut or scraped away, you can see the detailed crinkly growth lines or riblets on the shell and none of the expected coarse ribbing. 

Lytoceras sp. Photo: Craig Chivers

If you imagine running your finger along these, you would be tracing the work of decades of growth of these cephalopods. 

While we cannot know their actual lifespans, but we can make a healthy guess. 

The nautilus, their closest living cousins live upwards of 20 years — gods be good — and less than three years if conditions are poor.

The flanges, projecting flat ribs or collars, develop at the edge of the mouth border on the animal's mantle as they grow each new chamber. 

Each delicate flange grows over the course of the ammonites life, marking various points in time and life stages as the ammonite grew. There is a large variation within Lytoceras with regards to flanges. They provide both ornamentation and strength to the shell to protect it from water pressure as they moved into deeper seas.

The concretion prior to prep

This distinctive genus with its evolute shells are found in the Cretaceous marine deposits of: 

Antarctica (5 collections), Austria (19), Colombia (1), the Czech Republic (3), Egypt (2), France (194), Greenland (16), Hungary (25), Italy (11), Madagascar (2), Mexico (1), Morocco (4), Mozambique (1), Poland (2), Portugal (1), Romania (1), the Russian Federation (2), Slovakia (3), South Africa (1), Spain (24), Tanzania (1), Trinidad and Tobago (1), Tunisia (25); and the United States of America (17: Alaska, California, North Carolina, Oregon).

We also find them in Jurassic marine outcrops in:

Austria (15), Canada (9: British Columbia), Chile (6), France (181), Germany (11), Greenland (1), Hungary (189), India (1), Indonesia (1), Iran (1), Italy (50), Japan (14), Kenya (2), Luxembourg (4), Madagascar (2), Mexico (1), Morocco (43), New Zealand (15), Portugal (1), Romania (5), the Russian Federation (1), Slovakia (1), Spain (6), Switzerland (2), Tunisia (11), Turkey (12), Turkmenistan (1), Ukraine (5), the United Kingdom (12), United States (11: Alaska, California) — in at least 977 known collections. 

References:

Sepkoski, Jack (2002). "A compendium of fossil marine animal genera (Cephalopoda entry)". Bulletins of American Paleontology. 363: 1–560. Archived from the original on 2008-05-07. Retrieved 2017-10-18.

Paleobiology Database - Lytoceras. 2017-10-19.

Systematic descriptions, Mesozoic Ammonoidea, by W.J Arkell, Bernhard Kummel, and C.W. Wright. 1957. Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part L. Geological Society of America and University of Kansas press.

FOSSIL HUNTRESS PODCAST: DEAD SEXY SCIENCE

Geeky goodness from the Fossil Huntress. If you love paleontology, you will love this stream. Dinosaurs, trilobites, ammonites—you'll find them all here!

Close your eyes & fly with me as we head out together to explore Earth's rich history written in her rock. Travel to extraordinary places, sacred sites & unearth mysteries millions of years old on the Fossil Huntress Podcast.

This stream is for those who share an enduring passion for our world's hidden treasures, its wild places & want to uncover her beauty stone by stone.

This is the story of the making of our Earth and the many wonderful creatures who have called it home.

Join in the exploration of the fascinating science of paleontology — that lens that examines ancient animals, plants & ecosystems from wee single-celled organisms to big & mighty dinosaurs. Save the stream to your favorites to listen while you drive, head out fossil collecting or snuggle in for the night!

​To listen now, visit: https://open.spotify.com/show/1hH1wpDFFIlYC9ZW5uTYVL

ANCIENT ARAGONITE: 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.