Wednesday 23 October 2019

SMILODON FATALIS

During the last ice age, huge cats bigger than an African lion prowled Alberta, including the fearsome beast commonly known as the sabre-toothed tiger.

The proper name for the extinct predator with foot-long, serrated knife-like canines is Smilodon fatalis.

Up until the discovery of the fossil from Medicine Hat, Alberta, the species had never been found further north than Idaho. Or so it was thought...

A few years ago, a few small fossils caught the eye of researcher Ashley Reynolds as she was rummaging through the drawers at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. The drawer was part of a treasure trove of 1,200 specimens collected in the 1960s by University of Toronto palaeontologist C.S. Churcher and his team. The specimens were collected over many field seasons along the bluffs of the South Saskatchewan River near Medicine Hat.

Churcher was a palaeontologist with a keen eye and a delightful man. I had the very great pleasure of listening to many of his talks out at UBC and at a few VanPS meetings in the mid-2000s. "Rufus" was a thoroughly charming storyteller and shared many of his adventures from the field. He moved out to the West Coast for his retirement but his keen love of the science kept him giving talks to enthralled listeners keen to hear about his survey of the Dakhleh Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt, geomorphology, stratigraphy, recent biology, Pleistocene and Holocene lithic cultures, insights learned from Neolithic Islamic pottery to Roman settlements.

The specimens he had collected had been roughly sorted but never examined in detail. Reynolds, who was researching the growth patterns and life histories of extinct cats by looking at their bones, decided to look more carefully at the fossils Churcher had found, keen to add them to her research. And what a find she made!

One of the fossils labelled Smilodon was too small a piece to be identified. But another, a bone from the ancient cat's right front paw, was identical to other Smilodon bones and was positively identified as Canada's first Smilodon. CBC did a nice write up on her discoveries. 

References:
https://www.cbc.ca/n…/technology/sabre-toothed-cat-1.5305505

Tuesday 22 October 2019

LATE HETTANGIAN TO EARLY SINEMURIAN FAUNA

Hiking the hills of Nevada looking for David Taylor's faunal succession based on ammonoids established for the Late Hettangian to Early Sinemurian interval in the Western Cordillera.

It was a tremendous experience to walk through time and compare the fossil assemblages here with our own in the Canadian Rockies.

Here the faunal sequence consists of one zone and four informal biochronologic units or assemblages and was outlined by Taylor as follows: Paracaloceras morganense assemblage, Badouxia oregonensis assemblage, Canadensis Zone, Metophioceras trigonatum assemblage and Coroniceras involutum. They matched up to specimens we collected over three field seasons to similar faunal outcrops of Late Hettangian to Early Sinemurian of the Last Creek and Tyaughton area of the Canadian Rockies.

The succession also correlates with the interval delineated by the Northwest European Angulata Zone through the Lyra Subzone. Two new genera (Guexiceras and Tipperoceras) are described along with 23 new species. The phylogenetic relationships of the earliest Jurassic ammonite superfamilies indicate that it is useful to include under the Psiloceratida, the Psilocerataceae and their derivatives including the Lytocerataceae. The Arietitaceae were derived from Hettangian lytocerataceans.

Sunday 20 October 2019

CAMBRIAN ARTHROPODS OF THE BALANG

A large extinct bivalved arthropod, Tuzoia sinesis (Pan, 1957) from Cambrian deposits of the Balang Formation. The Balang outcrops in beautiful Paiwu, northwestern Hunan Province in southern China. The site is intermediate in age between the Lower Cambrian Chengjiang fauna of Yunnan and the Lower to Middle Cambrian, Kaili Lagerstätten of Guizhou in southwestern China.

This specimen was collected earlier this week. It is one of many new and exciting arthropods to come from the site.

Balang has a low diversity of trilobites and many soft-bodied fossils similar in preservation to Canada's Burgess Shale. Some of the most interesting finds include the first discovery of anomalocaridid appendages (Appendage-F-type) from China along with the early arthropod Leanchoiliids with his atypical frontal appendages (and questionable phylogenetic placement) and the soft-shelled trilobite-like arthropod, Naraoiidae.

While the site is not as well-studied as the Chengjiang and Kaili Lagerstätten, it looks very promising. The exceptionally well-preserved fauna includes algae, sponges, chancelloriids, cnidarians, worms, molluscs, brachiopods, trilobites and a few non-mineralized arthropods. It is an exciting time for Cambrian paleontology. The Balang provides an intriguing new window into our ancient seas and the profound diversification of life that flourished there.

Saturday 19 October 2019

LATE SILURIAN EURYPTERID

The impressive homeotype specimen of Eurypterus lacustris from Late Silurian deposits in New York. UCMP Berkeley's paleontological collections.

About two dozen families of eurypterids “sea scorpions” are known from the fossil record. Although these ancient predators have a superficial similarity, including a defensive needle-like spike or telson at their tail end, they are not true scorpions. They are an extinct group of arthropods related to spiders, ticks, mites and other extant creepy crawlies.

Eurypterids hunted fish in the muddy bottoms of warm shallow seas some 460 to 248 million years ago before moving on to hunting grounds in fresh and brackish water during the latter part of their reign. Their numbers diminished greatly during the Permian-Triassic extinction, becoming extinct by 248 million years ago.

Friday 18 October 2019

ESMERALDINA ROWEII

An Esmeraldina roweii multi-block of lovely trilobites from the Lower Lower Cambrian Poleta Formation of Esmeralda County, near Goldfield Nevada, plus a very interesting creature off to the lower left who looks to be an unidentified arthropod.

A very developed trilobite with long genal and axial spines, plus the ability to enroll. And all of this before the Olenellids existed. Collection of the deeply awesome George Walter Ast. Goldfield is located 247 miles southeast of Carson City, along U.S. Route 95.

Thursday 17 October 2019

MAMMUT AMERICANUM

The American Mastodon, Mammut americanum. Mastodons resemble elephants, but are more like elephant cousins.

A second species, Mammut pacificus, has recently been described from fossils found in Idaho and California. This specimen can be seen at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Photo credit: Guy Leahy.

Wednesday 16 October 2019

MIDDLE TRIASSIC OF NEVADA

Searching for bedrock in outcrops of the West Humboldt Mountains, Nevada. Perhaps the most famous and important locality for the Middle Triassic (Anisian/Ladinian) of North America. These beautiful hills are home to Triassic ammonoid outcrops and plentiful ichthyosaur fossils.

J.P. Smith published on the marine fauna in the early 1900's. They formed the basis for his monograph on North American Middle Triassic marine invertebrate fauna published in 1914. N. J. Siberling from the US Geological Survey published on these outcrops in 1962. His work included nearly a dozen successive ammonite faunas, many of which were variants on previously described species.

Evidently, his collections consisted mainly of weathered material and were made without stratigraphic control because he believed that most, if not all, of these species were coexistent. The fossiliferous beds found here, as well as localities in north-western Nevada, were designated the 'Daonella dubia' zone. Dubious would be closer to the truth. Smith joined the 1905 Expedition of the University of California’s Department of Geology in Berkeley funded by the beautiful and bold, Annie Alexander, the women to whom the UCMP owes both its collection and existence.

Tuesday 15 October 2019

MIDDLE TRIASSIC PAPER CLAMS & AMMONOIDS

Paper clams or "flat clams" were widespread in the Triassic. They often dominate the rocks in which they are found, as in these specimens from the Daonella dubia zone of the West Humboldt Range and the Desatoya Range of Nevada where they are associated with Ceratities trinodosus, Nevadites Whitney, Daonella lindstomi, D. moussoni and other species.

