TETRAPODS AND THE VERTEBRATE HAND

The irresistable tetrapod Tiktaalik

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. Westroll was an interesting fellow whose 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. 

Elpistostege watsoni

As a specialist in early fish, Westoll was the perfect person to ask 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

TUSKED TITANS OF THE ARCTIC: WALRUS ᐊᐃᕕᖅ

A lazy walrus lounges on an ice floe, its massive, blubbery body shimmering under the low Arctic sun. 

With a deep, rumbling sigh, it shifts its weight and scratches an itch on its side—more out of habit than necessity. Life, for this marine titan, moves at the pace of the tides.

Odobenus rosmarus, the walrus is the only surviving member of the family Odobenidae, a once-diverse group of pinnipeds that includes extinct relatives such as Dusignathus and Pontolis. 

Fossil remains place their lineage back to the late Miocene, around 10–11 million years ago. Early odobenids first appeared in the North Pacific and were more varied than the tusked, bottom-feeding walrus we know today—some had shorter tusks or none at all, and many hunted fish rather than clams.

These ancient walruses belonged to a broader superfamily, the Pinnipedia, which also includes seals and sea lions. Genetic and fossil evidence suggests pinnipeds split from terrestrial carnivores roughly 25–30 million years ago, likely from bear-like ancestors that took to the water during the Oligocene. Odobenids evolved later, perfecting their specialization as suction feeders. 

Their powerful tongues can vacuum soft-bodied mollusks straight from their shells—a skill that defines modern walrus diets.

Today, walruses inhabit the icy Arctic and subarctic waters of the Northern Hemisphere, with two recognized subspecies: the Atlantic walrus, O. r. rosmarus, found in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, and the Pacific walrus, O. r. divergens, ranging from the Bering Sea to the Chukchi Sea. They prefer shallow continental shelf regions where bivalves abound and haul out on sea ice or rocky shores in vast, noisy colonies.

Despite their ponderous appearance, walruses are powerful swimmers and social creatures with intricate communication and hierarchy systems. Their tusks—elongated canines present in both males and females—serve for dominance displays, hauling out, and defense. 

To Arctic peoples, walruses have long been vital for food, hides, and ivory, woven into traditional lifeways and mythology.

In Inuktitut, the word for walrus is “aiviq” (ᐊᐃᕕᖅ). It’s pronounced roughly eye-vik or ay-vik, depending on the dialect. The plural form is “aiviat” (ᐊᐃᕕᐊᑦ). The walrus, aiviq, holds deep cultural and spiritual importance in Inuit communities, long valued for its meat, ivory, and hide—vital resources for survival in the Arctic.

From Miocene shores to the modern polar ice, the walrus story is one of adaptation and endurance—a lineage that has survived shifting seas and ice ages, still scratching its ancient itch beneath the northern sun.

ANCIENT ELEGANCE: UINTACRINUS SOCIALIS

There is a particular kind of quiet magic in the world, the sort that sends a small shiver of awe through you when all the elements of deep time align. 

Every so often, nature grants us a perfect moment: minerals seep gently into ancient flesh, sediments cradle a creature’s delicate form, and the slow choreography of preservation captures a life in astonishing detail. 

For me, nothing embodies that magic quite like crinoids. These elegant echinoderms—equal parts flower and animal—feel like whispers from an ancient sea, caught forever in stone.

The specimen before us is no exception. If you lean in close and let your eyes wander across its intricate geometry, you will find yourself face to face with a stunning representative of Uintacrinus socialis. 

This Upper Cretaceous beauty, hailing from the Santonian roughly 85 million years ago, was first named nearly a century and a half ago by O.C. Marsh in honour of the Uinta Mountains of Utah. 

This specimen hail from the soft chalky layers of the Smoky Hills Niobrara Formation in central Kansas—a region that once lay beneath the warm, shallow waters of the Western Interior Seaway. Here, entire colonies of Uintacrinus drifted like living chandeliers, their feathery arms extended into the sun-dappled currents.

Crinoids are the quiet dancers of the animal kingdom. Although they appear plant-like—an underwater blossom swaying gracefully in the tide—they are very much animals, part of the illustrious echinoderm clan that includes sea stars, brittle stars, and urchins. 

Imagine a lily turned sentient: a cup-shaped central body holding a mouth on its upper surface, surrounded by delicate, branching arms that sweep food particles from the water. 

And, in true echinoderm fashion, add an anus inconveniently positioned right beside the mouth. Evolution, it seems, has a sense of humour.

The anchored species, traditionally called sea lilies, rise from the seafloor on slender stalks composed of stacked calcite rings—columnals—that resemble beads fallen from some ancient necklace. In shallower waters, the stalks can be short and sturdy, but in deeper seas they may stretch a metre or more, holding the crinoid aloft like the mast of a living ship, swaying gently with each passing current.

Yet most crinoids in today’s oceans are not anchored at all. The feather stars, or comatulids, break free from their juvenile stalks and spend their adulthood drifting, crawling, or even swimming with slow, balletic strokes of their arms. 

They cling to rocks and coral with tiny curved structures called cirri—delicate as eyelashes yet strong enough to grip firmly in swirling water. These cirri also allowed many fossil crinoids to hold fast to the Cretaceous seafloor, weathering tides and storms in the vast expanse of the Western Interior Seaway.

Like all echinoderms, crinoids exhibit pentaradial symmetry: a five-fold architecture expressed in their plates, arms, and feeding grooves. The aboral, or underside, of the calyx is encased in a mosaic of calcium carbonate plates that form their internal skeleton—robust enough to fossilize beautifully. 

The top surface, the oral area, is mostly soft tissue in life, opening into five deep ambulacral grooves where tube feet once reached outward like tiny graceful fingers. Between these lie the interambulacral zones, together forming the elegant star-like pattern that both living and fossil crinoids display.

Their fossil record is ancient and abundant. Crinoids first appear in the Ordovician over 450 million years ago—unless one counts Echmatocrinus, that strange and controversial form from the Burgess Shale whose affinities still spark debate among paleontologists. 

