FRESH FISH CONNOISSEURS: THE AMMONITES

Ammonites looked like the still extant Nautilus, a coiled shellfish that lives off the southern coast of Asia. They were kissing cousins in the Class Cephalopoda, meaning "head-footed," closely related to modern squid, cuttlefish and octopus. Cephalopods have a complex eye structure and can swim rapidly. They use these to their advantage as successful marine predators, cruising through the sea expertly grabbing prey with their tentacles - kind of like a hungry fellow at a smorgasborg. Fresh fish anyone?

The ammonite in the image is from the British Columbia Paleontological Alliance calendar. Beautiful photo... even though the ammonite is upside down. The opening at the edge of the shell is where the creature would have lived. Visit www.bcfossils.ca to see the original image and order your calendar for next year.

SCIENCE GEEK VALENTINE: PALEOMAGNETIC DATING

While in no way sexy, paleomagnetic dating stands the test of time for being useful. You probably remember a demo from science class where a sheet of paper is laid over a bar magnet, and iron filings are scattered lightly onto it. The filings line up with the fields generated by the magnet, in patterns that look rather like bottom-to-bottom fireworks bursts. Something similar occurs when rock is formed, whether by heat or by sedimentation:

Microscopic iron particles in the rock line up with the Earth’s magnetic fields as they are oriented at that time. But unlike the iron filings on the paper, which shift if the paper or the magnet is moved, iron particles in solidified rock remain frozen in their alignment unless the rock is reheated to 600°C or more.

This means that even when the Earth’s magnetic poles flip end for end – something they have done several hundred times during Earth’s history – the iron stays aligned as it was when the rock was formed. By comparing the residual magnetism in the rock with the known historical changes in the Earth’s magnetic fields, an age and birthplace for the rock can be easily be estimated — in theory.

The principle behind paleomanetic dating is easy to summerize: the practise is much more complicated. The intervals between pole reversals fluctuate wildly, from as little as one hundred thousand years to tens of millions of years. The time taken for the shifts to complete once started also varies, from a thousand to eight thousand years.

Imagine trying to time events with a grandfather clock that had a pendulum which swung at intervals that could vary from one minute to many hours, while the period of the pendulum swing itself ranged randomly from one second to eight seconds, and you’ll get a sense of the complexity of paleomagnetic dating. While far from a perfect science, paleomagnetic dating provides valuable pieces of the puzzle of Earth’s past.

STAGGERING ABUNDANCE: FOSSILS OF MCABEE

2009 EIGHTH BC PALEONTOLOGICAL SYMPOSIUM

Eighth British Columbia Paleontological Symposium

Presented by the Vancouver Paleontological Society,
University of British Columbia, Earth and Ocean Sciences, and
British Columbia Paleontological Alliance
MAY 15-18, 2009

Call for Posters & Abstracts

2009 BCPA CONFERENCE - The Vancouver Paleontological Society invites you the Eighth British Columbia Paleontological Symposium, to be held at the University of British Columbia, May 15-18, 2009.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER - This year’s keynote speaker will be Dr. Gregory Wilson, a specialist on the evolution and ecology of early mammals, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Integrative Biology. Continuing the format of past symposia, the meeting will bring together both the professional and avocational paleontological community.

As well as an engaging line-up of speakers, there will also be field trips, workshops, retail booth and the return of the popular Paleo Art Show with juried prizes. A Community Open House will be held on the Sunday for members of the general public.

FOSSIL MAMMALS - While the symposium will highlight fossil mammals, we invite talks, posters and displays showcasing all aspects of paleontology, with non-academics especially encouraged to contribute.

SYMPOSIUM ABSTRACT VOLUME - There will be a symposium abstract volume published and provided to all registrants. We request that speakers and poster presenters submit abstracts for the publication. Abstracts can be 1-4 pages (with 1 being standard) in length. Mailing and e-mail address of the author should be included for insertion in the volume.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION of posters and abstracts for publication is April 10, 2009. Submission of an abstract is mandatory for speakers and poster displays. Paleontologists unable to make the meeting but interested in contributing to the abstract volume to share their research on fossil mammals are welcome to contribute.