This designation was coined by J. P. Smith in the early 1900s for specific localities in the Humboldt Mountain Range.

Because of their widespread distribution and very high species turnover rates, they make for excellent biochronological macrofossils, helping us to correlate biological events through time.

We see the "cousins" of these Nevada specimens up in  Pine Pass near Chetwynd, British Columbia.

Pine Pass is part of the Pardonet Formation. Just a short hike from the road we were able to easily find the abundant outcroppings of the paper clam Monotis subcircularis, perfectly preserved and cemented in this strata from the Late Triassic.

Monday 14 October 2019

GRASPING HOOKLETS AND CALAMARI

This well-preserved partial ichthyosaur was found in the Blue Lias shales by Lewis Winchester-Ellis in 2018. The vertebrae you see are from the tail section of this marine reptile.

The find includes stomach contents that tell us a little about how this particular fellow liked to dine.

As with most of his brethren, he enjoyed fish and cephalopods. Lewis found fishbone and squid tentacle hooklets in his belly. 

Oh yes, these ancient cephies had grasping hooklets on their tentacles. I'm picturing them wiggling all ominously. The hooklets were the only hard parts of the animal preserved in this case as the softer parts of this ancient calamari were fully or partially digested before this ichthyosaur met his end.

Ichthyosaurus was an extinct marine reptile first described from fossil fragments found in 1699 in Wales. Shortly thereafter, fossil vertebrae were published in 1708 from the Lower Jurassic and the first member of the order Ichthyosauria to be discovered.

To give that a bit of historical significance, this was the age of James Stuart, Jacobite hopeful to the British throne. While scientific journals of the day were publishing the first vertebrae ichthyosaur finds, he was avoiding the French fleet in the Firth of Forth off Scotland. This wasn’t Bonnie Prince Charlie, this was his Dad. Yes, that far back.

The first complete skeleton was discovered in the early 19th century by Mary Anning & her brother Joseph along the Dorset Jurassic Coast. Joseph had mistakenly, but quite reasonably, taken the find for an ancient crocodile. Mary excavated the specimen a year later and it was this and others that she found that would supply the research base others would soon publish on.

Mary's find was described by a British surgeon, Sir Everard Home, an elected Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1814. The specimen is now on display at the Natural History Museum in London bearing the name Temnodontosaurus platyodon, or “cutting-tooth lizard.”

In 1821, William Conybeare and Henry De La Beche, a friend of Mary's, published a paper describing three new species of unknown marine reptiles based on Anning's finds.

The Rev. William Buckland would go on to describe two small ichthyosaurs from the Lias of Lyme Regis, Ichthyosaurus communis and Ichthyosaurus intermedius, in 1837.

Remarkable, you'll recall that he was a theologian, geologist, palaeontologist AND Dean of Westminster. It was Buckland who published the first full account of a dinosaur in 1824, coining the name, "Megalosaurus."

The Age of Dinosaurs and Era of the Mighty Marine Reptile had begun.

Ichthyosaurs have been collected in the Blue Lias near Lyme Regis and the Black Ven Marls. More recently, specimens have been collected from the higher succession near Seatown. Paddy Howe, Lyme Regis Museum geologist, found a rather nice Ichthyosaurus breviceps skull a few years back. A landslip in 2008 unveiled some ribs poking out of the Church cliffs and a bit of digging revealed the ninth fossil skull ever found of a breviceps, with teeth and paddles to boot.

Specimens have since been found in Europe in Belgium, England, Germany, Switzerland and in Indonesia. Many tremendously well-preserved specimens come from the limestone quarries in Holzmaden, southern Germany.

Ichthyosaurs ranged from quite small, just a foot or two, to well over twenty-six metres in length and resembled both modern fish and dolphins.

Dean Lomax and Sven Sachs, both active (and delightful) vertebrate palaeontologists, have described a colossal beast, Shonisaurus sikanniensis from the Upper Triassic (Norian) Pardonet Formation of northeastern British Columbia, Canada, measuring 3-3.5 meters in length. The specimen is now on display in the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada. It was this discovery that tipped the balance in the vote, making it British Columbia's Official Fossil. Ichthyosaurs have been found at other sites in British Columbia, on Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii, but Shoni tipped the ballot.

The first specimens of Shonisaurus were found in the 1990s by Peter Langham at Doniford Bay on the Somerset coast of England.

Dr. Betsy Nicholls, Rolex Laureate Vertebrate Palaeontologist from the Royal Tyrrell Museum, excavated the type specimen of Shonisaurus sikanniensis over three field sessions in one of the most ambitious fossil excavations ever ventured. Her efforts from 1999 through 2001, both in the field and lobbying back at home, paid off. Betsy published on this new species in 2004, the culmination of her life’s work and her last paper as we lost her to cancer in autumn of that year.

Charmingly, Betsy had a mail correspondence with Roy Chapman Andrews, former director of the American Museum of Natural History, going back to the late 1950s as she explored her potential career in palaeontology. Do you recall the AMNH’s sexy paleo photos of expeditions to the Gobi Desert in southern Mongolia in China in the early 20th century? You’d remember if you’d seen them. Roy Chapman Andrews was the lead on that trip. His photos are what fueled the flames of my own interest in paleo.

We've found at least 37 specimens of Shonisaurus in Triassic outcrops of the Luning Formation in the Shoshone Mountains in northwestern Nye County of Nevada, USA. The finds go back to the 1920s. The specimens that may it to publication were collected by Margaret Wheat of Fallon and Dr. C. L. Camp, UCMP, in the 1950s.  The aptly named Shonisaurus popularis became the Nevada State Fossil in 1977. Our Shoni got around. Isolated remains have been found in a section of sandstone in Belluno, in the Eastern Dolomites, Veneto region of northeastern Italy. The specimens were published by Vecchia et al. in 2002.

For a time, Shonisaurus was the largest ichthyosaurus known.

Move over, Shoni, as a new marine reptile find competes with the Green Anaconda (Eunectes murinus) and the Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus) for size at a whopping twenty-six (26) metres.

The find is the prize of fossil collector turned co-author, Paul de la Salle, who (you guessed it) found it in the lower part of the intertidal area that outcrops strata from the latest Triassic Westbury Mudstone Formation of Lilstock on the Somerset coast. He contacted Dean Lomax and Judy Massare who became co-authors on the paper.

The find and conclusions from their paper put "dinosaur" bones from the historic Westbury Mudstone Formation of Aust Cliff, Gloucestershire, UK site into full reinterpretation.

And remember that ichthyosaur the good Reverend Buckland described back in 1837, the Ichthyosaurus communis? Dean Lomax was the first to describe a wee baby. A wee baby ichthyosaur! Awe. I know, right? He and paleontologist Nigel Larkin published this adorable first in the journal of Historical Biology in 2017.

They had teamed up previously on another first back in 2014 when they completed the reconstruction of an entire large marine reptile skull and mandible in 3-D, then graciously making it available to fellow researchers and the public. The skull and braincase in question were from an Early Jurassic, and relatively rare, Protoichthyosaurus prostaxalis

The specimen had been unearthed in Warwickshire back in the 1950's. Unlike most ichthyosaur finds of this age, it was not compressed and allowed the team to look at a 3-D specimen through the lens of computerized tomography (CT) scanning. Another superb 3-D ichthyosaur skull was found near Lyme Regis by fossil hunter-turned-entrepreneur-local David Sole and prepped by the late David Costain. I'm rather hoping it went into a museum collection as it would be wonderful to see the specimen studied, imaged, scanned and 3-D printed for all to share. Here's hoping.

