LIVING FOSSILS: PERFECTION FROM THE GET GO

Horseshoe crabs are marine and brackish water arthropods of the order Xiphosura — a slowly evolving, conservative taxa.

Much like (slow) Water Striders (Aquarius remigis), (relatively sluggish) Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) and (the current winner on really slow evolution) Elephant Sharks (Callorhinchus milii), these fellows have a long history in the fossil record with very few anatomical changes. 

But slow change provides loads of great information. It makes our new friend, Yunnanolimulus luoingensis, an especially interesting and excellent reference point for how this group evolved. 

We can examine their genome today and make comparisons all the way back to the Middle Triassic (with this new find) and other specimens from further back in the Ordovician — 445 million years ago. 

These living fossils have survived all five mass extinction events. They are generalists who can live in shallow or deep water and will eat pretty much anything they can find on the seafloor.

The oldest horseshoe crab fossil, Lunataspis aurora, is found in outcrops in Manitoba, Canada. Charmingly, the name means crescent moon shield of the dawn. It was palaeontologist Dave Rudkin and team who chose that romantic name. Finding them as fossils is quite remarkable as their shells are made of protein which does not mineralized like typical fossils.

Even so, the evolution of their exoskeleton is well-documented by fossils, but appendage and soft-tissue preservation are extremely rare. 

A new study analyzes details of the appendage and soft-tissue preservation in Yunnanolimulus luoingensis, a Middle Triassic (ca. 244 million years old) horseshoe crab from Yunnan Province, SW China. The remarkable anatomical preservation includes the chelicerae, five pairs of walking appendages, opisthosomal appendages with book gills, muscles, and fine setae permits comparison with extant horseshoe crabs.

The close anatomical similarity between the Middle Triassic horseshoe crabs and their recent analogues documents anatomical conservatism for over 240 million years, suggesting persistence of lifestyle.

The occurrence of Carcinoscorpius-type claspers on the first and second walking legs in male individuals of Y. luoingensis tells us that simple chelate claspers in males are plesiomorphic for horseshoe crabs, and the bulbous claspers in Tachypleus and Limulus are derived.

As an aside, if you hadn't seen an elephant shark before and were shown a photo, you would likely say, "that's no freaking shark." You would be wrong, of course, but it would be a very clever observation.

Callorhinchus milii look nothing like our Great White friends and they are not true sharks at all. Rather, they are ghost sharks that belong to the subclass Holocephali (chimaera), a group lovingly known as ratfish. They diverged from the shark lineage about 400 million years ago.

If you have a moment, do a search for Callorhinchus milii. The odd-looking fellow with the ironic name, kallos, which means beautiful in Greek, sports black blotches on a pale silver elongate body. And their special feature? It is the fishy equivalent of business in the front, party in the back, with a dangling trunk-like projection at the tip of their snout and well-developed rectal glands near the tail.

As another small point of interest with regards to horseshoe crabs, John McAllister collected several of these while working on his MSc to see if they had microstructures similar to trilobites (they do) and whether their cuticles were likewise calcified. He found no real calcification in their cuticles, in fact, he had a rather frustrating time getting anything measurable to dissolve in acid in his hunt for trace elements. 

Likewise, when looking at oxygen isotopes (16/18) to get a handle on water salinity and temperature, his contacts at the University of Waterloo had tons of fun getting anything at all to analyze. It made for some interesting findings. Sadly, for a number of reasons, he abandoned the work, but you can read his very interesting thesis here: https://dr.library.brocku.ca/handle/10464/1959

Ref: Hu, Shixue & Zhang, Qiyue & Feldmann, Rodney & Benton, Michael & Schweitzer, Carrie & Huang, Jinyuan & Wen, Wen & Zhou, Changyong & Xie, Tao & Lü, Tao & Hong, Shuigen. (2017). Exceptional appendage and soft-tissue preservation in a Middle Triassic horseshoe crab from SW China. Scientific Reports. 7. 10.1038/s41598-017-13319-x.

GEOLOGY AND FOSSILS OF THE EAST KOOTENAY REGION

The East Kootenay region on the south-eastern edge of British Columbia is a land of colossal mountains against a clear blue sky. 

That is not strictly true, of course, as this area does see its fair share of rain and temperature extremes — but visiting in the summer every view is a postcard of mountainous terrain.

Rocks from deep within the Earth's crust underlie the entire East Kootenay region and are commonly exposed in the areas majestic mountain peaks, craggy rocky cliffs, glaciated river canyons, and rock cuts along the highways. Younger Ice Age sediments blanket much of the underlying rock.

I've been heading to the Cranbrook and Fernie area since the early 1990s. My interest is the local geology and fossil history that these rocks have to tell. I'm also drawn to the warm and welcoming locals who share a love for the land and palaeontological treasures that open a window to our ancient past.  

Cranbrook is the largest community in the region and is steeped in mining history and the opening of the west by the railway. It is also a stone's throw away from Fort Steele and the Lower Cambrian exposures of the Eager Formation. These fossil beds rival the slightly younger Burgess Shale fauna and while less varied, produce wonderful examples of olenellid trilobites and weird and wonderful arthropods nearly half a billion years old. 

Labiostria westriopi, McKay Group

The Lower Cambrian Eager Formation outcrops at a few localities close to Fort Steele, many known since the early 1920s, and up near Mount Grainger near the highway. 

Further east, the Upper Cambrian McKay Group near Tanglefoot Mountain is a palaeontological delight with fifteen known outcrops that have produced some of the best-preserved and varied trilobites in the province — many of them new species. 

The McKay Formation also includes Ordovician outcrops sprinkled in for good measure.