REGISTRATION – FULL SYMPOSIUM PASS
Professional Paleontologists $100 | Non-BCPA attendees $100 | BCPA Members $80 | Students $60

SEND CHEQUE PAYABLE TO:
Vancouver Paleontological Society, Centrepoint P.O. Box 19653, Vancouver, BC, V5T 4E7

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
www.bcfossils.ca | http://www.vcn.bc.ca/vanps/ | fossilhuntress@hotmail.co.uk

FOTO NATUREN

TRIASSIC-JURASSIC EXTINCTION

Located as they are in Canada’s most active earthquake zone, the Queen Charlotte Islands have had their share of shake-ups and scourings. Many of the Islands’ hillsides are scarred by slides (any specific examples?). But the rock beneath speaks of an even more violent past. Very few people know that the rock in the Queen Charlottes holds the key to a catastrophic event from eons ago.We’ve heard tales and seen images of the cataclysmic damage caused by meteriorites smashing into the Earth’s surface.

Until recently, it was a meteorite impact that was blamed for the worldwide Triassic/Jurassic Mass Extinction. This wholesale dying out of species occurred some 200 million years ago. New evidence challenges the meteorite theory. Experts now believe that tectonic forces may have caused hundreds of volcanoes around the world to erupt simultaneously. The subsequent showers of volcanic ash would have altered the composition of the atmosphere dramatically and plunged the world into near total darkness for years until it settled from the sky.

The picture painted of the sun flickering fitfully through inky clouds, paling against the torrents of glowing lava, while everywhere life is smothered, poisoned, or starved, rivals the most apocalyptic imaginings of Hollywood or religion. We know from worldwide evidence that the extinction was dramatic and affected upwards of 70% of the world’s biota.


Perhaps counterintuitively, for one might think of water as a refuge from fire, smoke, and lava, it was marine lifeforms that suffered the most. This is particularly well documented in the rocks of the Queen Charlottes, especially at Kennecott Point and Kunga Island.

Radiolarian microfossils – tiny, siliceous, single-celled microrganisms – tell the tale. In the Upper Triassic rocks, which predate the extinction by about 10 million years, radiolarians are preserved in hundreds of forms. Just above them, in the early Jurassic rock layers laid down about the time of the great die-offs, only a fraction of the previous number of forms are represented. The more recent Jurassic rock shows a rebound of radiolarian diversity (though of course, in different forms) — a diversity which continues to flourish and expand in today’s oceans.

EIGHTH BC PALEONTOLOGICAL SYMPOSIUM

Eighth British Columbia Paleontological Symposium

Presented by the Vancouver Paleontological Society,
University of British Columbia, Earth and Ocean Sciences, and
British Columbia Paleontological Alliance

May 15-18, 2009

Call for Posters & Abstracts

The Vancouver Paleontological Society invites you to submit a poster or abstract for the Eighth British Columbia Paleontological Symposium, to be held at the University of British Columbia, May 15-18, 2009.

This year’s keynote speaker will be Dr. Gregory Wilson, a specialist on the evolution and ecology of early mammals, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Integrative Biology. Continuing the format of past symposia, the meeting will bring together both the professional and avocational paleontological community.

As well as an engaging line-up of speakers, there will also be field trips, workshops, retail booth and the return of the popular paleontological art show with juried prizes. While the symposium will highlight fossil mammals, we invite talks, posters and displays showcasing all aspects of paleontology, with non-academics especially encouraged to contribute.

Symposium Abstract Volume
There will be a symposium abstract volume published and provided to all registrants. We request that speakers and poster presenters submit abstracts for the publication to the editor (see below). Abstracts can be 1-4 pages (with 1 being standard) in length although exceptions will be made for specific requests.

Abstract contributors are encouraged to include photos and/or diagrams although it should be noted that the abstract volume would be printed in black and white. Documents will not be edited for content but may be reformatted to fit into the volume. Mailing and e-mail address of the author should be included for insertion in the volume.