Lomax and Sven Sachs also published on an embryo from one of the largest ichthyosaurs known, a new species named Ichthyosaurus somersetensis. Their paper in the ACTA Palaeontologica Polonica from 2017, describes the third embryo known for Ichthyosaurus and the first to be positively identified to species level. The specimen was collected from the Lower Jurassic strata (lower Hettangian, Blue Lias Formation) of Doniford Bay, Somerset, UK and is housed in the collection of the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum (Lower Saxony State Museum) in Hannover, Germany.

We've learned a lot about them in the time we've been studying them. We now have thousands of specimens, some whole, some as bits and pieces. Many specimens that have been collected are only just now being studied and the tools we are using to study them are getting better and better.

While they resembled fish and dolphins, Ichthyosaurs were large marine reptiles belonging to the order known as Ichthyosauria or Ichthyopterygia. In 2018, Benjamin Kear and his team were able to study ichthyosaur remains at the molecular level, Their findings suggest ichthyosaurs had skin and blubber quite similar to our modern dolphins.

While ichthyosaurs evolved from land-dwelling, lung-breathing reptiles, they returned to our ancient seas and evolved into the fish-shaped creatures we find in the fossil record today.

Their limbs fully transformed into flippers, sometimes containing a very large number of digits and phalanges. Their flippers tell us they were entirely aquatic as they were not well-designed for use on land. And it was their flippers that first gave us the clue that they gave birth to live young; a find later confirmed by fossil embryo and wee baby ichy finds.

They thrived during much of the Mesozoic era; based on fossil evidence, they first appeared around 250 million years ago (Ma) and at least one species survived until about 90 million years ago into the Late Cretaceous.

During the early Triassic period, ichthyosaurs evolved from a group of unidentified land reptiles that returned to the sea. They were particularly abundant in the later Triassic and early Jurassic periods before being replaced as a premier aquatic predator by another marine reptilian group, the Plesiosauria, in the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

In the Late Cretaceous, ichthyosaurs were hard hit by the Cenomanian-Turonian anoxic event. As the deepest benthos layers of the seas became anoxic, poisoned by hydrogen sulphide, deep water marine life died off. This caused a cascade that wreaked havoc all the way up the food chain. At the end of that chain were our mighty predaceous marine reptiles. Bounty turned to scarcity and a race for survival began. The ichthyosaurs lost that race as the last lineage became extinct. It may have been their conservative evolution as a genus when faced with a need for adaptation to the world in which they found themselves and/or being outcompeted by early mosasaurs.

There are promising discoveries coming out of strata from the Cretaceous epeiric seas of Texas, USA from Nathan E. Van Vranken. His published paper from 2017, "An overview of ichthyosaurian remains from the Cretaceous of Texas, USA," looks at ichthyosaurian taxa from the mid-Cretaceous (Albian–Cenomanian) time interval in North America with an eye to ichthyosaurian distribution and demise.

The find and photos are all credited to Lewis Winchester-Ellis. Thank you for sharing your tremendous specimen with us. Lewis did much of the preparation of the specimen, removing the majority of the matrix. The spectacular final prep is credited to Lizzie Hingley, Stonebarrow Fossils, Oxfordshire. Her skill with an air scribe is unparalleled.

Link to Lomax Paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article…

Link to Nathan's Paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/…/10.1080/03115518.2018.1523462…

Nicholls Paper: E. L. Nicholls and M. Manabe. 2004. Giant ichthyosaurs of the Triassic - a new species of Shonisaurus from the Pardonet Formation (Norian: Late Triassic) of British Columbia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 24(4):838-849 [M. Carrano/H. Street]

Sunday 13 October 2019

ANAHOPLITES PLANUS

A beautiful specimen of the ammonite, Anahoplites planus (Mantell, 1822) from Albian deposits in Courcelles-sur-Voire, Aube, north-central France. Anahoplites (Sowerby, 1815) is a genus of compressed hoplitid ammonites with flat sides, narrow, flat or grooved venters, and flexious ribs or striae arising from weak umbilical tubercles that end in fine dense ventrolateral nodes.

Anahoplites is now included in the subfamily Anahoplitinae and separated from the Hoplitinae where it was placed in the older in the 1957 edition of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part L (Ammonoidea). Genera of the Hoplitinae tend to be more robust, with broader whorls and stronger ribs.

Anahoplites is found in Cretaceous (Middle to the late Albian) deposits from England, through Europe, all the way to the Transcaspian Oblast region in Russia to the east of the Caspian Sea. The Aube department, named after the local river, is the type locality of the Albian stage (d'ORBIGNY, 1842). Two formations are recognized in the clay facies (the "Gault" auct.) of the stratotype, the Argiles tégulines de Courcelles (82 m), overlain by the Marnes de Brienne (43 m). The boundary between the two formations is well-defined at the top of an indurated bed and readily identifiable in the field.

This involute (113 mm) specimen shows evidence of cohabitation by some of his marine peers. We see two different bryozoa, an oyster and some serpulids making a living and leaving trace fossils on his flat sides. This specimen was prepared with potase by José Juárez Ruiz of Spain.

Friday 11 October 2019

PUNTLEDGE ELASMOSAUR

This toothy beauty is an elasmosaur, a large marine reptile now housed in the Courtenay and District Museum on Vancouver Island. This specimen was found by Mike Trask and his daughter in the winter of 1988 in the shale along the Puntledge River. It was the first elasmosaur found west of the Canadian Rockies and one of those moments that lights up and inspires a whole community.

The Puntledge Elasmosaur discovery led to the expansion of the local museum, the excavation site became a provincial heritage site and many, many teaching programs and guided tours have transpired since.

This is a far cry from other similar finds. You may remember an earlier find by Edward Drinker Cope. His 1868 discovery from outcrops in Kansas was originally described with the head incorrectly attached to the tail. It wasn't long before his archrival, one Othniel Charles March pointed it out quite publically. These were less gentle times and those two gents had a rivalry so underhanded and so public it is famously called, "the Bone Wars." The Courtenay and District Museum, the community surrounding it and allied organizations like the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society, have a lot to be proud of. Their outreach and educational programs have inspired young and old alike.

Thursday 10 October 2019

ICHTHYOSAUR QUARRIES OF THE HUMBOLDT

Looking out over the Middle Triassic exposures of the Humboldt Mountain Range.

These hills were the site of the 1905 Expedition of the University of California’s Department of Geology in Berkeley funded by the beautiful and bold, Annie Alexander, the women to whom the UCMP owes both its collection and existence. Annie brought together a paleontological crew to explore these localities and kept an expedition journal of their trip which is now on display at the University of California Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley.

Annie's interest was the ichthyosaurs and she was well pleased with the results. They dodged rattlesnakes and tarantulas, finding many new specimens as they opened up new quarries in the hills of the Humboldt Range of Nevada.

Ichthyosaurs range from quite small, just a foot or two, to well over twenty-six metres in length and resembled both modern fish and dolphins. The specimens from Nevada are especially large and well-preserved. They hail from a time, some 217 million years ago, when Nevada, and parts of the western USA, was covered by an ancient ocean that would one day become our Pacific Ocean. Many ichthyosaur specimens have come out of Nevada. So many, in fact, that they named it their State Fossil back in 1977.