Other cities in the area and the routes to and from them produce other fossil fauna from Kimberley to Fernie and the district municipality of Invermere and Sparwood. This is an arid country with native grasslands and forests of semi-open fir and pine. Throughout there are a host of fossiliferous exposures from Lower Cretaceous plants to brachiopods. 

The area around Whiteswan Lake has wonderful large and showy Ordovician graptolites including Cardiograptus morsus and Pseudoclimacograptus angustifolius elongates — some of our oldest relatives. A drive down to Flathead will bring you to ammonite outcrops and you can even find Eocene fresh-water snails in the region. 

The drive from Cranbrook to Fernie is about an hour and change through the Cambrian into the Devonian which flip-flops and folds over revealing Jurassic exposures. 

Fernie Ichthyosaur Excavation, 1916

The Crowsnest Highway into Fernie follows Mutz Creek. From the highway, you can see the Fernie Group and the site along the Elk River where an ichthyosaur was excavated in 1916. 

The Fernie Formation is Jurassic. It is present in the western part of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in western Alberta and northeastern British Columbia. 

It takes its name from the town of Fernie, British Columbia, and was first defined by W.W. Leach in 1914. The town of Fernie is rimmed by rugged mountains tipped with Devonian marine outcrops. In essence, all these mountains are upside down with the oldest layers flipped to the top and a good 180 million years older than those they sit upon. 

Before they were mountains, these sedimentary rocks were formed as sediment collected in a shallow sea or inland basin. About 360 million years ago, the rocks that you see in Fernie today were down near the equator. They road tectonic plates, pushing northeast smashing into the coastline of what would become British Columbia. A little push here, shove there — compression and thrust faulting — and the rock was rolled over on its head — repeatedly. But that is how mountains are often formed, though not usually pushed so hard that they flip over. But still, it is a slow, relentless business. 

Cretaceous Plant Material, Fernie, BC

Within Fernie, there are small exposures of Triassic and Jurassic marine outcrops. East of the town there are Cretaceous plant sites, and of course, the Jurassic 1.4-metre Titanites occidentalis ammonite up on Coal Mountain.

The regional district's dominant landform is the Rocky Mountain Trench, which is flanked by the Purcell Mountains and the Rocky Mountains on the east and west, and includes the Columbia Valley region. The southern half of which is in the regional district — its northern half is in the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District. 

The regional district of Elk Valley in the southern Rockies is the entryway to the Crowsnest Pass and an important coal-mining area. 

Other than the Columbia and Kootenay Rivers, whose valleys shape the bottomlands of the Rocky Mountain Trench, the regional districts form the northernmost parts of the basins of the Flathead, Moyie and Yahk Rivers. 

The Moyie and Yahk are tributaries of the Kootenay, entering it in the United States, and the Flathead is a tributary of the Clark Fork into Montana.

Photo One: Tyaughton Mountain, Mckay Group; Photo Two: Labiostria westriopi, Upper Cambrian McKay Group, Site ML (1998); John Fam Collection; Photo Three: Ichthyosaur Excavation, Fernie, British Columbia, 1916; Photo Four: Cretaceous Plant Fossils, east of Fernie towards Coal Mountain. The deeply awesome Guy Santucci as hand-model for scale. 

LOVE CAN TRAVEL ANYWHERE IN AN INSTANT

Nunatsiarmiut Mother and Child, Baffin Island, Nunavut

Warm light bathes this lovely Nunatsiarmiut mother and child from Baffin Island, Nunavut. 

They speak Inuktitut, the mother tongue of the majority of the Nunatsiarmiut who call Baffin Island home. 

Baffin is the largest island in the Arctic Archipelago in the territory of Nunavut in Canada's far north—the chilliest region of Turtle Island. 

As part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Baffin Island is home to a constellation of remote Inuit communities each with a deep cultural connection to the land—Iqaluit, Pond Inlet, Pangnirtung, Clyde River, Arctic Bay, Kimmirut and Nanisivik. 

The ratio of Inuit to non-Inuit here is roughly three to one and perhaps the reason why the Inuktitut language has remained intact and serves as the mother tongue for more than 36,000 residents. Inuktitut has several subdialects—these, along with a myriad of other languages—are spoken across the north.  

If you look at the helpful visual below you begin to get a feel for the diversity of these many tongues. The languages vary by region. There is the Iñupiaq of the Inupiatun/Inupiat; Inuvialuktun of the Inuinnaqtun, Natsilingmiutut, Kivallirmiutut, Aivilingmiutut, Qikiqtaaluk Uannanganii and Siglitun. Kalaallisut is spoken by many Greenlandic peoples though, in northwest Greenland, Inuktun is the language of the Inughuit.

We use the word Inuktitut when referring to a specific dialect and inuktut when referring to all the dialects of Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun.

Northern Language Map (Click to Enlarge)

Should you travel to the serene glacier-capped wilds and rolling tundra of our far north, you will want to dress for the weather and learn a few of the basics to put your best mukluk shod feet forward. 

The word for hello or welcome in Inuktitut is Atelihai—pronounced ahh-tee-lee-hi. And thank you is nakurmiik, pronounced na-kur-MIIK.  

Perhaps my favourite Inuktitut expression is Naglingniq qaikautigijunnaqtuq maannakautigi, pronounced NAG-ling-niq QAI-kau-ti-gi-jun-naqtuq MAAN-na-KAU-ti-gi. This tongue-twister is well worth the linguistic challenge as it translates to love can travel anywhere in an instant. Indeed it can. 

So much of our Indigenous culture is passed through stories, so language takes on special meaning in that context. It is true for all societies but especially true for the Inuit. Stories help connect the past to the present and future. They teach how to behave in society, engage with the world and how to survive in the environment. They also help to create a sense of belonging. 

