In Search of Ancient BC - Volume I

In Search of Ancient BC - Volume I by Barbara Huck, Heidi Henderson & Philip Torrens

"Once, parts of British Columbia lay on the far side of the Pacific. Once, its ancient seacoasts were inhabited by creatures on the threshold of evolution. Once it was populated by some of Canada's first peoples.

Today, B.C. is one of the world's most geographically varied places. But clues to its ancient past are everywhere, in its mountains and arid valleys, along its lakeshores and seacoasts.

For the first time, the geological, paleontological and archaeological wonders of southern B.C. are gathered in one place. With hundreds of color photographs, maps and drawings, In Search of Ancient British Columbia presents an accessible, route-oriented approach for today's time travellers, creating an indispensable guide to the forces that have shaped the spirit of the land."

Heartland Books is a Winnipeg-based publisher of history, heritage, travel and non-fiction. I look forward to Volume II covering the northern regions. - review of In Search of Ancient BC

KIBBEE LAKE

Paddling in the rain, I notice bits of mica in the water, playing in the light and the rock change here to greywacke, argillite, phyllite and schist. Past Lanezi, we continue onto Sandy Lake, where old growth cedars line the south-facing slopes to our left and grey limestone, shale and dolostone line the shore. Mottled in with the rock, we sneak up on very convincing stumps posing as large mammals. Picking up the Cariboo River again, we follow it as it flows into Babcock Lake, an area edged with Lower Cambrian limestone, shale and argillite. At the time these rocks were laid down, the Earth was seeing our earliest relatives, the first chordates entering the geologic scene.

GREEN EYED MONSTER

ANGUS EYES

ON YOUR KNEES - PTEROSAURS TOOK FLIGHT ON ALL FOURS

Pterosaurs took flight using all fours, a discovery that flies in the face of previous research on the ancient reptiles, a new study says.

Two of the giant creatures' "legs" were extremely strong wings, which when folded, created "knuckles" that allowed the animals to walk and jump (above left, the pterosaur known as Hatzegotpteryx in an artist's rendering).

The way a bird lifts off—using two legs—doesn't make sense for pterosaurs, which would have had to heave their 500 pounds (227 kilograms) airborne using only their hind legs, the study says.

Instead, the "remarkably strong" animals apparently made a leaping launch in less than a second from flat ground, with no aid from wind or ledges.

"Most people are familiar with images of pterosaurs as very skinny, almost emaciated-looking things—basically a hang glider with teeth," study author Michael B. Habib, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told National Geographic News. "They're actually built a lot more like Arnold Schwarzenegger than Urkel."

Habib compared bone strength in 20 species of modern birds and 3 species of pterosaurs to develop the new model, announced yesterday by the journal Zitteliana.

The finding is also consistent with the idea that bigger animals require more overall brawn to power their movement, Habib added.

"We put V8 engines in our biggest, heaviest cars, not V4s, like the one in my Camry."

— Story sourced from National Geographic, Christine Dell'Amore

TAKING IN THE BONES

MORNING FOG: CHUCKANUT FOSSIL SITE

LAKE WAKATIPU

FOSSIL CRINOIDS

AVIGNON: SOUTH OF FRANCE :: PARIS BASIN

MOONLIT KAYAK

ROCK CLIMBING: MURRIN

EOCENE NS#002 PLANT SITE

HIDE AND SEEK

INNER BEAUTY

JET RANGER FOSSIL FIELD TRIP

GOLDEN PEEKS AT RHODESIAN

When my little golden retriever, Meadow, was just a pup, I took her to the dog part where she played the day away with a gorgeous rhodesian ridgeback. Later that year, I let her pick a rhodesian puppy out of a litter and that is how we came to have my beautiful boy Kane. I love this shot.

DEEP BLUE: WRECK DIVING

DINOSAURS VS. CROCODILIAN UPSTARTS -- A BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL

Dinosaurs, long hailed as the rulers of the Triassic almost lost the title belt to a group of crocodilian upstarts, the crurotarsans. In a short lived battle for survival, geologically speaking, the two groups ran head to head for about thirty million years. The Crurotarsi or "cross-ankles" as they are affectionately known, are a group of archosaurs - formerly known as Pseudosuchians when paleontologist Paul Serono renamed them for their node-based clade in 1991

:: GORDES :: SOUTH OF FRANCE :: PARIS BASIN

SUNSET IN THE FIELD

IN THE FIELD

PEACEFUL SAIL

ROCKCLIMBING: SQUAMISH

HIGH-ELEVATION FOSSIL COLLECTING

2008-10-12 - British Columbia, Canada: danneggiato sito dell’Eocene (fossil site damaged) Fossil hunters run amok and the B.C. government sits idle S

Reprinted from the Vancouver Sun, Published: Friday, October 10, 2008

While my writing is referenced, I did was not contacted for the article and did not provide comment.