Fossil fragments and complete specimens of these marine reptiles have been collected in the Blue Lias near Lyme Regis and the Black Ven Marls. More recently, specimens have been collected from the higher succession near Seatown. Paddy Howe, Lyme Regis Museum geologist, found a rather nice Ichthyosaurus breviceps skull a few years back. A landslip in 2008 unveiled some ribs poking out of the Church cliffs and a bit of digging revealed the ninth fossil skull ever found of a breviceps, with teeth and paddles to boot.

Specimens have since been found in Europe in Belgium, England, Germany, Switzerland and in Indonesia. Many tremendously well-preserved specimens come from the limestone quarries in Holzmaden, southern Germany.

Wednesday 9 October 2019

KASKAPAU FORMATION: DINOSAUR BONE

Dinosaur bone / Kaskapau Formation
Bones from a variety of dinosaurs have been found in the Tumbler Ridge area of British Columbia.

Here plaster is used to protect a valuable dinosaur bone collected from Flatbed Creek near Tumbler Ridge. The bone is from the Kaskapau Formation (Turonian) and was found a few metres away from a Tetrapodosaurus, "four-footed lizard," trackway.

Both Rich McCrea and Lisa Buckley have published extensively on the fossil material from this area. Additional Papers: Arbour et al. (2008ish) wrote up a paper in the Canadian Journal of Earth Science on dinosaur material collected in the 60s from BC; Rylaarsdam et al. contributed to the same journal two years earlier on the association of dinosaur footprints and skeletal material in the Kaskapau Formation.

Tuesday 8 October 2019

MIDDLE TRIASSIC AMMONOIDS OF NEVADA

A beautiful block of marine fossils found in bedrock outcrops of the West Humboldt Mountains, Nevada. Perhaps the most famous and important locality for the Middle Triassic (Anisian/Ladinian) of North America. These beautiful hills are home to Triassic ammonoid outcrops and plentiful ichthyosaur fossils.

J.P. Smith published on the marine fauna in the early 1900s. They formed the basis for his monograph on North American Middle Triassic marine invertebrate fauna published in 1914. N. J. Siberling from the US Geological Survey published on these outcrops in 1962. His work included nearly a dozen successive ammonite faunas, many of which were variants on previously described species.

Smith was a surface collector and it showed in his research. His collections consisted mainly of weathered material and were made without stratigraphic control because he believed that most, if not all, of these species, were coexistent.

The fossiliferous beds found here, as well as localities in north-western Nevada, were designated the 'Daonella dubia' zone. Dubious would be closer to the truth. Smith joined the 1905 Expedition of the University of California’s Department of Geology in Berkeley funded by the beautiful and bold, Annie Alexander, the women to whom the UCMP owes both its collection and existence.

Monday 7 October 2019

MUMMIFIED RED TILE FISH

An amazing mummified Red tilefish, Branchiostegus japonicus (Houttuyn, 1782) from Holocene deposits near Shizuoka, Japan. This specimen shows remarkable detail right down to the scales. Quite spectacular, truly.

Modern cousins of this 'horsehead' fishy fellow are native to the western Pacific ocean live as far south as the Arafura Sea today. They can grow to around 46 centimetres in length though most reach about 35 cm. Tilefish enjoy sandy and mud substrates and live in depths of 30 to 200 metres. Collection and photos from the deeply awesome Takashi Ito.

Sunday 6 October 2019

ANCIENT AEGEAN ELEPHANTS

The islands of the Aegean are peaks of underwater mountains that extend out from the mainland. 

Crete is the last of this range and boasts a diverse beauty from its high mountains of Psiloritis, Lefka Ori, and Dikti, to its ocean-caressed pink sand beaches.

Much of the island of Crete is Miocene and filled with fossil molluscs, bivalves, and gastropods who lived 5 to 23 million years ago in warm, tropical seas.

They are easily collected from their pink limestone matrix and are often eroded out, mixing with their modern relatives. Aside from the marine deposits, the island boasts some great vertebrate finds, including the remains of 

Deinotherium with its strange downward-curving tusks
Deinotherium giganteum
, a massive 8 million-year-old mammal and primitive relative of the elephants roaming the Earth today. 

Deinotherium evolved from the slightly smaller, early Miocene, Prodeinotherium, though both genera were much larger than all of the more primitive proboscideans.

With an enormous large nasal opening at the centre of his skull, presumably, to house a rather largish trunk, Deinotherium may be the inspiration behind the myth of the Cyclops, the one-eyed giant from Homer's famous Odyssey. I'll share about some of the North African finds with you and you can judge for yourself. I think the resemblance is striking. 

The photo above is from the Grigore Antipa National Museum of Natural History in Bucharest, Romania. If you're in Romania, it's definitely a highlight. Photo credit: Flavius70 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22541962. The illustration of Deinotherium ("terrible beast") is by the hugely talented Daniel Eskridge.

Friday 4 October 2019

PERICLIMENES COLEMANI

These lovelies are Coleman shrimp, Periclimenes colemani. They are generally found in mating pairs atop the exquisitely beautiful but frightfully poisonous, Fire Sea Urchin, Asthenosoma varium.

The female of the Coleman pair in this photo is the slightly larger beauty on the left. She's looking poised and ready to catch something tasty with her open claws. Coleman shrimp and several other fish and invertebrates were named after the Australian naturalist and underwater nature photographer, Neville Coleman. It was his life's mission to document all of the sea life of Australia.

Wednesday 2 October 2019

CERATIOCARIS OF SCOTLAND

This braw fellow is Ceratiocaris papilio (Salter in Murchison, 1859) a Pod Shrimp from the Silurian mudstones of the Kip Burn Formation in the Midland Valley of Scotland. 

He swam in our ancient seas, rising with the tide alongside and in the waters above many marine creatures that you will likely know — crinoids, brachiopods, trilobites and new and exotic fish — some sporting jaws for the first time in their lineage.

Ceratiocaris is a genus of extinct Palaeozoic phyllocarid crustacean whose fossils are found in marine strata from the Upper Ordovician through to the Silurian.

They are typified by eight short thoracic segments, seven longer abdominal somites and an elongated pretelson somite. Their carapace is slightly oval-shaped; they have many ridges parallel to the ventral margin and possess a horn at the anterior end.

This tidy specimen is from the Silurian mudstones that characterize the Kip Burn Formation with its dark laminated silty bands. The lower part of the Kip Burn houses the highly fossiliferous ‘Ceratiocaris beds’, that yield the arthropods Ceratiocaris, Dictyocaris, Pterygotus, Slimonia and the fish Birkenia and Thelodus.

The upper part of the formation, the Pterygotus beds, contain abundant eurypterid fauna together with the brachiopods Lingula and Ceratiocaris. The faunas in the Kip Burn Formation reflect the start of the transition from marine to quasi- or non-marine conditions in the group. Ceratiocaris is also well-known from the Silurian Eramosa Formation of Ontario, Canada, which also has rather nice eurypterids, too. Photo credit/collection of York Yuxi Wang and Tianyi Zhang.

Joseph H. Collette; David M. Rudkin (2010). Phyllocarid crustaceans from the Silurian Eramosa Lagerstätte (Ontario, Canada): taxonomy and functional morphology. Journal of Paleontology. 84 (1): 118–127. doi:10.1666/08-174.1.