Through the Paleozoic, crinoids flourished in such numbers that their disarticulated columnals often blanket limestone beds. In some places, these columnals form the very fabric of the rock itself, creating entire cliffs built from the remnants of ancient underwater meadows. To run your fingers along such a rock is to touch a community that lived hundreds of millions of years before humans ever drew breath.

And yet, crinoids endure. They survive today in tropical reefs, deep ocean slopes, and soft-bottomed basins, their lineage stretching unbroken from those early Paleozoic seas to the modern oceans. 

Some cling to the seafloor in twilight depths; others drift like feathered ghosts, arms unfurling in silent, rhythmic pulses. 

When a fossil like Uintacrinus socialis emerges from the chalk of Kansas or the limestone of Utah, we are granted a rare window into that vanished age. 

And for those of us who spend our days searching riverbeds, quarries, and sea cliffs for such wonders, as I am sure you do, it is for the thrill of having a satisfying split and letting the past shine through.

That, to me, is pure magic.

CHEERFUL CHICKADEES: WASHINTON'S TINY WINTER SONGBIRD

On a frosty Washington morning, when mist clings to the Douglas firs and frost paints the ferns silver, a flit of motion catches your eye—a small, round bird with a bold black cap and curious, sparkling eyes. 

It lands on a branch covered in ice crystals, flicks its tail, and calls out its name: chick-a-dee-dee-dee! 

Few sounds are as heartening in the Northwest woods as the song of the chickadee, a reminder that even in the quiet cold of winter, life hums along in cheerful defiance.

Chickadees are some of the most beloved birds in Washington State. Two species are especially common: the Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus), found in lowland forests, parks, and backyards, and the Chestnut-backed Chickadee (Poecile rufescens), a fluffier cousin that prefers the damp coniferous forests of the coast and Cascades. Both species are year-round residents—tiny nonmigratory survivors who somehow endure the state’s wet winters and brief, brilliant summers.

Despite weighing less than a dozen paperclips, chickadees are bold, curious, and surprisingly fearless. Birdwatchers often find them among the first to visit feeders, snatching a seed and darting off to store it for later. They can remember the locations of hundreds, even thousands, of hidden food caches—an astonishing feat of memory for such a small creature.

Their name, “chickadee,” comes from their signature call, which varies in tone and number of “dees” depending on what’s happening. A few soft notes mean “all is well,” while a flurry of dee-dee-dees can signal alarm. The more “dees,” the greater the threat—almost like a feathery Morse code. Researchers have discovered that chickadees use an intricate communication system that rivals those of parrots or crows in complexity.

Chickadees thrive in Washington because of their incredible adaptability. They’re found from the Olympic Peninsula’s moss-draped rainforests to the dry ponderosa pine country east of the Cascades. In winter, they fluff their feathers to trap heat and can even lower their body temperature at night to conserve energy—a form of regulated hypothermia called torpor.

They feed on insects, seeds, and berries, often gleaning tiny larvae from bark crevices or pecking open fir cones for seeds. In summer, they shift toward a high-protein diet of caterpillars and spiders, feeding their chicks a steady stream of wriggling meals.

Each spring, chickadees begin their courtship with soft calls and playful chases through the trees. They’re cavity nesters, meaning they prefer to raise their young in holes—often old woodpecker nests or natural tree cavities. Sometimes they’ll even excavate a soft-rotted snag themselves, a remarkable feat for such a small bird.

Once a site is chosen, the female lines the nest with moss, fur, and feathers, creating a cozy chamber for her eggs. Typically, she lays 6–8 small white eggs, which she incubates for about two weeks. Both parents take part in feeding the chicks, bringing in insects almost constantly until the young fledge and venture into the world.

In Washington, chickadees are more than just a common backyard bird—they’re a symbol of resilience and cheer. Their constant movement and lively chatter seem to bring warmth even to the dampest winter days. Many Washingtonians hang feeders of black oil sunflower seeds or suet to attract these tiny visitors, rewarding them with a flurry of acrobatics and music.

If you’re out hiking in Mount Rainier National Park or walking through Seattle’s Green Lake Park, listen for that bright, whistled fee-bee or the classic chick-a-dee-dee-dee. You may find a black-capped chickadee tilting its head curiously at you from a low branch, unbothered by your presence.

Chickadees, like all modern songbirds, trace their lineage deep into the fossil record—back to the Miocene, around 23 to 5 million years ago, when the ancestors of the family Paridae (which includes chickadees, titmice, and tits) first appeared in Europe and Asia. 

These early perching birds evolved from small, insect-eating passerines that diversified rapidly after the extinction of the dinosaurs, filling the forests of the world with song. Fossil evidence from sites in Europe, such as the famed Miocene deposits of Germany, shows small tit-like birds already possessing the short, stout bills and agile feet that characterize today’s chickadees. 

Over time, these adaptable birds spread across the Northern Hemisphere, eventually colonizing North America through Beringia during cooler Pleistocene glacial periods. The Washington State chickadees we see today—bold, intelligent, and winter-hardy—carry within them the ancient legacy of these pioneering songbirds that once flitted through prehistoric forests millions of years ago.

In the heart of Washington’s wild landscapes—beneath towering cedars, beside mountain streams, or even outside your kitchen window—the chickadee sings. Unfazed by rain or snow, this tiny bird embodies the wild spirit of the Pacific Northwest: curious, enduring, and always full of life.

ANCIENT AMBUSH KILLER: MACHAIRODUS

Saber-Toothed Cat, Machairodus aphanistus

The skull before you lies cradled in a glass case at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain.

This museum—one of my most cherished anywhere in the world—houses extraordinary treasures in the heart of a city I adore.

Even at a distance, the skull seems almost unreal, its sweeping lines and lethal symmetry more like an artifact of myth than a product of natural selection.

The upper canines of Machairodus aphanistus sweep downward in a deadly curve, their bases thick and reinforced, their blades tapering into elegant, murderous crescents. 

Grooves along their sides lighten the teeth without robbing them of strength, an evolutionary compromise that allowed this ancient predator to deliver precise, slicing blows. The zygomatic arches flare outward with commanding confidence, a testament to the enormous jaw muscles that once powered the bite. Even the wide nasal opening hints at a creature ruled by scent, finely attuned to the faintest whispers of prey on a warm Miocene wind.