You have likely seen or heard the word Eskimo used in older books to refer to the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit or Yupik. This misnomer is a colonial term derived from the Montagnais or Innu word ayas̆kimew—netter of snowshoes. 

It is a bit like meeting a whole new group of people who happen to wear shoes and referring to them all as cobblers—not as a nickname, but as a legal term to describe populations from diverse communities disregarding the way each self-refer. 

Inukshuk / Inuksuk Marker Cairn

For those who identify as Inupiaq or Yupik, the preferred term is Inuit meaning people—though some lingering use of the term Eskimo lives on. The Inuit as a group are made up of many smaller groups. 

The Inuit of Greenland self-refer as Kalaallit or Greenlanders when speaking Kalaallisut. 

The Tunumiit of Tunu (east Greenland), speak Tunumiit oraasiat ("East Greenlandic"); and the Inughuit of north Greenland, speak Inuktun "Polar Eskimo."

The Inupiat of Alaska, or real people, use Yupik as the singular for real person and yuk to simply mean person.

When taken all together, Inuit is used to mean all the peoples in reference to the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit and Yupik. Inuit is the plural of inuk or person. 

You likely recognize this word from inuksuk or inukshuk, pronounced ih-nook-suuk — the human-shaped stone cairns built by the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, and other peoples of the Arctic regions of northern Canada, Greenland, and Alaska—as helpful reference markers for hunters and navigation. 

The word inuksuk means that which acts in the capacity of a human, combining inuk or person and suk, as a human substitute. 

A World of Confusion

You may be disappointed to learn that our northern friends do not live in igloos. I remember answering the phone as a child and the fellow calling was hoping to speak to my parents about some wonderful new invention perfect for use in an igloo. 

The call came while I was in the kitchen of our family home in Port Hardy. He was disappointed to hear that I was standing in a wooden house with the standard four walls to a room and a handy roof topping it off. 

I also had my own room with Scooby-Doo wallpaper, but he was having nothing of it.

"Well, what about your neighbours? Surely, a few of them live in igloos..." 

It seems that some atlases in circulation at the time, and certainly the one he was looking at, simply blanketed everything north of the 49th parallel in a snowy white. His clearly showed an igloo sitting proudly in the centre of the province.

Interestingly, I only learned this morning (thank you, Jen) that that type of playful map is called a Counter Map and can be used in delightful ways to draw the reader in to the mapping of a landscape, region, people or culture—often out of scale and with many wonderful images added to give you a beautiful sense of the people, plants, animals and topography of a place.

My cousin Shawn brought one such simplified book back from his elementary school in California. British Columbia had a nice image of a grizzly bear and a wee bit further up, a polar bear grinned smugly. 

British Columbia's beaver population would be sad to know that they did not inhabit the province though there were two chipper beavers with big bright smiles—one in Ontario and another gracing the province of Quebec. Further north, where folk do build igloos, their icy domes were curiously lacking. 

Igloos are used for winter hunting trips much the same way we use tents for camping. The Inuit do not have fifty words for snow—you can thank the ethnographer Franz Boas for that wee fabrication—but within the collective languages of the frozen north there are more than fifty words to describe it. And kisses are not nose-to-nose. To give a tender kiss or kunik to a loved one, you press your nose and upper lip to their forehead or cheek and rub gently. 

Fancy trying a wee bit of Inuktitut yourself? This link will bring you to a great place to start: https://inhabitmedia.com/inuitnipingit/

Inuit Language Map:  By Noahedits - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0. If you want to the image full size, head to this link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85587388

TIKTAALIK, TETRAPODS AND MIGUASHA

Elpistostege watsoni

In the late 1930s, our understanding of the transition of fish to tetrapods — and the eventual jump to modern vertebrates — took an unexpected leap forward. The evolutionary a'ha came from a single partial fossil skull found on the shores of a riverbank in Eastern Canada. 

Meet the Stegocephalian, Elpistostege watsoni, an extinct genus of finned tetrapodomorphs that lived during the Late Givetian to Early Frasnian of the Late Devonian — 382 million years ago. 

Elpistostege watsoni — perhaps the sister taxon of all other tetrapods — was first described in 1938 by British palaeontologist and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Thomas Stanley Westoll. Westoll's research interests were wide-ranging. He was a vertebrate palaeontologist and geologist best known for his innovative work on Palaeozoic fishes and their relationships with tetrapods. 

As a specialist in early fish, Westoll was asked to interpret that single partial skull roof discovered at the Escuminac Formation in Quebec, Canada. His findings and subsequent publication named Elpistostege watsoni and helped us to better understand the evolution of fishes to tetrapods — four-limbed vertebrates — one of the most important transformations in vertebrate evolution. 

Hypotheses of tetrapod origins rely heavily on the anatomy of but a few tetrapod-like fish fossils from the Middle and Late Devonian, 393–359 million years ago. These taxa — known as elpistostegalians — include Panderichthys, Elpistostege and Tiktaalik — none of which had yet to reveal the complete skeletal anatomy of the pectoral fin. 

Elpistostege watsoni

None until 2010 that is, when a complete 1.57-metre-long articulated specimen was found and described by Richard Cloutier et al. in 2020. 

The specimen helped us to understand the origin of the vertebrate hand. Stripped from its encasing stone, it revealed a set of paired fins of Elpistostege containing bones homologous to the phalanges (finger bones) of modern tetrapods and is the most basal tetrapodomorph known to possess them. 

Once the phalanges were uncovered, prep work began on the fins. The fins were covered in wee scales and lepidotrichia (fin rays). The work was tiresome, taking more than 2,700 hours of preparation but the results were thrilling. 

Origin of the Vertebrate Hand

We could now clearly see that the skeleton of the pectoral fin has four proximodistal rows of radials — two of which include branched carpals — as well as two distal rows organized as digits and putative digits. 