M. Copeland; T. E. Bolton (1985). Fossils of Ontario part 3: the eurypterids and phyllocarids. Volume 48 of Life Sciences Miscellaneous Publications. Royal Ontario Museum. ISBN 0-88854-314-X.

Monday 30 September 2019

SHOSHONE MOUNTAIN RANGE

Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park encompasses 1,540 acres. The elevation ranges from 6,840 feet to a high point of 7,880 feet. The hillsides in the park are covered with big sagebrush, while pinyon pine and Utah juniper dominate the upper elevations.

Common animal inhabitants include mule deer, black-tailed jackrabbits, cottontails, western bluebirds, pinyon jays, chukar partridge, whiptail lizards, western fence lizards, gophers and snakes.

​​Nestled at 7,000 feet on the western slope of central Nevada’s Shoshone mountain range, the park provides an array of stimulating recreational opportunities. The forested slopes provide shade, and breezes help to moderate the summer temperatures which seldom exceed 90˚F. Late spring and early fall can often be the nicest times of the year. Winter visits to the park are possible, but call for weather and road conditions before visiting.

Sunday 29 September 2019

PHYLLOCERAS OF JAPAN

Phylloceras consanguineum (Gemmellaro 1876) a fast-moving carnivorous ammonite from Late Jurassic (Middle Oxfordian) deposits near Sokoja, Madagasgar, off the southeast coast of Africa. (22.8° S, 44.4° E: 28.5° S, 18.2° E)

This classical Tethyan Mediterranean specimen is very well preserved, showing much of his delicate suturing in intricate detail. Phylloceras were primitive ammonites with involute, laterally flattened shells.

They were smooth, with very little ornamentation, which led researchers to think of them resembling plant leaves and gave rise to their name, which means "leaf-horn."

They can be found in three regions that I know of.  In the Jurassic of Italy near western Sicily's Rosso Ammonitico Formation, Lower Kimmeridgian fossiliferous beds of Monte Inici East and Castello Inici (38.0° N, 12.9° E: 26.7° N, 15.4° E) and in the Armine area, southeastern Toyama Prefecture, northern central Japan, roughly (36.5° N, 137.5° E: 43.6° N, 140.6° E).

Saturday 28 September 2019

OUR CARIBOO MOUNTAINS

We soak up the breathtaking views after a long morning's paddle. The east and south sides of our route are bound by the imposing white peaks of the Cariboo Mountains, the northern boundary of the Interior wet belt, rising up across the Rocky Mountain Trench, and the Isaac Formation, the oldest of seven formations that make up the Cariboo Group.

Some 270 million-plus years ago, had one wanted to buy waterfront property in what is now British Columbia, you’d be looking somewhere between Prince George and the Alberta border. The rest of the province had yet to arrive but would be made up of over twenty major terranes from around the Pacific. The rock that would eventually become the Cariboo Mountains and form the lakes and valleys of Bowron was far out in the Pacific Ocean, down near the equator.

With tectonic shifting, these rocks drifted north-eastward, riding their continental plate, until they collided with and joined the Cordillera in what is now British Columbia. Continued pressure and volcanic activity helped create the tremendous slopes of the Cariboo Range we see today with repeated bouts of glaciation during the Pleistocene carving their final shape. Warm and dry with bellies filled full of soup and crisps, we head back out to explore more of nature's bounty.

Friday 27 September 2019

HOLCOPHYLLOCERAS OF MADAGASCAR

There is tremendously robust suturing on this lovely ammonite, Holcophylloceras mediterraneum, (Neumayr 1871) from Late Jurassic (Oxfordian) deposits near Sokoja, Madagasgar. Madagascar is a treasure trove of outstanding fossil species and this ammonite is no exception.

The shells had many chambers divided by walls called septa. The chambers were connected by a tube called a siphuncle which allowed for the control of buoyancy with the hollow inner chambers of the shell acting as air tanks to help them float.

We can see the edges of this specimen's shell where it would have continued out to the last chamber, the body chamber, where the ammonite lived. Picture a squid or octopus, now add a shell and a ton of water.

Thursday 26 September 2019

EOCENE INSECTS OF PRINCETON

March Flies are hardy, medium-sized flies in the Order Diptera, with a body length ranging from 4.0 to 10.0 mm. This species is one of the most satisfying fossils to collect in the Eocene deposits of Princeton, British Columbia.

The body is black, brown, or rusty, and thickset, with thick legs. The antennae are moniliform. The front tibiae bear large strong spurs or a circlet of spines. The tarsi are five-segmented and bear tarsal claws, pulvilli, and a well-developed empodium. As it is with many species, these guys included, the teens of this species are troublesome but the adults turn out alright. As larvae, Bibionidae is an agricultural pest, devouring all those tasty young seedlings you've just planted.

Then, as they mature their tastes turn to the nectar of flowers from fruit trees and la voila, they become your best friends again. With their physical and behavioural transformation complete, Bibionidae becomes a welcome garden visitor, pulling their weight in the ecosystems they live in by being important pollinators.

Wednesday 25 September 2019

GIANT GROUND SLOTH

In 1788, this magnificent specimen of a Megatherium sloth was sent to the Royal Cabinet of Natural History from the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata.

The megaterios were large terrestrial sloths belonging to the group, Xenarthra. These herbivores inhabited large areas of land on the American continent. Their powerful skeleton enabled them to stand on their hind legs to reach leaves high in the trees, a huge advantage given the calories needed to be consumed each day to maintain their large size.

Avocados were one of the food preferences of our dear Giant ground sloths. They ate then pooped them out, spreading the pits far and wide. The next time you enjoy avocado toast, thank this large beastie. One of his ancestors may have had a hand (or butt) in your meal.

In 1788, Bru assembled the skeleton as you see it here. It is exhibited at the Museo Nacional De Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain, in its original configuration for historic value. If you look closely, you'll see it is not anatomically correct. But all good paleontology is teamwork. Based upon the drawings of Juan Bautista Bru, George Cuvier used this specimen to describe the species for the very first time.

Tuesday 24 September 2019

MIDDLE TRIASSIC AMMONOID & BELEMNITE

A beautiful plate with a lovely example of the Middle Triassic ammonoid and belemnite from Fossil Hill in the Humboldt Mountains of Nevada. This locality is perhaps the most famous and important locality for the Middle Triassic (Anisian/Ladinian) of North America.

This was the site of the 1905 Expedition of the University of California’s Department of Geology in Berkeley funded by the beautiful and bold, Annie Alexander, the women to whom the UCMP owes both its collection and existence. J. P. Smith joined the expedition, though he was interested in the invertebrate fauna, not the mighty marine reptiles that helped get the project funded.

J.P. Smith published on the marine fauna in the early 1900s. They formed the basis for his monograph on North American Middle Triassic marine invertebrate fauna published in 1914.

N. J. Siberling from the US Geological Survey published on these outcrops in 1962. His work included nearly a dozen successive ammonite faunas, many of which were variants on previously described species. Evidently, his collections consisted mainly of weathered material and were made without stratigraphic control because he believed that most, if not all, of these species, were coexistent. The fossiliferous beds found here, as well as localities in north-western Nevada, were designated the 'Daonella dubia' zone. Dubious would be closer to the truth. Smith joined the 1905 Expedition of the University of California’s Department of Geology in Berkeley funded by the beautiful and bold, Annie Alexander, the women to whom the UCMP owes both its collection and existence.