This skull—stripped of flesh, muscle, and fur—remains a vivid record of a predator that walked the Earth between nine and five million years ago, long before the saber-toothed icons of the Americas made their mark. 

Machairodus aphanistus lived in the shifting landscapes of the Late Miocene, a time when Europe and western Asia were giving way to broader grasslands and open woodlands. Forest canopies receded. Herds grew larger and faster. Predators had to adapt or perish, and Machairodus responded with a design both beautiful and deadly.

Unlike its more famous descendant, Smilodon, with its compact body and powerful forelimbs, Machairodus moved with the grace of a panther. It was long-limbed and athletic, relying on bursts of speed and stealth to launch an ambush. But its skull tells a more nuanced story—one of tension between speed and specialization. The tall sagittal crest reveals a powerhouse of jaw muscles anchoring deep into the bone. 

The forward-facing orbits provide the stereoscopic vision needed to track prey with extraordinary accuracy. The sheer length of the canines required a jaw capable of opening nearly ninety degrees, a gape far wider than that of any modern cat, allowing those great blades to descend unobstructed into vulnerable regions like the throat.

You will be relieved to hear that our ancestors did not hunt and were not hunted by this impressive predator. Machairodus aphanistus went extinct in the Late Miocene, roughly 5–9 million years ago.

The earliest members of the human lineage (Homo) did not appear until about 2.8 million years ago, in the early Pleistocene. Even our more ancient relatives—Australopithecines—don’t show up until 4–4.5 million years ago.

So there is a gap of millions of years between the disappearance of Machairodus and the emergence of anything that could be considered human or human-adjacent. For that, I think we can all breath a collective sigh.

Still, others were alive on the plains that were their hunting grounds. Both hunters and prey.

In the warm, open savannas of the Miocene, the world of Machairodus was alive with competition. Packs of early hyenas honed their bone-crushing skills. Bear-dogs patrolled the river valleys. Other machairodonts—kin, rivals, or both—shared the same hunting grounds. 

The herbivores were just as diverse: early horses galloped across the plains in tight herds, while rhinocerotids, camelids, and horned antelope moved in cautious groups, ever aware of shadows that shifted in the tall grass. To survive in this dynamic ecosystem, Machairodus embraced an ambush strategy refined over countless generations. It would stalk silently, using shrubs, boulders, or dim forest edges for cover. 

When the distance closed, it lunged with explosive force, using its muscular forelimbs to pin or destabilize its prey before delivering a swift, slicing bite to the neck. Death came quickly—less by crushing force and more by catastrophic blood loss.

There is a sense, looking at its skull that you are seeing an evolutionary idea mid-transformation.

Machairodus aphanistus stands at a pivotal moment in the story of the saber-toothed cats. Its body remained agile and panther-like, but its cranial features were edging ever closer to the extreme adaptations that would define later giants like Homotherium and Smilodon. It represents a crucial chapter in which nature was experimenting, refining, and pushing the boundaries of what a predator could become.

The skull contains all of this history within its bone: the open grasslands, the pounding hooves of prey, the quiet tension of ambush, and the relentless arms race that shaped predator and prey alike. 

In its silence, it speaks. It tells of a world both familiar and wild, a world where the line between beauty and brutality was sharpened to a sabre’s edge.

ICELAND'S BLACK SAND BEACH

Reynisfjara, Iceland's Black Sand Beach

Imagine a beach covered with impossibly smooth black stones. In site of the shore, stand tall black basalt sentinels and a cliff of basalt behind you. 

This dreamlike setting is Iceland’s famed black-sand shores. Wind, rain, puffins and surf—a bucket-list moment. 

The beach—Reynisfjara, a wind-scoured sweep on the island’s southern edge—unfurls beneath a sky bruised with storm light and salted mist. 

Each wave rushes in with a roar that rolls through your ribs. When the water drains back, it draws away over sand so dark it behaves like a mirror, reflecting the cloud-washed sky in long silver ribbons.

Iceland sits astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a tectonic boundary where the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart at a geological snail’s pace—an inch or two each year. 

Rising beneath this rift is a mantle plume, a column of hot rock that feeds Iceland’s remarkable volcanism. Eruptions here are not rare; they are a defining rhythm of life.

When lava from the island’s volcanoes meets the frigid North Atlantic, it shatters almost instantly. 

Sea Stacks, Reynisfjara, Iceland

Thermal shock fractures the molten rock into fine, glassy fragments—tiny shards of basalt, magnetite-rich minerals, and volcanic glass called tachylite. 

Over centuries, these microscopic pieces are tumbled smooth by tide and storm, accumulating into endless black expanses that gleam like obsidian under low Arctic sun.

Just above the surf line rises a natural marvel so striking it feels engineered: a vast wall of columnar basalt, known as Hálsanefshellir. 

At first glance it looks like an organ pipe gallery fit for a storm god. In truth, it is the architecture of cooling lava. Even with the inclement weather, it was being fully explored by waves of tourists. 

When a thick basaltic flow slowly cools, it contracts and fractures along geometric planes. The result is a forest of hexagonal pillars—mathematical, precise, and impossibly ordered for something born of chaos. 

The Cave at Reynisfjara, Iceland

These columns stack and curve like ribs along the cliff face, forming a cavern whose acoustics mimic a cathedral. 

The cave, carved by relentless Atlantic weathering, feels ancient yet alive. Each winter storm pries loose boulders from the upper wall; each summer’s calm polishes the stones below.

The sound inside the cave is a chorus: wind whistling through basalt corridors, waves booming like drums, and the occasional cry of seabirds nesting along the ledges. 

Even the light behaves differently here—broken and refracted into soft geometric shadows.

Offshore stand Reynisdrangar, three jagged sea stacks rising like dark sentinels from the foam. I risked getting close to them to feel the incredible power of the surf, but also kept an eye on it as I had arrived on a rising tide.

The scene was moody and dreamlike. The silhouettes shift with the tide and light—sometimes harsh and angular, sometimes softened into mythic silhouettes. Legend says they were once trolls turned to stone by the rising sun. Geology tells a different story.