Deadline for submission of posters and abstracts for publication is April 1st, 2009. Submission of an abstract is mandatory for speakers and poster displays.

About the Vancouver Paleontological Society
The Vancouver Paleontological Society is a non-profit society whose purpose is to promote the science of paleontology through study and education and make contributions to the science through discovery, collection, description, public education and preservation of material for study and posterity.

British Columbia Paleontological Alliance
The Vancouver Paleontological Society is a member of the British Columbia Paleontological Alliance, a union of professional and amateur paleontologists working to advance the science of paleontology. For more information: www.bcfossils.ca

Submitting a Poster - Helpful Hints

What is a poster? A poster is a visual medium to express current results of one's research work on a topic the presenter has chosen to study or to provide an overview of a researched topic. A poster is something that you pin up on a board. The dimension of a poster can vary from 2' x 3' to 4' x 8'. It contains text and figures relevant to one's work. It follows the same pattern as any scientific article that appears in a journal does. One typical format:

Title, Author(s), Affiliation
Summary
Introduction – Reasons behind the work
General information
Geographical location of where the fossils were found
Description and interpretation
Conclusions
References

Dedicate a box to each one of the above categories. Within the box, include the text and figures relevant to the category. Number the boxes in such a way that the reader can follow from one box to the other in a sequence the presenter wishes. The structure of the above framework changes from topic to topic.

Who should do a poster?
Anyone who has an interest in sharing their work and who likes feedback from the audience (or attendees) on their work should consider doing a poster.

What should be considered for a poster?
Any topic that ties in with palaeontology can be considered for a poster.

Why posters?
Written presentations are mechanisms to convey past and recent developments in a field of study essential to the investigator. An effective written presentation is a poster presentation.

How does one make a poster & how should it look?
Most posters are made using a computer, either in a word processing program or PowerPoint. However, you do not have or use a computer to make a poster. Whatever the size of your poster is should be easily ready from 3 to 4 feet away. The same is true for photos, graphs and figures. Ensure they are printed large enough to be clear from a distance. Posters can be full color or black and white.

Good Luck!

Eighth British Columbia Paleontological Symposium
Presented by the Vancouver Paleontological Society,
University of British Columbia, Earth and Ocean Sciences & British Columbia Paleontological Alliance

May 15-18, 2009
Vancouver, BC

PROGRAM:

Fri, May 15, 2009:

5:00 PM Registration Opens
Poster & Fossil Display Set-up

6:00 - 10:00 Walcott Icebreaker
Posters, Fossil Displays & Art Show


Sat, May 16, 2009:

8:30 Registration & Package Pick-Up

9:00 Welcome & Keynote Address

9:45 -4:00 Speaker Program
Posters, Fossil Displays & Art Show

6:00 PM W.R Danner Banquet


Sun, May 17, 2009:

8:30 Registration & Package Pick-Up

9:00 – 3:00 Speaker Program
Posters, Fossil Displays & Art Show

3:00 – 5:00 Community Open House
Junior Paleontologist Workshops & Fossil ID

4:00 – 6:00 Symposium Workshops


Mon, May 18, 2009

9:00 AM Field Trip Departures

Location: University of British Columbia

Deadline for submission of posters and abstracts for publication is April 1st, 2009. Submission of an abstract is mandatory for speakers and poster displays.

Further Information

Posters presentation | Abstract submissions | General Information |

E-mail: fossilhuntress@hotmail.co.uk

MEANDERING THROUGH THE EOCENE: CHUCKANUT DRIVE

by Heidi Henderson

Chuckanut Drive, in northwestern Washington provides a visual feast from sea to sky.

An amazing array of plants and animals call this coastline home. For the fossil enthusiast, it is a chance to slip back in time and have a bird’s eye view to a more tropical time with a visit to the Chuckanut Formation. Snug up against the Pacific Ocean, this 6000m thick exposure yields a vast number of tropical and flowering plants that you might see in Mexico today. Easily accessible by car, this rich natural playground makes for an enjoyable daytrip just one hour south of the US Border.