Despite this skeletal pattern — which represents the most tetrapod-like arrangement of bones found in a pectoral fin to date blurring the line between fish and land vertebrates — the fin retained lepidotrichia (those wee fin rays) distal to the radials. 

This arrangement confirmed an age-old question — showing us for the first time that the origin of phalanges preceded the loss of fin rays, not the other way around.

E. watsoni is very closely related to Tiktaalik roseae found in 2004 in the Canadian Arctic — a tetrapodomorpha species also known as a Choanata. These were advanced forms transitional between fish and the early labyrinthodonts playfully referred to as fishapods — half-fish, half-tetrapod in appearance and limb morphology. 

Up to that point, the relationship of limbed vertebrates (tetrapods) to lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygians) was well known, but the origin of major tetrapod features remained obscure for lack of fossils that document the sequence of evolutionary changes — until Tiktaalik. While Tiktaalik is technically a fish, this fellow is as far from fish-like you can be and still be a card-carrying member of the group. 

Tiktaalik roseae

Complete with scales and gills, this proto-fish lacked the conical head we see in modern fish but had a rather flattened triangular head more like that of a crocodile. 

Tiktaalik had scales on its back and fins with fin webbing but like early land-living animals, it had a distinctive flat head and neck. He was a brawny brute. The shape of his skull and shoulder look part fish and part amphibian.

The watershed moment came as Tiktaalik was prepped. Inside Tiktaalik's fins, we find bones that correspond to the upper arm, forearm and even parts of the wrist — all inside a fin with webbing — remarkable! 

Its fins have thin ray bones for paddling like most fish, but with brawny interior bones that gave Tiktaalik the ability to prop itself up, using his limbs for support. I picture him propped up on one paddle saying, "how you doing?" 

Six years after Tiktaalik was discovered by Neil Shubin and team in the ice-covered tundra of the Canadian Arctic on southern Ellesmere Island, a team working the outcrops at Miguasha on the Gaspé Peninsula discovered the only fully specimen of E. watsoni found to date — greatly increasing our knowledge of this finned tantalizingly transitional tetrapodomorph. 

E. watsoni fossils are rare — this was the fourth specimen collected in over 130 years of hunting. Charmingly, the specimen was right on our doorstop — extracted but a few feet away from the main stairs descending onto the beach of Miguasha National Park. 

L'nu Mi’gmaq First Nations of the Gespe’gewa’gi Region

Miguasha is nestled in the Gaspésie or Gespe’gewa’gi region of Canada — home to the Mi’gmaq First Nations who self-refer as L’nu or Lnu. The word Mi’gmaq or Mi’kmaq means the family or my allies/friends in Mi'kmaw, their native tongue (and soon to be Nova Scotia's provincial first language). They are the people of the sea and the original inhabitants of Atlantic Canada having lived here for more than 10,000 years. 

The L'nu were the first First Nation people to establish contact and trade with European explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries — and perhaps the Norse as early as the turn of the Millenium. Sailing vessels filled with French, British, Scottish, Irish and others arrived one by one to lay claim to the region — settling and fighting over the land. As each group rolled out their machinations of discovery, tensions turned to an all-out war with the British and French going head to head. I'll spare you the sordid details but for everyone caught in the crossfire, it went poorly.

North America Map 1775 (Click to Enlarge)

Cut to 1760, the British tipped the balance with their win at the Battle of the Restigouche, the last naval battle between France and England for possession of the North American continent — Turtle Island. 

The bittersweet British victory sparked the American War of Independence. 

For the next twenty years, the L'nu would witness and become embroiled in yet another war for these lands, their lands — first as bystanders, then as American allies, then intimidated into submission by the British Royal Navy with a show of force by way of a thirty-four gun man-of-war, encouraging L'nu compliance — finally culminating in an end to the hostilities with the 1783 Treaty of Paris. 

The peace accord held no provisions for the L'nu, Métis and First Nations impacted. None of these newcomers was Mi'kmaq — neither friends nor allies.

It was to this area some sixty years later that the newly formed Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) began exploring and mapping the newly formed United Province of Canada. Geologists in the New Brunswick Geology Branch traipsed through the rugged countryside that would become a Canadian province in 1867. 

It was on one of these expeditions that the Miguasha fossil outcrops were discovered. They, too, would transform in time to become Miguasha National Park or Parc de Miguasha, but at first, they were simply the promising sedimentary exposures on the hillside across the water —  a treasure trove of  Late Devonian fauna waiting to be discovered.

In the summer of 1842, Abraham Gesner, New Brunswick’s first Provincial Geologist, crossed the northern part of the region exploring for coal. Well, mostly looking for coal. Gesner also had a keen eye for fossils and his trip to the Gaspé Peninsula came fast on the heels of a jaunt along the rocky beaches of Chignecto Bay at the head of the Bay of Fundy and home to the standing fossil trees of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. 

Passionate about geology and chemistry, he is perhaps most famous for his invention of the process to distil the combustible hydrocarbon kerosene from coal oil — a subject on which his long walks exploring a budding Canada gave him a great deal of time to consider. We have Gesner to thank for the modern petroleum industry. He filed many patents for clever ways to distil the soft tar-like coal or bitumen still in use today.

He was skilled in a broad range of scientific disciplines — being a geologist, palaeontologist, physician, chemist, anatomist and naturalist — a brass tacks geek to his core. Gesner explored the coal exposures and fossil outcrops across the famed area that witnessed the region become part of England and not France — and no longer L'nu.

Following the Restigouche River in New Brunswick through the Dalhousie region, Gesner navigated through the estuary to reach the southern coast of the Gaspé Peninsula into what would become the southeastern coast of Quebec to get a better look at the cliffs across the water. He was the first geologist to lay eyes on the Escuminac Formation and its fossils.