Monday 23 September 2019

AN ANCIENT MARINE LINEAGE

Life on Earth began in the oceans more than 3.5 billion years ago. That means that all of us, all of our homo sapien sapien brethren and every living thing on the planet is a  descendant of a marine organism.

Knowing that we share an ancient history with every living species is rather humbling. While we diverged early on from cats, dogs, frogs and birds, we share a history and proud lineage with all the vertebrates alive today.

I was up hunting for trilobites near Cranbrook and came across a graptolite. It looked like a wee pen mark on a bit of rock. It too is one of our relatives and one of the earliest. So how did vertebrates go from worm-like marine animals like Metaspriggina, to the modern diversity of forms?

Friday 20 September 2019

CRETACEOUS NAUTILUS OF MEXICO

A picture-perfect Campanian nautilus, Eutrophoceras irritilansis,
who lived during the Upper Cretaceous (late Campanian) near the town of Porvenir de Jalpa (about 64 km / 40 miles west of Saltillo) in what is now southern Coahuila (formerly Coahuila de Zaragoza), northern Mexico. Collection of Jose Ventura.

Thursday 19 September 2019

FERGUSON HILL, NEVADA

Ferguson Hill contains the most complete macrofossil record spanning the Triassic-Jurassic boundary in North America. The ammonoids from the uppermost Triassic can be traced to the boundary and the earliest ammonites (Psiloceratids) can be seen right at the base of the Jurassic (Hettangian).

It was in contention for the Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) defining the base of the Jurassic System, Lower Jurassic Series and Hettangian Stage. However, in 2008, the Kuhjoch (Karwendel Mountains, Northern Calcareous Alps, Tyrol, Austria) was chosen over Ferguson Hill mainly because the beds containing the oldest Psiloceras (P. spelae spelae) were better preserved and contained Hettangian microfossils.

Wednesday 18 September 2019

ROCKY MOUNTAIN COUGAR

Cougars are meat-eating mammals (primarily dining on deer) who boast being the most widely distributed land mammal in the Western Hemisphere. They are impressive athletes, able to leap 18 feet or more straight upward from a sitting position.

They lead solitary lives and are excellent at avoiding humans for the most part. Cougars have a massive range that runs from the mountainous Canadian Rockies in northwestern Canada all the way down to Patagonia in South America. These cats make their dens in mountain graggs, along rocky ledges, in dense woodland areas and under uprooted trees and debris.

Monday 16 September 2019

FOSSIL RELIC: AMIIFORMES

This well-preserved fossil fish skull is from Calamopleurus (Agassiz, 1841), an extinct genus of bony fishes related to the heavily armoured ray-finned gars.

They are fossil relics, the sole surviving species of the order Amiiformes. Although bowfins are highly evolved, they are often referred to as primitive fishes and living fossils as they retain many of the morphologic characteristics of their ancestors.

This specimen was found in Lower Cretaceous outcrops of the Santana Formation in the Araripe Basin UNESCO Global Geopark of northeastern Brazil. Collection of David Murphy

Sunday 15 September 2019

NOTOCHORDS: CHORDATES TO CALAMARI

You and I are vertebrates, we have backbones. Having a backbone or spinal column is what sets apart you, me and almost 70,000 species on this big blue planet.

So which lucky ducks evolved one? Well, ducks for one. Warm-blooded birds and mammals cheerfully claim those bragging rights. They're joined by our cold-blooded, ectothermic friends, the fish, amphibians and reptiles. All these diverse lovelies share this characteristic.

And whether they now live at sea or on land, all of these lineages evolved from a marine organism somewhere down the line, then went on to develop a notochord and spinal column. Notochords are flexible rods that run down the length of chordates and vertebrates. They are handy adaptations for muscle attachment, helping with signalling and coordinating the development of the embryonic stage. The cells from the notochord play a key role in the development of the central nervous system and the formation of motor neurons and sensory cells. Alas, we often take our evolution for granted.

Let's take a moment to appreciate just how marvellous this evolutionary gift is and what it allows us to do. Your backbone gives your body structure, holds up that heavy skull of yours and connects your tasty brain to your body and organs. Eating, walking, fishing, hunting, your morning yoga class, are all made possible because of this adaptation. Pick pretty near anything you love to do and it is only possible because of your blessed spine.

And it sets us apart from our invertebrate friends.

While seventy thousand may seem like a large number, it represents less than three to five per cent of all described animal species. The rest is made up of the whopping 97%'ers, our dear invertebrates who include the arthropods (insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and myriapods), molluscs (our dear chitons, snails, bivalves, squid, and octopus), annelids (the often misunderstood earthworms and leeches), and cnidarians (our beautiful hydras, jellyfish, sea anemones, and corals). You'll notice that many of our invertebrate friends occur as tasty snacks. Having a backbone provides a supreme advantage to your placement in the food chain. Not always, as you may include fish and game on your menu. But generally, having a backbone means you're more likely to be holding the menu versus being listed as an appetizer. So, enjoy your Sunday 'downward dog' and thank your backbone for the magical gift it is.

Saturday 14 September 2019

HEXAGONAL COLUMNS: COOLING BASALT

The Giant's Causeway is a spectacular expanse of interlocking hexagonal basalt columns formed from volcanic eruptions during the Paleocene some 50-60 million years ago.

These columns tell a story of the cooling and freezing of the lava flows that formed them. As lava at the surface cools and freezes, it also shrinks as its molecules rearrange themselves into a solid structure. This happens much more quickly at the surface where the lava comes in contact with moist, cool air. As the basalt cools and shrinks, pressure increases in intensity and cracks begin to form. A way to dissipate this huge stress is to crack at an angle of 120 degrees, the angle that gives us a hexagon.

We see this beautifully illustrated at the Giant's Causeway in Ireland. Here, highly fluid molten basalt intruded through chalk beds which later cooled, contracted and cracked into hexagonal columns, creating a surreal visual against a dark and stormy Irish Sea.

Friday 13 September 2019

DORIPPE SINICA OF JAPAN

A beautiful example of the decapod, Dorippe sinica, from Holocene deposits near Shizuoka, Japan. This regal fellow has a strongly sculptured carapace. He looks like he would have been quite the bruiser moving about on the seafloor looking for tasty snacks. He likely enjoyed just about any form of meat, potentially dining on fish, worms, eggs, squid, starfish or even a few of his slow-moving cousins.

The carapace is deeply grooved with conspicuous wart-like tubercles; anterolateral margin, between the base of the exorbital tooth and cervical groove, smooth, without tubercles or denticles.

The teeth on the lower orbital margin in the cluster. Carpus of cheliped distinctly granulated on the upper surface and with a conspicuous row of granules along the anterior margin. Though missing here, the merus of second and third pereiopods are almost cylindrical. (Türkay 1995). This specimen was collected and is the collection of the deeply awesome Takashi Ito of Japan

ARANDASPIDA: AGENTS OF SHIELD

The oldest and most primitive pteraspidomorphs were the Astraspida and the Arandaspida. You'll notice that all three of these taxon names contain 'aspid', which means shield.