Reynisdrangar are the remnants of an ancient volcanic plug—stubborn harder rock that resisted erosion long after surrounding cliffs surrendered to the sea. As waves undercut the basalt headland, fractures widened into arches, arches collapsed into towers, and the towers now endure as lonely paragons of erosion’s slow sculpting hand.

Their basalt cores are layered with volcanic ash and pillow lavas, hinting at a prehistoric eruption beneath ice or water. 

Seabirds—guillemots, kittiwakes, and Atlantic puffins—wheel around them in summer, decorating their cliffs with life and movement. I was sad to miss the puffins, but I will return to these shores again in the Spring. 

Reynisfjara is beautiful, but it is also powerful—and unpredictable. Sneaker waves, born from distant storms off Antarctica, surge higher than expected, racing up the sand with startling speed. 

They are a reminder that this coast is shaped by forces vast and ongoing: plate tectonics, glacial history, volcanic fire, and a restless ocean with no memory of the day before.

This is Iceland at its most iconic: stark, sculptural, and alive. It delivered all the feels I was looking for. It also delivered some wonderful palm-sized souvenirs that were inspected with interest as I moved through Customs on the way home.

URSUS CURIOUS: TLA'YI

A young Black Bear cub, Ursus americanus, tip-toes toward a frisky (and very startled) Striped Skunk, Mephitis mephitis — two wonderfully charismatic neighbours here in southern British Columbia.

Skunks, despite their reputation as the great olfactory villains of the mammal world, are actually closer to Old World stink badgers than to true polecats. 

Their infamous spray comes from paired anal scent glands capable of delivering a sulphur-rich chemical cocktail with uncanny accuracy — up to three metres, cross-wind. 

A single blast contains thiols so potent that predators learn, very quickly, that curiosity is overrated. Well… most predators. This wee bear clearly didn’t get the memo.

Black Bear cubs are, by nature, little bundles of kinetic joy and overwhelming inquisitiveness. Born in mid-winter, blind and tiny (weighing little more than a can of soup), they spend their first months cozied up in the den. 

By spring, though? Trouble. Pure, adorable trouble. Cubs stay with their mothers for about two years, learning every essential skill — how to climb, what to eat, what not to poke — but sometimes a particularly irresistible mystery will lure one a few metres away for a solo investigation.

Skunks, meanwhile, are far more than their signature scent. They’re accomplished insectivores with surprisingly strong forelimbs, adapted for rooting out beetle larvae, grubs, and other soil-dwelling goodies. 

They’re also bold. A skunk will usually stomp its feet, click its teeth, and arch its tail in a dramatic “Don’t make me do it” warning display. 

And yet — miracle of miracles — nobody got skunked. A karmic win for everyone involved.

This charming moment is also a reminder of the rich biodiversity we’re blessed with on the rugged west coast of British Columbia, where coastal rainforests shelter everything from salmon-loving black bears to nocturnal, grub-snuffling skunks.

Bears and skunks also have deep, fascinating roots in the fossil record. The lineage leading to modern skunks (Mephitidae) first appears in the Oligocene, roughly 30–32 million years ago, with early forms like Promephitis showing many of the skeletal hallmarks — and likely the scent-gland superpowers — of their modern cousins. 

Bears (Ursidae), meanwhile, trace their ancestry back even further. Their earliest known relatives emerge in the late Eocene, around 38 million years ago, with small, doglike proto-bears such as Parictis and later the hemicyonids, sometimes called “dog-bears,” bridging the evolutionary steps toward the true bears we know today. 

By the Miocene, both families were well established across North America, sharing ancient forests and floodplains just as their modern descendants do today — though hopefully with just as few skunk-related mishaps.

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, this playful black bear is t̕ła'yi — a name that captures both its spirit and its place within these lands. 

A perfect word for a perfect little explorer with an arguably questionable sense of danger.

HOLCOPHYLLOCERAS: A JEWEL OF JURASSIC SEAS

What is most wonderful about natural science is that every fossil—every spiral, ridge, and suture—opens a window onto a vanished world. 

Take, for instance, this tremendously robust, intricately sutured ammonite: Holcophylloceras mediterraneum (Neumayr, 1871). Collected from Late Jurassic (Oxfordian) deposits near Sokoja, Madagascar, it is a marvel of paleontological sculpture, a testament to evolutionary experimentation that thrived in the tropical Tethyan seas some 160 million years ago.

Madagascar has long been recognized as a treasure trove of beautifully preserved fossils. From its Cretaceous dinosaurs to its Triassic amphibians and its extraordinary Jurassic ammonites, the island offers a richness few regions can rival. 

The spiraled shell of Holcophylloceras mediterraneum is no exception—its ornate sutures and lustrous preservation hint at a creature exquisitely adapted to the warm, shallow continental shelf of Gondwana’s eastern margin.

Like all ammonites, Holcophylloceras built its shell in a series of chambers divided by walls known as septa. These septa, when intersecting the outer shell, formed the elaborate suture patterns that make collectors swoon—tangled, fractal-like lines that resemble botanical tracings or rivers on an ancient map.

Running through each chamber was the siphuncle, a biological marvel that allowed the ammonite to adjust the gas and fluid content inside its shell. In effect, ammonites carried a set of built-in ballast tanks, enabling them to rise and sink through the water column almost effortlessly. Their final and largest chamber—the body chamber—housed the soft tissues, including the tentacles, eyes, and muscular arms.

Picture, if you will, a squid or octopus, then surround it with a coiled, beautifully ribbed shell. Now place it in a warm tropical sea filled with predators and prey, reefs and drifting plankton, and a ton upon ton of water pressing down from above. That was the world Holcophylloceras mastered.

The Oxfordian oceans surrounding Madagascar were not quiet waters. They were alive—thrumming with movement, colour, and competition. The ammonite’s elegant spiral belies the reality of its bustling neighbourhood. Some of the many animals that would have swum, crawled, hunted, or drifted around Holcophylloceras mediterraneum include:

Marine Reptiles

• Plesiosaurs – long-necked Cryptoclidus–like forms gliding between shoals of fish.
• Ichthyosaurs – such as Ophthalmosaurus, sleek torpedo-shaped hunters with dinner-plate eyes built for dim, deeper waters.
• Pliosaurs – apex predators like Liopleurodon, whose cavernous jaws could swallow a human whole.