In his 1843 report to the Geologic Survey, he wrote, “...I found the shore lined with a coarse conglomerate. Farther eastward the rocks are light blue sandstones and shales, containing the remains of vegetables. (...) In these sandstone and shales, I found the remains of fish and a small species of tortoise with fossil foot-marks.”

We now know that this little tortoise was the famous Bothriolepis, an antiarch placoderm fish. It was also the first formal mention of the Miguasha fauna in our scientific literature. Despite the circulation of his report, Gesner’s discovery was all but ignored — the cliffs and their fossil bounty abandoned for decades to come. Geologists like Ells, Foord and Weston, and the research of Whiteaves and Dawson, would eventually follow in Gesner's footsteps.

North America Map 1866 (Click to Enlarge)

Over the past 180 years, this Devonian site has yielded a wonderfully diverse aquatic assemblage from the Age of Fishes — five of the six fossil fish groups associated with the Devonian including exceptionally well-preserved fossil specimens of the lobe-finned fishes. 

This is exciting as it is the lobe-finned fishes — the sarcopterygians — that gave rise to the first four-legged, air-breathing terrestrial vertebrates – the tetrapods. 

Fossil specimens from Miguasha include twenty species of lower vertebrates — anaspids, osteostra-cans, placoderms, acanthodians, actinopterygians and sarcopterygians — plus a limited invertebrate assemblage, along with terrestrial plants, scorpions and millipedes.

Originally interpreted as a freshwater lacustrine environment, recent paleontological, taphonomic, sedimentological and geochemical evidence corroborates a brackish estuarine setting — and definitely not the deep waters of the sea. This is important because the species that gave rise to our land-living animals began life in shallow streams and lakes. It tells us a bit about how our dear Elpistostege watsoni liked to live — preferring to lollygag in cool river waters where seawater mixed with fresh. Not fully freshwater, but a wee bit of salinity to add flavour.  

• Photos: Elpistostege watsoni (Westoll, 1938 ), Upper Devonian (Frasnian), Escuminac formation, Parc de Miguasha, Baie des Chaleurs, Gaspé, Québec, Canada. John Fam, VanPS
• Origin of the Vertebrate Hand Illustration, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2100-8
• Tiktaalik Illustration: By Obsidian Soul - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47401797

References & further reading:

• From Water to Land: https://www.miguasha.ca/mig-en/the_first_discoveries.php
• UNESCO Miguasha National Park: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/686/
• Office of L'nu Affairs: https://novascotia.ca/abor/aboriginal-people/
• Cloutier, R., Clement, A.M., Lee, M.S.Y. et al. Elpistostege and the origin of the vertebrate hand. Nature 579, 549–554 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2100-8
• Daeschler, E. B., Shubin, N. H. & Jenkins, F. A. Jr. A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan. Nature 440, 757–763 (2006).
• Shubin, Neil. Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion History of the Human Body.
• Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03972-8

WOOLLY MAMMOTHS: MASSIVE BEASTS OF ICE AND SNOW

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.

NOOTKA: FOSSILS AND FIRST NATIONS HISTORY

Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dan Bowen searching an outcrop. Photo: John Fam

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dan Bowen, Chair of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS) did a truly splendid talk on the Fossils of Nootka Sound. With his permission, I have uploaded the talk to the ARCHEA YouTube Channel for all to enjoy. Do take a boo, he is a great presenter. Dan also graciously provided the photos you see here. The last of the photos you see here is from the August 2021 Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam, Vice-Chair, Vancouver Paleontological Society (VanPS).

Know Before You Go — Nootka Trail

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

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

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

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

WARRIOR CRABS: KU'MIS

Look how epic this little guy is! 

He is a crab — and if you asked him, the fiercest warrior that ever lived. While that may not be strictly true, crabs do have the heart of a warrior and will raise their claws, sometimes only millimetres into the air, to assert dominance over their world. 

Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the Phylum Arthropoda. 

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw of the Pacific Northwest, this brave fellow is ḵ̓u'mis — both a tasty snack and familiar to the supernatural deity Tuxw'id, a female warrior spirit. Given their natural armour and clear bravery, it is a fitting role.

They inhabit all the world's oceans, sandy beaches, many of our freshwater lakes and streams. Some few prefer to live in forests.

Crabs build their shells from highly mineralized chitin — and chitin gets around. It is the main structural component of the exoskeletons of many of our crustacean and insect friends. Shrimp, crab, and lobster all use it to build their exoskeletons.

Chitin is a polysaccharide — a large molecule made of many smaller monosaccharides or simple sugars, like glucose. 

It is handy stuff, forming crystalline nanofibrils or whiskers. Chitin is actually the second most abundant polysaccharide after cellulose. It is interesting as we usually think of these molecules in the context of their sugary context but they build many other very useful things in nature — not the least of these are the hard shells or exoskeletons of our crustacean friends.

Crabs in the Fossil Record

The earliest unambiguous crab fossils date from the Early Jurassic, with the oldest being Eocarcinus from the early Pliensbachian of Britain, which likely represents a stem-group lineage, as it lacks several key morphological features that define modern crabs. 

Most Jurassic crabs are only known from dorsal — or top half of the body — carapaces, making it difficult to determine their relationships. Crabs radiated in the Late Jurassic, corresponding with an increase in reef habitats, though they would decline at the end of the Jurassic as the result of the decline of reef ecosystems. Crabs increased in diversity through the Cretaceous and represented the dominant group of decapods by the end.

We find wonderful fossil crab specimens on Vancouver Island. The first I ever collected was at Shelter Point, then again on Hornby Island, down on the Olympic Peninsula and along Vancouver Island's west coast near Nootka Sound. They are, of course, found globally and are one of the most pleasing fossils to find and aggravating to prep of all the specimens you will ever have in your collection. Bless them.