These early fishes and many of the Pteraspidomorphi possessed large plates of dermal bone at the anterior end of their bodies. This dermal armour was very common in early vertebrates, but it was lost in their descendants. Arandaspida is represented by two well-known genera: Sacabampaspis, from South America and Arandaspis from Australia. Arandaspis have large, simple, dorsal and ventral head shields. Their bodies were fusiform, which means they were shaped sort of like a spindle, fat in the middle and tapering at both ends. Picture a sausage that is a bit wider near the centre with a crisp outer shell. Image: Tamura (http://spinops.blogspot.com) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19460450

Thursday 12 September 2019

TYAUGHTON FOSSIL EXPOSURES

Our collecting area near the Tyaughton Fossil Exposures, Taseko Lakes, British Columbia, Canada. Tyaughton is kind of like El Dorado. Instead of immeasurable riches in gold, this region of the Chilcotin Mountains holds the treasures of time — bountiful Triassic-Jurassic fossils

TIKTAALIK OF ELLESMERE ISLAND

Tiktaalik was a fish with some advantageous tetrapod-like features that proved to be useful to an adaptation to land. Their head was detached from their shoulder girdle meaning they could lift their heads to take a look around. This was a new adaptation for our marine friends. The bones in the front limb were strong enough and adapted to support their bodies.

Tuesday 10 September 2019

PAKICETUS: UNLIKELY WHALES

The unlikely creature bearing the title of "the first whale," is a fellow named Pakicetus. He is definitely not how we picture whales living today. Pakicetus is an extinct genus of cetaceans that lived about 50 million years ago.

They were mammals and looked like large rodents. They were also quite small by whale standards, reaching about four-feet in length. They ate meat, sometimes fish and are the ancestors of whales, porpoises and dolphins.

The only real clue of their connection to our aquatic friends is the shape of their skulls. Pakicetus had a long skull and an ear bone that is unique to whales. Oddly, they also had ankle bones that share characteristics with some of our even-toed mammals. They lived along the shores of a large shallow sea known as the Tethys. Although rare, there are several examples of mammals heading back to a life at sea. Photo: Kevin Guertin from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada - DSCF1201, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36657302

Monday 9 September 2019

DENMAN ISLAND CONCRETION

Northumberland Fm, Upper Cretaceous Nanaimo Group
A concretion found eroding out of the grey shales at Denman Island.

Thee Upper Cretaceous Nanaimo Group of southwest British Columbia is a >4 km-thick succession consisting mostly of deep marine siliciclastics deposited directly on the Insular Superterrane. As such, this succession has been the focus of several paleomagnetic, isotope geochemistry, paleontology, and sedimentology studies in attempts to elucidate the tectonic history and paleolatitude of the Insular Superterrane and associated entities during the critical time of Nanaimo Group deposition, 90 to 65 million years ago. The upper two-thirds of the succession is continuously and well exposed on Denman and Hornby islands and represents the best example of this part of the succession in the northern half of what we consider the single Nanaimo Basin. A concretion found on the beach at Denman, eroding out of the grey shales of the Upper Cretaceous Nanaimo Group

Sunday 8 September 2019

NOOTKA ISLAND

Nootka Sound, Photo: Dan Bowen
Rugged West Coast VIPS Fossil Field Trip to Late Eocene - Early Oligocene, Hesquiat formation of Nootka Island, west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

The area is known for its exceptional natural beauty and bounty of beautifully preserved decapod fossil specimens. The formation is named for the Hesquiaht people of the Nuu-chah-nulth, of Nootka Sound. The VIPS has led many research expeditions to remote sites on our West Coast. Their efforts have been rewarded with many new species being identified and excellent cooperation with paleontological researchers from around the globe.

Friday 6 September 2019

BIODIVERSITY AT SEA AND ON LAND

Most of the Earth's surface is an ocean. When I think of the Earth, it is our oceans that I picture. Life began there. We began there. Most of the major animal groups can trace their lineage back to the seas and the Cambrian explosion, an orgy of breathtaking species diversification.

Since that time, a shocking half a billion years ago, our seas have played host to an astonishing array of species. If I'd visited our Earth back in the Cambrian, I would have bet good money that our watery planet's future was in the seas not on the land. But that 's not the case. Quite surprisingly, it is our humble rock and soil who now boast more species. Five times that of those living in the oceans. I know, shocking but true. Our oceans certainly had the running start on both numbers and diversity of species. But it is our fungi, our flowering plants, mindblowing variety of insects, trees, bees and fleas that make up the bulk of Earth's species these days.

It is something I'm interested in learning more about as it does not make good sense to me. 80 percent of Earth's species live on land today. About 15 percent call our oceans home and another 5% or so live in freshwater. Why more species live on land than in the ocean has puzzled others as well. Robert May, a zoologist at the University of Oxford, mulls this very question in an article from 1994 titled, “Biological Diversity: Differences between Land and Sea.” He continued with his research and published "The future of biological diversity in a crowded world," in Current Science, Vol. 82, No. 11 (10 June 2002), pp. 1325-1331.

Here he questions how well we know the plants, animals and micro-organisms with which we share this beautiful planet. His focus in the paper was to question how many species are there and how fast are some going extinct? You'll be interested to know that his best guess in 2002 was somewhere between 1.7 to 1.8 million. That's a considerable increase from Carl Linneaus' work back in 1758, the Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician took a stab at the same question and came up with an estimate of about 9,000 species. While his numbers were off by a long margin, he did give us the binomial nomenclature system we use for naming organisms, so he still gets a hall pass.

May is a boy about town. His work is referenced everywhere. You may enjoy an article by the Atlantic from 2017 that delves into the topic for the lay audience with an eye to popularized reading. May, R. (2002). The future of biological diversity in a crowded world. Current Science, 82(11), 1325-1331. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24105996 / The Atlantic article: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/07/why-are-there-so-many-more-species-on-land-than-in-the-sea/533247/

Wednesday 4 September 2019

FAVRET CANYON

Favret Canyon is considered one of the most important locations for the Middle Triassic (Anisian-Ladinian). It is a beautiful, yet desolate country. The roads are rough and the exposures are weathered out. The mountains bring a moodiness to the landscape and impact the weather.

We had stormy clouds, rain, sun, and afternoons of wind while walking through time and collecting marine fauna.

Tuesday 3 September 2019

PRIMITIVE FISH OF THE CHENGJIANG LAGERSTÄTTE

Three genera of Lower Cambrian fish are known from the 530 million-year-old Chengjiang Lagerstätte in Yuxi, Yunnan Province, southern China. The locality is just north of Fuxian Lake and about a half-hour drive south from the city of Kunming.
  • Haikouichthys ercaicunensis
  • Myllokunmingia fengjiaoa
  • Zhongjianichthys rostratus
The first two of these are fusiform in shape, whereas the third is eel-like. Myllokunnmingial and Haikouichthys have fusiform bodies and pairs of large eyes within the dorso-anterior lobe. Zhongjianichthys has eyes behind the dorso-anterior lobe.

A friend of mine, Eldon Grupp from the USA, found an 18 mm specimen on a mortality slab of Haikouella from Chengjiang. Apparently, no one had noticed it before shipping. Not surprising as Zhongjianichthys are easy to overlook. I've asked him if I can get a photo of that mortality plate to share with you. It's quite stunning. Haikouella, of course, are not vertebrates, but advanced craniate chordates. The specimen in question, however, was a vertebrate. Eldon has assigned this specimen to genus Zhongjianichthys based on its eel-like characteristics and its large eyes located behind the anterior or rostral lobe instead of within it. Even so, family affiliation is uncertain.