Other Cephalopods

Belemnites – dart-shaped squid-relatives such as Hibolithes, flickering through the water column like living arrows.

Other ammonite genera sharing these seas:

• Perisphinctes
• Asaphoceras
• Physodoceras
• Aspidoceras
• Glochiceras

Each species filled its own ecological niche, from fast-swimming pursuit hunters to slow-drifting plankton feeders.

Fishes and Sharks

• Hybodont sharks – including Hybodus and Asteracanthus, equipped with crushing teeth for shelled prey and formidable dorsal spines.
• Teleost fishes – early ray-finned fishes beginning to diversify.
• Coelacanths – ancient lobe-finned holdovers patrolling calmer waters.

Invertebrates

• Bivalves – oysters, rudists, and inoceramids carpeting the shallow seafloor.
• Gastropods – from turreted turritellids to broad-shelled neritids.
• Crustaceans – shrimp, lobsters, and small crabs scraping algae from reef structures.
• Sea urchins and echinoids – spiny architects of sandy burrows.

Reefs & Drifting Life

• Sponges and corals creating pocket reefs in warm carbonate-rich environments.
• Planktonic foraminifera and radiolarians – the drifting micro-architecture of the Jurassic sea, powering food webs from below.

Ammonites like Holcophylloceras thrived in these diverse ecosystems by filling a mid-level trophic niche. They were both predator and prey—nimble enough to hunt small fish and crustaceans, yet vulnerable to larger hunters. Their greatest evolutionary advantage was their ability to regulate buoyancy, adjusting depth as easily as a modern submarine.

But their most beautiful legacy remains their shells. In death, they fell to the seafloor, where their chambers filled with sediment, minerals, and eventually time itself. 

Today, polished by erosion or revealed in limestone, they offer a perfect blend of geometry, biology, and ancient artistry.

MASSIVE ICHTHYOSAUR VERTEBRAE FROM NEVADA

The massive marine reptile vertebra you see here—broad, five-sided, drum-shaped, and heavy enough to require two hands to lift—once belonged to an ichthyosaur, one of the most impressive lineages of marine reptiles ever to patrol Earth’s oceans. 

This particular fossil hails from Berlin–Ichthyosaur State Park in central Nevada, a high desert landscape where sagebrush now whispers over ground that was once submerged beneath a warm, tropical Triassic sea.

During the Late Triassic, roughly 217 million years ago, this region lay along the western margin of the supercontinent Pangaea. 

Shallow, nutrient-rich waters supported a thriving marine ecosystem dominated by ammonites, early fish, and  ichthyosaurs.

Today, the Berlin–Ichthyosaur site is the richest concentration of large ichthyosaur fossils in North America. 

More than 37 articulated or semi-articulated skeletons have been excavated from the Luning Formation, a thick sequence of limestone and shaly carbonates that records the rise and fall of this ancient seaway. 

These rocks formed from fine carbonate mud and shell debris that settled on the sea floor, gradually entombing the bodies of these marine giants under quiet, low-oxygen conditions ideal for fossil preservation.

The site’s fossil beds preserve something even more scientifically tantalizing: multiple large individuals clustered together in a single stratigraphic horizon. 

Whether these accumulations represent mass strandings, predator trap dynamics, toxic algal events, or a natural death assemblage remains debated.

Photo Credit: The talented hand model supporting this magnificent beast is Betty Franklin. 

What you don’t see in the photo are the enormous grins we’re both wearing as we marvel over this beauty—hers because she gets to hold it, and mine because I get to capture the moment. 

Thank you, Berlin-Ichthyosaur!

WHEN GORGONS REIGNED SUPREME

Step back into the deep Paleozoic—an era that began some 540 million years ago with oceans bustling with trilobites, early fish, and soft-bodied wonders, while the continents themselves hosted little more than humble mats of mosses and fungi. Life’s great drama was still mostly underwater.

Fast-forward 240 million years, and the evolutionary landscape had transformed dramatically. 

Vertebrates had conquered the land, ecosystems had diversified, and Earth’s surface teemed with reptilian innovators, amphibians the size of crocodiles, and the early ancestors of mammals. Among these emerging terrestrial titans strode the Gorgonopsians, or “Gorgons”—ferocious sabre-toothed therapsids that dominated the Middle to Late Permian, from about 265 to 252 million years ago.

These were no sluggish proto-reptiles. Gorgons were highly specialized predators, boasting elongated canine teeth worthy of any future saber-toothed cat, powerful jaws, and sleek, muscular bodies built for pursuit. Their anatomy blended the primitive and the prophetic: reptile-like postures paired with early mammalian traits such as differentiated teeth and strong jaw musculature. 

Their clawed limbs, keen forward-facing eyes, and cutting-edge predatory adaptations placed them firmly at the top of the Permian food chain. In a world long before dinosaurs, they were the undisputed apex hunters.

My own fascination with these remarkable creatures was ignited by Gorgons, Peter Ward’s wonderfully wry and insightful dive into the ancient landscapes of South Africa. Ward’s vivid tales of fieldwork in the blistering, bone-dry vastness of the Karoo Basin—ancestral home of the Gorgons—captured both the hardships and the sheer exhilaration of unearthing deep time. 

His descriptions of sunburn and scientific revelations in that arid world made me laugh more than once. It is a highly enjoyable read.

The Great Karoo itself is a geological and paleontological marvel. This enormous, semi-arid expanse formed within a vast inland basin roughly 320 million years ago, at a time when the part of Gondwana destined to become Africa lay draped across the South Pole. 

Layer upon layer of sedimentary rock accumulated as glaciers advanced and retreated, rivers meandered, lakes dried, and ecosystems rose and fell. Today, those layers read like a grand evolutionary chronicle, preserving a world populated by beaked herbivores, hulking amphibians, and the charismatic, toothy Gorgonopsians.

This was a pivotal chapter in Earth’s history—just before the catastrophic Permian-Triassic extinction swept away nearly 90% of life. Yet in the twilight of the Permian, before that great dying, the Karoo thrived with innovation and ecological complexity. It was a world where the early steps toward warm-bloodedness were being taken, where synapsids (our own deep ancestors) were experimenting with new forms, and where the Gorgons reigned supreme.