A fossil bed of global importance is being irreparably damaged by commercial fossil hunters operating with provincial government approval, say leading scientists.

And scientists’ letters to a series of cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats show that although the province is finally seeking someone to monitor the site, it has been aware of the concerns for almost a decade.

The operations take place under provincial regulations.

One letter likened what’s been going on to “wrapping fish in the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

The McAbee site between Kamloops and Cache Creek is a 51-million-year-old lake bed that yields exquisitely preserved fossils from the early Eocene epoch. Scientists say it holds answers critical to our present-day understanding of how plants and animals adapt to rapid climate change.

The Eocene is known for its diversity of large and exotic mammals, among them a carnivorous ungulate. The scientific value of the McAbee site, however, is its vast array of lesser-known plant, insect, fish and bird species that flourished when the world was much warmer and palms grew in what’s now Alaska.

Tree leaves, flowers and pollen fell into the water, sank into the mud along with now-extinct insect and fish species and, layer by layer over millions of years, created a stunning fossilized record of a lost world that may hold information crucial to survival in ours.

It’s the diversity of the site that permits scientists to collect large assemblages of fossil specimens preserved in vertical layers of shale — the site’s “stratigraphy” — and enables them to study their evolution over long periods of time.

The Eocene is vital for scientific study because it was in this time that the evolutionary ancestors of many modern animals, insects and plants first appeared.

But five of Canada’s leading paleontologists have written to the provincial government protesting that the stratigraphic integrity of the site is being destroyed by the use of heavy equipment in the hunt for individual specimens prized for commercial sale.

“We are writing to you to express our concern that an important British Columbia heritage site is currently being dismantled and sold to the highest bidder,” the scientists said in a March 2, 2007 letter to Charlie Wyse, the Liberal MLA for Cariboo South.

“This important fossil locality is currently under mineral claim by fossil dealers, has been extensively worked, and is being rapidly destroyed.”

The letter, one of a number going back as far as 2002, advised the province that individual fossil specimens from the McAbee site were for sale on the Internet.

The letter was signed by James Haggart, chair of the B.C. Paleontological Alliance, Rolf Mathewes of Simon Fraser University, James Basinger at the University of Saskatchewan, David Greenwood at Brandon University and Bruce Archibald, a PhD candidate at Harvard University.

Archibald, now a post-doctoral fellow at Simon Fraser University, has done extensive research on the McAbee fossils.

He wrote again on Sept. 11, 2008, this time to Stan Hagen, minister of agriculture and lands, to inform the government that he had just visited the McAbee site.

“I was absolutely shocked to see the amount of new destruction present,” Archibald wrote. “In fact, the richest beds containing the most finely preserved and most diverse fossils are now completely destroyed, or very nearly so. It is quite clear that degradation of the site has greatly accelerated since I visited it last year before the claimholders signed the current agreement with your ministry supposedly defining their appropriate stewardship of the site.”

shume@islandnet.com

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

————————————————————————————-

Additional info:

Site description: http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Sites/mcabee.htm

Scientific info: by Heidi Henderson blog

Fossil tour: http://www.dll-fossils.com/

Fossils for sale: http://www.fossilscapes.com/plants/plantfossils1.htm

Ottobre 12, 2008 - Pubblicato da Giuseppe Buono | A - Paleontologia, G - America Northern, P - Geositi, P - Paleobotanica, T - Eocene, Z - Commercio illegale | fossili, Canada, Eocene, fossils, fossilien, British Columbia, danneggiato, fossil site, damaged | Nessun Commento

Non c’è ancora nessun commento.

TEENAGE KANE

CANADIAN ROCKIES: TYAUGHTON

SALMON: RETURN TO SENDER

We are all familiar with the image of salmon returning to fresh water, to the rivers of their youth, to spawn and complete their lifecycle, in fact, it is one of the staple images of British Columbia. As adults, we bring our children to witness this cycle, rushing to the banks of our local rivers to watch as the adults, keen in their fight for reproduction and survival, struggle to complete their epic journeys against currents and predators. Arriving as they do, year upon year, season upon season, it seems to us that this is how it has been since time immemorial.

But we now have evidence that migration to the sea may be a relatively recent behaviour. Fossil beds at Driftwood Canyon, near Smithers, contain large numbers of fossil salmonid remains from the Eocene age, approximately 45 million years ago. What is interesting is that the fossil beds are filled equally with both juvenile and larger adults.

If these salmon were heading off to sea in their juvenile form and returning to spawn as adults we would expect to find an abundance of larger carcasses in the lake sediments and relatively few juveniles. Given the equal numbers, we can conclude that the salmonids of the Eocene, lived out their lifecycle as a landlocked species, the way Kokanee do today.