AVES: LIVING DINOSAURS

Cassowary, Casuariiformes

Wherever you are in the world, it is likely that you know your local birds. True, you may call them des Oiseaux, pássaros or uccelli — but you'll know their common names by heart.

You will also likely know their sounds. The tweets, chirps, hoots and caws of the species living in your backyard.

Birds come in all shapes and sizes and their brethren blanket the globe. It is amazing to think that they all sprang from the same lineage given the sheer variety. 

If you picture them, we have such a variety on the planet — parrots, finches, wee hummingbirds, long-legged waterbirds, waddling penguins and showy toucans. 

But whether they are a gull, hawk, cuckoo, hornbill, potoo or albatross, they are all cousins in the warm-blooded vertebrate class Aves. The defining features of the Aves are feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. The best features, their ability to dance, bounce and sing, are not listed, but it is how I see them in the world.

These modern dinosaurs live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m (9 ft) ostrich. 

There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or "perching" birds. Birds have wings whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds.

Wings evolved from forelimbs giving birds the ability to fly

Wings, which evolved from forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. 

The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming.

Wee Feathered Theropod Dinosaurs

We now know from fossil and biological evidence that birds are a specialized subgroup of theropod dinosaurs, and more specifically, they are members of Maniraptora, a group of theropods that includes dromaeosaurs and oviraptorids, amongst others. As palaeontologists discover more theropods closely related to birds, the previously clear distinction between non-birds and birds has become a bit muddy.

Recent discoveries in the Liaoning Province of northeast China, which include many small theropod feathered dinosaurs — and some excellent arty reproductions — contribute to this ambiguity. 

Still, other fossil specimens found here shed a light on the evolution of Aves. Confuciusornis sanctus, an Early Cretaceous bird from the Yixian and Jiufotang Formations of China is the oldest known bird to have a beak.

Like modern birds, Confuciusornis had a toothless beak, but close relatives of modern birds such as Hesperornis and Ichthyornis were toothed, telling us that the loss of teeth occurred convergently in Confuciusornis and living birds.

The consensus view in contemporary palaeontology is that the flying theropods, or avialans, are the closest relatives of the deinonychosaurs, which include dromaeosaurids and troodontids.

Together, these form a group called Paraves. Some basal members of this group, such as Microraptor, have features that may have enabled them to glide or fly. 

The most basal deinonychosaurs were wee little things. This raises the possibility that the ancestor of all paravians may have been arboreal, have been able to glide, or both. Unlike Archaeopteryx and the non-avialan feathered dinosaurs, who primarily ate meat, tummy contents from recent avialan studies suggest that the first avialans were omnivores. Even more intriguing...

Avialae, which translates to bird wings, are a clade of flying dinosaurs containing the only living dinosaurs, the birds. It is usually defined as all theropod dinosaurs more closely related to modern birds — Aves — than to deinonychosaurs, though alternative definitions are occasionally bantered back and forth.

The Earliest Avialan: Archaeopteryx lithographica

Archaeopteryx, bird-like dinosaur from the Late Jurassic

Archaeopteryx lithographica, from the late Jurassic Period Solnhofen Formation of Germany, is the earliest known avialan that may have had the capability of powered flight. 

However, several older avialans are known from the Late Jurassic Tiaojishan Formation of China, dating to about 160 million years ago.

The Late Jurassic Archaeopteryx is well-known as one of the first transitional fossils to be found, and it provided support for the theory of evolution in the late 19th century. 

Archaeopteryx was the first fossil to clearly display both traditional reptilian characteristics — teeth, clawed fingers, and a long, lizard-like tail—as well as wings with flight feathers similar to those of modern birds. It is not considered a direct ancestor of birds, though it is possibly closely related to the true ancestor.

Unlikely yet true, the closest living relatives of birds are the crocodilians. Birds are descendants of the primitive avialans — whose members include Archaeopteryx — which first appeared about 160 million years ago in China.

DNA evidence tells us that modern birds — Neornithes — evolved in the Middle to Late Cretaceous, and diversified dramatically around the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 mya, which killed off the pterosaurs and all non-avian dinosaurs.

In birds, the brain, especially the telencephalon, is remarkably developed, both in relative volume and complexity. Unlike most early‐branching sauropsids, the adults of birds and other archosaurs have a well‐ossified neurocranium. In contrast to most of their reptilian relatives, but similar to what we see in mammals, bird brains fit closely to the endocranial cavity so that major external features are reflected in the endocasts. What you see on the inside is what you see on the outside.

This makes birds an excellent group for palaeoneurological investigations. The first observation of the brain in a long‐extinct bird was made in the first quarter of the 19th century. However, it was not until the 2000s and the application of modern imaging technologies that avian palaeoneurology really took off.

Understanding how the mode of life is reflected in the external morphology of the brains of birds is but one of several future directions in which avian palaeoneurological research may extend.

Although the number of fossil specimens suitable for palaeoneurological explorations is considerably smaller in birds than in mammals and will very likely remain so, the coming years will certainly witness a momentous strengthening of this rapidly growing field of research at the overlap between ornithology, palaeontology, evolutionary biology and the neurosciences.

Reference: Cau, Andrea; Brougham, Tom; Naish, Darren (2015). "The phylogenetic affinities of the bizarre Late Cretaceous Romanian theropod Balaur bondoc (Dinosauria, Maniraptora): Dromaeosaurid or flightless bird?". PeerJ. 3: e1032. doi:10.7717/peerj.1032. PMC 4476167. PMID 26157616.