SEMENOVITES OF THE CASPIAN RIM: CRETACEOUS AMMONITES OF KAZAKHSTAN

This tasty block of Semenovites (Anahoplites) cf. michalskii hails from Cretaceous, Albian deposits that outcrop on the Tupqaraghan — Mangyshlak Peninsula, a stark and beautiful finger of land jutting into the eastern Caspian Sea in western Kazakhstan. 

The ammonites you see here are housed in the collection of the deeply awesome Emil Black. 

Their ancient provenance lies in rocks laid down some 105–110 million years ago, a time when warm epeiric seas flooded much of Central Asia and the ancestors of these coiled cephalopods thrived in shelf environments rich in plankton and marine life.

Present-day Kazakhstan is itself a geological palimpsest, a place made from multiple micro-continental blocks that were rifted apart during the Cambrian, later sutured back together, then pressed against the southern margin of Siberia before drifting to where we find them today. 

The Mangyshlak block preserves a record of these shifting tectonic identities, its plateaus and scarps reading like the torn edges of continents long departed.

The Mangyshlak (Mangghyshlaq) Peninsula is a land of structure and emptiness—high, wind-planed plateaus abruptly broken by escarpments, dry valleys, and shallow basins bleached white with salt. 

To the west lies the Caspian Sea; to the northeast the marshy Buzachi Peninsula, its wet depressions feeding migratory birds and a surprising profusion of reeds. Just north, the Tyuleniy Archipelago—a scattering of low islands—hints at the shallow bathymetry and shifting sediment loads that dominate this coastline.

Field workers on Mangyshlak often describe the region by its broad horizontality. The sky feels enormous, unbroken, a pale arch stretching over the tawny plateaus. The ground underfoot is firm but dusty, composed of compacted sandy limestones and weathered marl that break into familiar, fossil-bearing blocks. The climate is dry, the winds persistent, and visibility often perfect—ideal for spotting promising outcrops from a great distance.

Kazakhstan as a whole is a nation shaped by contrasts. Lowlands form fully one-third of its landmass. Hilly plateaus and plains account for nearly half. Low mountainous regions rise across the eastern and southern margins, making up roughly one-fifth of the terrain.

This spacious geography culminates at Mount Khan-Tengri (22,949 ft / 6,995 m) in the Tien Shan range, a crystalline sentinel marking the border between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and China. These far-off mountains are invisible from Mangyshlak, but their presence is felt in the broad regional tectonic architecture.

 
The Western Lowlands and the Caspian Depression

The Tupqaraghan Peninsula lies within the influence of the Caspian Depression, one of the lowest terrestrial points on Earth. At its deepest, the Depression reaches 95 feet below modern sea level, a phenomenon caused by both tectonic subsidence and the unusual hydrology of the endorheic Caspian Basin.

To the south, the land rises gradually into the Ustyurt Plateau, an immense chalk and limestone table marked by wind-sculpted buttes and long, eroded escarpments. The Tupqaraghan Peninsula itself is cut from these same sedimentary sequences—Miocene, Paleogene, and Mesozoic strata cropping out in irregular terraces that lure geologists and paleontologists alike.

This is a region where erosional processes are laid bare. Minimal vegetation allows exposures to remain clean and highly visible; many slopes are studded with ammonites, inoceramid bivalves, belemnite rostra, and the fragmentary remains of marine reptiles and pterosaurs. Expeditions here frequently report layers rich in small, well-preserved invertebrate fossils, their delicate sutures and ornamentation astonishingly intact.

 
Deserts, Uplands, and Salt-Lake Basins

Much of Kazakhstan is dominated by arid and semi-arid environments, and the Mangyshlak Peninsula is no exception. To the east and southeast of the region lie the great sand deserts that define Central Asia:

• Greater Barsuki Desert
• Aral Karakum Desert
• Betpaqdala Desert
• Muyunkum and Kyzylkum Deserts

These swaths of wind-polished grains advance and retreat across broad flats and shallow depressions. The vegetation here—shrubs, saxaul, and salt-tolerant herbs—is sparse, drawing life from subterranean groundwater or ephemeral spring melt.

In central Kazakhstan, salt-lake depressions punctuate the uplands. These basins often shimmer under the sun, their surfaces coated in chalky halite crusts that record cycles of evaporation stretching back millennia.

To the north and east the land lifts again, rising into ridges and massifs: the Ulutau Mountains, the Chingiz-Tau Range, and the Altai complex, which sends three great ridges reaching into Kazakhstan. Farther south, the Tarbagatay Range and the Dzungarian Alatau introduce still more rugged topography before the landscape resolves again into plains around Lake Balkhash.
Paleontological Richness of the Region

Kazakhstan is famed for more than its ammonites. Dinosaurian bones, trackways, and scattered pterosaur remains punctuate Mesozoic and Paleogene localities across the nation. The Mangyshlak region in particular has yielded:

• Albian ammonites
• Cretaceous bivalves
• Marine reptile fragments
• Occasional vertebrate traces

These Semenovites come from a fossiliferous belt once submerged under a warm, shallow sea—a world unfurled in silt and light where these cephalopods thrived.

Paleo-coordinates: 44° 35′ 46″ N, 51° 52′ 53″ E.

HAIDA GWAII: MISTY SHORES AND DAPPLED LIGHT

Misty shores, moss-covered forests, dappled light, and the smell of salt air—these are my memories of Haida Gwaii, a land where ancient stories are written in stone.

Formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, the archipelago of Haida Gwaii lies at the far western edge of Canada, where the Pacific Ocean meets the continental shelf. 

These islands—steeped in the rich culture of the Haida Nation—are not only a cultural treasure but a geologic and paleontological wonderland.

Geologically, Haida Gwaii is part of Wrangellia, an exotic tectonostratigraphic terrane that also includes parts of Vancouver Island, western British Columbia, and Alaska. The region's complex geological history spans hundreds of millions of years and includes volcanic arcs, seafloor spreading, and the accretion of entire landmasses.

The Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) has long been fascinated with these remote islands. 

Their geologists and paleontologists have led numerous expeditions over the past century, documenting the diverse sedimentary formations and fossiliferous beds. 

Much of the foundation for this work was laid by Joseph Frederick Whiteaves, the GSC’s chief paleontologist in Ottawa during the late 19th century.

In 1876, Whiteaves published a pioneering paper on the Jurassic and Cretaceous faunas of Skidegate Inlet. This work firmly established the paleontological significance of the archipelago and cemented Whiteaves’ reputation as a global authority in the field. His paper, "On the Fossils of the Cretaceous Rocks of British Columbia" (GSC Report of Progress for 1876–77), remains a key early reference for West Coast palaeontology.

Later, Whiteaves would go on to describe Anomalocaris canadensis from the Burgess Shale—an “unlike other shrimp” fossil that would later be recognized as one of the most extraordinary creatures of the Cambrian explosion.

Whiteaves' early work on the fossil faunas of Haida Gwaii, particularly in the Haida Formation, created a foundation for generations of researchers to follow.

One of our most memorable fossil field trips was to the Cretaceous exposures of Lina Island, part of the Haida Formation. We considered it one of our “trips of a lifetime.” 

With great sandstone beach exposures and fossil-rich outcrops dating from the Albian to Cenomanian, Lina Island offered both scientific riches and stunning natural beauty.

Haida Fossil Fauna

Our expedition was supported and organized by John Fam, Vice Chair of the Vancouver Paleontological Society, and Dan Bowen, Chair of the British Columbia Paleontological Alliance and the Vancouver Island Paleontological Society. 

Their dedication to fostering collaborative research and building relationships with local Haida communities was key. 

We were warmly welcomed, and field trips to fossil sites were arranged in partnership with community members and cultural stewards.

The Haida Formation yielded beautifully preserved specimens embedded both in bedding planes and in concretions—hard, rounded nodules that often house exceptionally preserved fossils. 

Collecting in the mists along the foreshore, our finds included:

• Douvilleiceras spiniferum
• Brewericeras hulenense
• Cleoniceras perezianum
• Fossil cycads, evidence of rich Cretaceous plant life

These fossils offered a rare glimpse into an ancient marine ecosystem that once teemed with life. Douvilleiceras, a spiny ammonite, is particularly striking. 

Douvilleiceras spiniferum, Haida Gwaii

This genus, first identified by Whiteaves from Haida Gwaii, ranges from the Middle to Late Cretaceous and has been found across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.  

The Haida specimens, from the early to mid-Albian, to my eye are the most beautiful—and beautifully preserved.

  Douvilleiceras is one of my favourite ammonites of all time and I was blessed to find several good examples of that species from our expeditions to these fossil-rich outcrops.

All of the fossils I collected from Haida Gwaii have been skillfully prepped and donated to the Haida Gwaii Museum in Skidegate, British Columbia. 

It is a privilege to contribute in a small way to the scientific and cultural understanding of these extraordinary islands.

References and Further Reading:

Whiteaves, J.F. (1876). On the Fossils of the Cretaceous Rocks of British Columbia. Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress.

Jeletzky, J.A. (1970). Paleontology of the Cretaceous rocks of Haida Gwaii. Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 175.

Haggart, J.W. (1991). New Albian (Early Cretaceous) ammonites from Haida Gwaii. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 28(1), 45–56.

Haggart, J.W. & Smith, P.L. (1993). Paleontology and stratigraphy of the Cretaceous Queen Charlotte Group. Geological Survey of Canada Paper 93-1A.

Carter, E.S., Haggart, J.W., & Mustard, P.S. (1988). Early Cretaceous radiolarians from Haida Gwaii and implications for tectonic setting. Micropaleontology, 34(1), 1–14.

MOSASAURS: LORDS OF OUR CRETACEOUS SEAS

A Mosasaur Snatches a Tasty Bite

Slip beneath the surface of a Late Cretaceous ocean—if you dare—and you enter the domain of one of Earth’s most spectacular marine predators: the mosasaur. 

Long before whales ruled the deep, these muscular, paddle-limbed lizards patrolled warm inland seas with the confidence of creatures that knew nothing could challenge them for long.

Imagine a body built like a torpedo, jaws hinged like a trap, and teeth designed for the dual purposes of slicing and holding. Some species stretched over 15 metres long—longer than a city bus—yet they moved with the agility of oversized crocodiles on turbo mode. 

With a powerful tail fin beating side to side, they could lunge forward in explosive bursts, swallowing ammonites whole or ambushing unsuspecting sharks. Yes—sharks were on their menu.

Scientifically, mosasaurs are a wonderful paradox. They were reptiles—close cousins of modern monitor lizards—but they evolved flippers, streamlined skulls, and even tail flukes remarkably similar to those of whales and ichthyosaurs. Convergent evolution at its flashy finest.

Mosasaurs hunted in our Cretaceous Seas

Their fossils also tell a tale of planetary drama. The chalky cliffs of Europe, the badlands of Morocco, the ancient seaways of Kansas—all hold the remains of these sea dragons. 

Every jawbone and vertebra is a relic from a vanished ocean that once split North America in two.

Along the rugged shores of Vancouver Island, mosasaurs left their mark as well. 

In the Nanaimo Group—marine deposits laid down in the twilight of the Cretaceous—researchers have uncovered beautifully preserved remains that once cruised the ancient Pacific coastline. 

Species recorded from these rocks include Tylosaurus pembinensis, Plioplatecarpus marshii, Mosasaurus hoffmanni, Clidastes liodontus, and the smaller but no less impressive Phosphorosaurus ponpetelegans. 

These fossils, often found in shale and sandstone, offer a rare West Coast window into the last great age of marine reptiles.

And yet, their spectacular reign was brief. When the asteroid struck 66 million years ago, the seas dimmed, the food chains collapsed, and even these titans couldn’t outswim extinction.

But in stone, they still roar. Their skeletons—sleek, predatory, impossibly elegant—remind us that Earth’s oceans were once ruled by lizards the size of whales… and that nature occasionally writes stories no novelist would dare invent.

