WANNERIA DUNNAE

Wanneria dunnaeis an impressive trilobite from British Columbia's Eager Formation, and one of the more striking specimens found at the original research site of the lovely Lisa Bohach, a paleontologist now working out of Alberta.

The site has changed over the years, both physically and politically, but the one constant is the exquisite detail of the specimens. Both Wanneria dunnae and Ollenelus ricei are commonly found here. I had a eureka moment there a few years ago when ambling up the path to the main pit. The sun hit a wily would-be hiking track on a bit of shale at just the right angle. Closer inspection showed it to be a Tuzoia, one of the rare arthropods to come from the area.

BEAUTIFUL EARTH SERIES: VALHALLA

MOONLIT PADDLE

CROCODILIAN UPSTARTS: THE CRUROTARSANS

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 with the Crurotarsi butting their massive skulls and narrow snouts against their evolutionary opponent and ultimate successors, the dinosaurs.

The Crurotarsi or "cross-ankles" as they are affectionately known, are a group of archosaurs - formerly known as Pseudosuchians when paleontologist Paul Serono, the darling of National Geographic, renamed them for their node-based clade in 1991.