Reference: Ivanov, M., Hrdlickova, S. & Gregorova, R. (2001) The Complete Encyclopedia of Fossils. Rebo Publishers, Netherlands. p. 312

SPIRRALING BEAUTY: TURRITELLA

Gastropods, or univalves, are the largest and most successful class of molluscs. They started as exclusively marine but have adapted well and now their rank spends more time in freshwater than in salty marine environments.

Many are marine, but two-thirds of all living species live in freshwater or on land. Their entry into the fossil record goes all the way back to the Cambrian.

Slugs and snails, abalones, limpets, cowries, conches, top shells, whelks, and sea slugs are all gastropods. They are the second-largest class of animals with over 60,000–75,000 known living species. The two beauties you see here are Turritella, a genus of medium-sized sea snails with an operculum, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Turritellidae. They hail from the Paris Basin and have tightly coiled shells, whose overall shape is basically that of an elongated cone. The name Turritella comes from the Latin word turritus meaning "turreted" or "towered" and the diminutive suffix -ella.

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of collecting in the Paris Basin with a fellow named Michael. I had stalked the poor man from Sunday market to Sunday market, eventually meeting up with him in the town of Gordes. He graciously shared his knowledge of the local fossil localities from the hills south of Calais to Poitiers and from Caen to the Rhine Valley, east of Saarbrücken. I deeply regret losing my notebook from that trip but cherish the fossils and memories.

The Paris Basin has many fine specimens of gastropods. These molluscs were originally sea-floor predators, though they have evolved to live happily in many other habitats. Many lines living today evolved in the Mesozoic. The first gastropods were exclusively marine and appeared in the Upper Cambrian (Chippewaella, Strepsodiscus). By the Ordovician, gastropods were a varied group present in a variety of aquatic habitats. Commonly, fossil gastropods from the rocks of the early Palaeozoic era are too poorly preserved for accurate identification. Still, the Silurian genus Poleumita contains fifteen identified species.

Most of the gastropods of the Palaeozoic belong to primitive groups, a few of which still survive today. By the Carboniferous, many of the shapes we see in living gastropods can be matched in the fossil record, but despite these similarities in appearance the majority of these older forms are not directly related to living forms. It was during the Mesozoic era that the ancestors of many of the living gastropods evolved.

In rocks of the Mesozoic era, gastropods are more common as fossils and their shells often very well preserved. While not all gastropods have shells, the ones that do fossilize more easily and consequently, we know a lot more about them. We find them in fossil beds from both freshwater and marine environments, in ancient building materials and as modern guests of our gardens.

AINOCERAS: A CUTE AS YOU PLEASE HETEROMORPH FROM VANCOUVER ISLAND

A wee baby deep chocolate Ainoceras sp. heteromorph ammonite from Vancouver Island. This adorable corkscrew-shaped ammonite is an extinct marine mollusc related to squid and octopus.  

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. These little cuties were predators who hunted in Cretaceous seas.

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. 

Not all ammonites have this whacky corkscrew design. Most are coiled and some are even shaped like massive paperclips. This one is so remarkable, so joyously perfect my internal thesaurus can’t keep up.

I will be heading back to the area where these lovelies are found in late March this year to see if I can find other associated fossils and learn more about his paleo community

SLOTHS AND BLUE GREEN ALGAE

Ever wonder why the slow moving sloth has a slightly greenish hue? Ever consider the sloth at all? Well, perhaps not. Location, location, location, is the mantra for many of us in our macro world, but it is also true for the small world of algae.

Blue green algae is a term used to describe any of a large, heterogeneous group of prokaryotic, principally photosynthetic organisms.

These little oxygenic (oxygen-producing) fellows appeared about 2,000,000,000 to 3,000,000,000 years ago and are given credit for greatly increasing the oxygen content of the atmosphere, making possible the development of aerobic (oxygen-using) organisms and some very special relationships with some of the slowest moving mammals on the planet, the sloths or Folivora.

The tribes of South America who live close to these insect and leaf-eaters, call these arboreal browsers "Ritto, Rit or Ridette, which roughly translates to variations on sleep, sleepy, munching and filthy. Not all that far off when you consider ths sloth and their lifestyle.

The sloth's body and shaggy coat, or pelage, provides a comfy habitat to two types of wee blue-green algae along with various other invertebrates. The hairs that make up the sloth's coat have grooves that help foster algal growth.

And, while Kermit the Frog says, "it's not easy being green," it couldn't be further from the truth for this slow-moving tree dweller. The blue-green algae gives the sloth a natural greenish camouflage, an arrangement that is certainly win-win.

TEYLERS OF THE NETHERLANDS

This past weekend, I stopped in to have a visit with Tina and Graham Beard in Qualicum Beach and the topic of the starfish Helianthaster came up—both the details of the find and the history of this particular specimen. 

Our visit led to the telling o the story when I was most recently asked to speak on this particular specimen. 

I was slated to do a talk at Burlington House in September 2022, and while I was enroute, Queen Elizabeth II passed away. This was both a tragic event within the United Kingdom and for the world at large.

It left those within the UK in a tizzy and me as a traveler and presenter unclear if my talk was to go on, or be respectfully be postponed.

When I landed in London, the Queen was laying in state. Queen Elizabeth upon ascending the throne in 1952 was a patron of the Linnean Society (of which I am an elected Fellow) so I wondered if we would hold a special ceremony, quietly observe her loss or just how this was going to go. In the end, I did deliver my talk but the audience was interested but noticeably somber.   

The fossil you see here shows exceptional preservation of the starfish Helianthaster preserved in minute detail in pyrite from the Devonian of Bundenbach, Germany.

Helianthaster rhenanus was first described in 1862 by Roemer, based on fossils found in the Bundenbach area in Germany, dating back to the lower Devonian. 