FOSSILS OF THE UPPER CRETACEOUS MOTORCROSS SITE: NANAIMO

Steller's Jay, Cyanocitta stelleri

One of the classic fossil localities on Vancouver Island lies within the Santonian–Maastrichtian (Upper Cretaceous) Haslam Formation at the old Motocross Pit near Brannen Lake, just outside Nanaimo, British Columbia. 

Once an active quarry, the site now hums with the roar of dirt bikes and the scent of gasoline and wet earth carried on the coastal wind. The air is cool and mineral-rich, and if you pause between races, you can catch the distant rush of Benson Creek Falls through the evergreens. 

A smaller gravel operation still works nearby, closer to Ammonite Falls, where shale and sandstone beds of the Nanaimo Group continue to reveal fossils from an ancient seaway that once covered this region. 

Despite its modern transformation, the Motocross Pit remains one of the most storied and scientifically valuable fossil sites of the Nanaimo Group.

We find well-preserved nautiloids and ammonites — Canadoceras, Pseudoschloenbachia, Epigoniceras — the bivalves — Inoceramus, Sphenoceramus— gastropods, and classic Nanaimo Group decapods — Hoploparia, Linuparus. We also find fossil fruit and seeds which tell the story of the terrestrial history of Vancouver Island.

The Motocross Pit locality was first brought to my attention by John Fam, Vice-Chair of the Vancouver Island Paleontological Society (VanPS). John is one of those rare individuals whose enthusiasm for paleontology is matched only by his warmth and generosity. During his years on Vancouver Island, he was an active VanPS member and a key collaborator during my tenure as Chair. Many of the most memorable joint VIPS/VanPS expeditions were sparked by his curiosity, leadership, and infectious passion for fossils.

John grew up just fifteen minutes from the Motocross locality and spent countless hours there collecting specimens with his father. His love of fossils is a family affair—one that continues today with his wife, Grace, and their two young sons, who now share in the same sense of wonder that first drew John to the site.

I first met John many years ago and still remember staying overnight at his parents’ home before a weekend field trip to Jurassic Point. That evening, he shared stories of his early fossil-hunting adventures and walked me through his carefully curated collection—an experience that spoke volumes about his dedication to the science and art of paleontology.

Upper Cretaceous Haslam Fm near Brannen Lake

Inspired by his stories, I later visited the Motocross Pit with my uncle Doug, a kind and curious man who had explored much of the coast but had never seen this fossil treasure so close to home. 

We spent the day walking through time together, tracing the ancient layers of the Cretaceous seafloor. 

When I returned to the site alone this past year, the wind in the trees and the scent of damp shale carried a bittersweet note—reminding me of the joy of that shared day and of one of the best men I have ever known, now gone but never forgotten. 

As I approached the site, there were no people around, so I walked the periphery looking for the bedrock of the Haslam. The rocks we find here were laid down south of the equator as small, tropical islands. They rode across the Pacific heading north and slightly east over the past 80 million years to where we find them today.

Upper Cretaceous Haslam Formation Motocross Pit

Jim Haggart and Peter Ward have each made remarkable contributions to our understanding of the rich molluscan fauna of the Nanaimo Group, the Late Cretaceous sedimentary sequence that records the history of an ancient seaway once spanning much of what is now coastal British Columbia and Washington State.

Both men bring to paleontology a mix of scholarly rigor and adventurous spirit—embodying, in the best sense, that “Indiana Jones” archetype of the field scientist: field-worn boots, weathered notebooks, and an endless curiosity for the deep past. 

Their fieldwork across Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands, and the San Juan archipelago has provided essential biostratigraphic correlations, linking fossil assemblages across what were once the submerged margins of the Wrangellia Terrane. 

Through careful mapping, fossil collection, and stratigraphic analysis, their work has helped clarify the temporal and environmental relationships among the various formations of the Nanaimo Group, from the Haslam and Extension to the Pender and Geoffrey formations.

Haggart and Ward’s research builds on a long tradition of geologic and paleontological inquiry in the region. Foundational studies by Usher (1952), Matsumoto (1959a, 1959b), and Mallory (1977) established the first detailed taxonomic and biostratigraphic frameworks for these Late Cretaceous faunas. 

Equally significant was the work of Muller and Jeletzky (1970), who untangled the complex lithostratigraphic and biostratigraphic relationships within the Nanaimo Group—providing the bedrock upon which modern interpretations stand.

Together, this lineage of research has transformed the Nanaimo Group from a series of scattered coastal outcrops into one of the best-documented Cretaceous marine sequences in western North America, offering crucial insight into paleogeography, faunal migration, and the dynamic tectonic history of the Pacific margin.

Candoceras yokoyama, Photo: John Fam, VanPS

As I walked along the bedrock of the Haslam, a Steller's Jay, Cyanocitta stelleri, followed me from tree to tree making his guttural shook, shook, shook call. 

Instructive, he seemed to be encouraging me, timing his hoots to the beat of my hammer. Vancouver Island truly has glorious flora and fauna.

Fancy some additional reading? Check out a paper published in the Journal of Paleontology back in 1989 by Haggard and Ward on Nanaimo Group Ammonites from British Columbia and Washington State.

In it, they look at the ammonite species Puzosia (Mesopuzosia) densicostata Matsumoto, Kitchinites (Neopuzosia) japonicus Spath, Anapachydiscus cf. A. nelchinensis Jones, Menuites cf. M. menu (Forbes), Submortoniceras chicoense (Trask), and Baculites cf. B. boulei Collignon are described from Santonian--Campanian strata of western Canada and northwestern United States.

Stratigraphic occurrences and ranges of the species are summarized and those taxa important for correlation with other areas in the north Pacific region and Late Cretaceous ammonite fauna of the Indo-Pacific region. Here's the link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1305358?seq=1

Peter Ward is a prolific author, both of scientific papers and more popularized works. I highly recommend his book Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History. It is an engaging romp through a decade's research in South Africa's Karoo Desert.

Photo: Candoceras yokoyamai from Upper Cretaceous Haslam formation (Lower Campanian) near Nanaimo, British Columbia. One of the earliest fossils collected by John Fam (1993). Prepared using only a cold chisel and hammer. Photo & collection of John Fam, VIPS.