Shaping our World

Over vast expanses of time, powerful tectonic forces have massaged the western edge of the continent, smashing together a seemingly endless number of islands to produce what we now know as North America and the Pacific Northwest.

Intuition tells us that the earth’s crust is a permanent, fixed outer shell – terra firma. Aside from the rare event of an earthquake or the eruption of Mount St. Helen’s, our world seems unchanging, the landscape constant. In fact, it has been on the move for billions of years and continues to shift each day. As the earth’s core began cooling, some 4.5 billion years ago, plates, small bits of continental crust, have become larger and smaller as they are swept up in or swept under their neighboring plates. Large chunks of the ocean floor have been uplifted, shifted and now find themselves thousands of miles in the air, part of mountain chains far from the ocean today or carved by glacial ice into valleys and basins.

Washington is Born

Two hundred million years ago, Washington was two large islands, bits of continent on the move westward, eventually bumping up against the North American continent and calling it home. Even with their new fixed address, the shifting continues; the more extreme movement has subsided laterally and continues vertically. The upthrusting of plates continues to move our mountain ranges skyward – the path of least resistance.

This dynamic movement has created the landscape we see today and helped form the fossil record that tells much of Washington’s relatively recent history – the past 50 million years.

Chuckanut Formation

The area we will be visiting along Chuckanut Drive is much younger than other parts of Washington. The fossils we will visit lived and died some 40-55 million years ago, very close to where they are now, but in a much warmer, swampy setting.

The exposures of the Chuckanut Formation were once part of a vast river delta; imagine, if you will, the bayou country of the Lower Mississippi. The siltstones, sandstones, mudstones and conglomerates of the Chuckanut Formation were laid down about 40-54 million years ago during the Eocene epoch, a time of luxuriant plant growth in the subtropical flood plain that covered much of the Pacific Northwest. This ancient wetland provided ideal conditions to preserve the many trees, shrubs & plants that thrived here.

Plants are important in the fossil record because they are more abundant and can give us a lot of information about climate, temperature, the water cycle and humidity of the region. The Chuckanut flora is made up predominantly of plants whose modern relatives live in tropical areas such as Mexico and Central America. If you are interesting in viewing a tropical paradise in your own backyard, look no further than the Chuckanut.

Images and tag lines: Glyptostrobus, the Chinese swamp cypress, is perhaps the most common plant found here. Also abundant are fossilized remains of the North American bald cypress, Taxodium; Metasequoia (dawn redwood), Lygodium (climbing fern), large Sabal (palm) and leaves from a variety of broad leaf angiosperm plants such as (witch hazel), Laurus (laurel), Ficus (fig) and Platanus (sycamore), and several other forms.

Inset: Mammal Fossils in Washington

While less abundant, evidence of the animals that called this ancient swamp home are also found here. Rare bird, reptile, and mammal tracks have been immortalized in the outcrops of the Chuckanut Formation.

Tracks of a type of archaic mammal of the Orders Pantodonta or Dinocerata (blunt foot herbivores), footprints from a small shorebird, and tracks from an early equid or webbed bird track give evidence to the vertebrates that inhabited the swamps, lakes and river ways of the Pacific Northwest 50 million years ago. The movement of these celebrity vertebrates was captured in the soft mud on the banks of a river, one of the only depositional environments favorable for track preservation.

Sidebar: Fossils Must be Dinosaurs…

We can thank Mr. Spielberg and popular culture for the fact that most people think of dinosaurs when they think of fossils. The bone record is actually far less abundant that the plant record. While calcium rich bones and teeth fossilize well, they often do not get laid down in a situation that makes this possible.

Look around at the site today and the abundance of plants and lack of visible animal life. They are far fewer animals than plants and consequently in a setting such as this far fewer animals in the fossil record. It is the reverse at some sites, i.e. the Gobi desert and Alberta, but in the Chuckanut, this is the way it plays out.

In Alberta, most of what we find are small bone fragments from vertebrates. This colors our notions of what the world must have looked like. It shows us only one small piece of the puzzle as to what life must have been like in an area when part of the fossil record is missing.

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.