Helianthaster was variously attributed to Asteroidea, Ophiuroidea or to another group (Auluroidea ), but only recently this echinoderm and its close relatives (Helianthasteridae ) have been attributed with some certainty to Asteroidea (Blake, 2009). 

Other very similar starfish were the North Americans Arkonaster (Middle Devonian) and Lepidasterella ( Carboniferousmedium), the latter with 24 arms.

This animal, similar to modern starfish, had a diameter that could exceed 15 centimetres with extended arms. Helianthaster had 14 - 16 arms, elongated and thin, with an aboral surface with granular ossifications. The mouth was wide and composed of rather large oral plates; there were thorns on the adambulacrali, while the central disc was composed of small ossicles.

A study of the type specimen was examined with the use of X- rays. The result was images that seem to confirm the presence of large semicircular muscle flanges along the middle of the arms (Südkamp, ​​2011).

The second image you see here is a specimen from the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the oldest museum in the Netherlands established in 1778. 

We have a cloth merchant turned banker to thank for both the building and this specimen. And, in a way, the beginnings of nomenclature. Pieter Teyler van der Hulst left us this legacy including many of the museum's specimens and the nest egg that would allow its expansion to the glory we enjoy today. 

Pieter lived next to George Clifford III, the financier of Swedish naturalist Carlo Linnaeus (1707-1778). Pieter's funds aided George in funding Linnaneus' work. In a bit of full circle scientific poetry, it was those dollars and this work that gave us the naming system that allowed us to attach a scientific name to this very specimen through Carl's binomial nomenclature. 

In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages. Such a name is called a binomial name (which may be shortened to just "binomial"), a binomen, binominal name or a scientific name; more informally it is also historically called a Latin name. So, for this lovely specimen, Helianthaster rhenanus is this specimen's Latin name.

In his will, Pieter Teyler decided that his collection and part of his fortune should be used to create a foundation for their promotion, the Teylers Stichting (Teyler foundation). 

Teyler's legacy to the city of Haarlem was divided into two societies Teylers Eerste Genootschap (Dutch: Teyler's First Society ) or 'Godgeleerd Genootschap' ( Theological Society ), aimed at the study of religion, and the Teylers Tweede Genootschap ( Second Society ), dedicated to physics, poetry, history, drawing and numismatics.

The executors of Teyler's wishes, the first directors of Teylers Stichting, decided to establish a centre for study and education. Books, scientific instruments, drawings, fossils and minerals, would be housed under one roof. 

The concept was based on a revolutionary ideal derived from the Enlightenment: people could discover the world independently, without coercion from the church or the state. The example that guided the founders in creating the Teyler Museum was the Mouseion of classical antiquity: a "temple for the muses of the arts and sciences" which would also be a meeting place for scholars and host various collections.

This was a time when science and religion were still intermixed but beginning to divide into separate camps. The world was at war, expeditions were undertaken to secure new lands and trade routes—and the slave trade was slowly being abolished. 

In 1778, Russia controlled Alaska and would not sell to the USA, a country two years old in 1778, for another eighty-nine years in 1867. It was also the year that we lost Carl Linnaeus. He left his scientific work and his legacy of more than 1,600 books covering the literature of natural history from the 15th century to his death, a collection that would become the foundation of the Linnaeus Society, established in his name a decade later in 1788—and to which I am an elected fellow.

Here are some of the world events that happened in 1778, the year this museum was founded to give all of this a bit more context:

• January 18 – Third voyage of James Cook: Captain James Cook, with ships HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery, first views Oahu then Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands of the Pacific Ocean, which he names the Sandwich Islands.

• February 5 – South Carolina becomes the first state to ratify the Articles of Confederation. General John Cadwalader shoots and seriously wounds Major General Thomas Conway in a duel after a dispute between the two officers over Conway's continued criticism of General George Washington's leadership of the Continental Army.

• February 6 – American Revolutionary War – In Paris, the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and France, signalling official French recognition of the new republic.

• February 23 – American Revolutionary War – Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben arrives at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania and begins to train the American troops.

• March 6–October 24 – Captain Cook explores and maps the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, from Cape Foulweather (Oregon) to the Bering Strait.

• March 10 – American Revolutionary War – George Washington approves the dishonourable discharge of Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin, for "attempting to commit sodomy, with John Monhort a soldier."

• July 10 – Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain.

• July 27 – American Revolutionary War – First Battle of Ushant – British and French fleets fight to a standoff.

• August 3 – The La Scala Opera House opens in Milan, with the première of Antonio Salieri's Europa riconosciuta.

Many more things happened, of course. Folk were born, fell in love, died—and some left legacies that we still enjoy to this day. 

Photo two by Ghedoghedo, CC BY-SA 4.0.

MOON DANCERS: POETRY UNDER THE SEA

Moon Jelly Fish / Aurelia Aurita

Aurelia aurita (also called the common jellyfish, moon jellyfish, moon jelly or saucer jelly) is a widely studied species of the genus, Aurelia. 

All species in the genus are closely related, and it is difficult to identify Aurelia medusae without genetic sampling; most of what follows applies equally to all species of the genus.

The genus Aurelia is found throughout most of the world's oceans, from the tropics to as far north as latitude 70° north and as far south as 40° south. The species Aurelia aurita is found along the eastern Atlantic coast of Northern Europe and the western Atlantic coast of North America in New England and Eastern Canada. In general, Aurelia prefer the waters close to shore. It is an inshore genus that can be found in estuaries and harbours.

The genus Aurelia is found throughout most of the world's oceans, from the tropics to as far north as latitude 70° north and as far south as 40° south. The species Aurelia aurita is found along the eastern Atlantic coast of Northern Europe and the western Atlantic coast of North America in New England and Eastern Canada. These beauties are spectacular as they move through the water looking like flowing glass sculptures.