Monday 2 September 2019

SIRENIA: MANATEES AND DUGONGS

I'd always grouped the dugongs and manatees together. There are slight differences between these two groups. Both groups belong to the order Sirenia. They shared a cousin in the Steller's sea cow, Hydrodamalis gigas, but that piece of their lineage was hunted to extinction by our species in the 18th century. Dugongs have tail flukes with pointed tips and manatees have paddle-shaped tails, similar to a Canadian Beaver.

Both of these lovelies from the order Sirenia went from terrestrial to marine, taking to the water in search of more prosperous pastures, as it were.

They are the extant and extinct forms of the oddball manatees and dugongs. They inhabit rivers and shallow coastal waters, making the best use of their fusiform bodies that lack dorsal fins and hind limbs. I've been thinking about them in the context of some of the primitive armoured fish we find in the Chengjiang biota of China, specifically those primitive species that were also fusiform.

We find dugongs today in waters near northern Australia and parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. They favour locations where seagrass, their food of choice, grows plentiful and they eat it roots and all. While seagrass low in fibre, high in nitrogen and easily digestible is preferred, dugongs will also dine on lower grade seagrass, algae and invertebrates should the opportunity arise. They've been known to eat jellyfish, sea squirts and shellfish over the course of their long lives. Some of the oldest dugongs have been known to live 70+ years, which is another statistic I find surprising. They are large, passive, have poor eyesight and look pretty tasty floating in the water; a defenceless floating buffet. Their population is in decline but yet they live on.


Sunday 1 September 2019

THE LURE OF THE SEA

Many land animals have returned to the sea throughout evolutionary history. We have beautifully documented cases from amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals from over 30 different lineages over the past 250 million years.

Our dear penguins, seals, sea lions, walruses, whales, crocodiles and sea turtles were once entirely terrestrial. Some dipped a toe or two into freshwater ponds, but make no mistake, they were terrestrial. Each of these animals had ancestors that tried out the sea and decided to stay. They evolved and employed a variety of adaptations to meet their new saltwater challenges. Some adapted legs as fins, others became more streamlined, and still, others developed specialized organs to extract dissolved oxygen from the water through their skin or gills. The permutations are endless.

Returning to the sea comes with a whole host of benefits but some serious challenges as well. Life at sea is very different from life on land. Water is denser than air, impacting how an animal moves, sees and hears. More importantly, it impacts an air-breathing animal's movement on a pretty frequent basis. If you need air and haven't evolved gills, you need to surface frequently. Keeping your body temperature at a homeostatic level is also a challenge as water conducts heat much better than air. Even with all of these challenges, the lure of additional food sources and freedom of movement kept those who tried the sea in the sea and they evolved accordingly.

This is an interesting article from Alicia Ault writing for the Smithsonian who interviewed Nick Pysenson and Neil Kelley about some of their research that touches on this area. They published a paper on it in the journal Science back in 2015.

Here's the link: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6232/aaa3716

And Ault's work is definitely worth a read: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/take-deep-dive-reasons-land-animals-moved-seas-180955007/

Saturday 31 August 2019

DEVONIAN JAWLESS FISH

Armoured Agnatha / Photo: Fossilero Fisher
This lovely specimen is an armoured agnatha jawless bony fish, Victoraspis longicornualis, from Lower Devonian deposits of Podolia, Ukraine.

Victoraspis longicornualis was named by Anders Carlsson and Henning Bloom back in 2008. The new osteostracan genus and species were described based on material from Rakovets' present-day Ukraine. This new taxon shares characteristics with the two genera Stensiopelta (Denison, 1951) and Zychaspis (Javier, 1985).

Agnatha is a superclass of vertebrates. This fellow looks quite different from our modern Agnatha, who include lamprey and hagfish. Ironically, hagfish are vertebrates who do not have vertebrae. Sometime in their evolution they lost them as they adapted to their environment.

Ref: Carlsson, A. & Blom, H. Paläont. Z. (2008) 82: 314. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02988898

Friday 30 August 2019

ANDROGYNOCERAS OF YORKSHIRE

A stunning example of the ammonite Androgynoceras from the Yorkshire Coast, England.

The Geology of Yorkshire in northern England shows a very close relationship between the major topographical areas and the geological period in which their rocks were formed. The rocks of the Pennine chain of hills in the west are of Carboniferous origin whilst those of the central vale is Permo-Triassic.

The North York Moors in the north-east of the county are Jurassic in age while the Yorkshire Wolds to the south east are Cretaceous chalk uplands. The plain of Holderness and the Humberhead levels both owe their present form to the Quaternary ice ages. The strata become gradually younger from west to east. Much of Yorkshire presents heavily glaciated scenery as few places escaped the direct or indirect impact of the great ice sheets as they first advanced and then retreated during the last ice age. This beauty is in the collection of the deeply awesome Harry Tabiner.

Wednesday 28 August 2019

FLAT CLAMS: BIOCHRONOLOGICAL MACROFOSSILS

Paper clams or 'flat clams' were widespread in the Triassic. We call these bivalves 'flat clams' because of their very thin shell width and narrow valve convexity. They often dominate the rocks in which they are found, as in these specimens from Pine Pass near Chetwynd in the Foothills of northeastern British Columbia.

Pine Pass is part of the Pardonet Formation. Just a short hike from the road we were able to easily find the abundant outcroppings of the paper clam, Monotis subcircularis, perfectly preserved and cemented in this strata from the Late Triassic. Because of their widespread distribution and very high species turnover rates, they make for excellent biochronological macrofossils, helping us to correlate biological events through time.

Tuesday 27 August 2019

MCABEE FOSSIL BEDS: EOCENE KAMLOOPS GROUP

The McAbee Fossil Beds are known for their incredible abundance, diversity and quality of fossils including lovely plant, insect and fish species that lived in an old lake bed setting 52-53 million years ago.

It is one of the best local sites in the province to experience a fossil dig first-hand. It's an easy 4-hour drive from Vancouver and easily done as a rather longish day trip. I headed up there this past weekend with some wonderful enthusiastic crew. 

The site was designated a Provincial Heritage Site under British Columbia's Heritage Conservation Act in July of 2012. The site was reopened to public tours and viewing this summer with plans to build out a visitor's centre and educational programs in the future.

We were greeted on the day by two wonderful hosts from the Bonaparte Band, Gayle Pierro and Leroy Antoine. Both were very welcoming and informative, sharing the lay of the land, a bit of their history with the workings and offering us a guided tour. 

From the road, it is a short drive up to the first staging area that houses visitor parking and a public washroom. The first Site Information station is a short stroll away and includes a tent with a table and maps showing plans for the site. Here, Gayle walked us through the vision for McAbee and showed us a selection of some of the species found here. 

We were asked to stop back on the way down and fill out a survey that asked about our experience and provide feedback that will help shape what McAbee is to become. A short hike up the hill towards the hoodoos leads to another staging area. Here, Leroy was our host and guide. He shared a bit more about the geology of the area and showed us specimens found over the summer.

As McAbee is a Heritage Site, their only request was that we stay within the marked area and trails and keep ourselves safe. Here safe means hydrated, shaded from the sun and avoiding both the resident rattlesnakes and cacti. McAbee offers an excellent opportunity for education and outreach both for locals and the larger community. It was very enjoyable to see the reactions of those visiting the site as they took in the wonderful diversity of fossil species and learning about the local history from our hosts.

The Province is committed to providing access to the site to scientists and the lay public. The direction on what happens next at McAbee is being driven by the Heritage Branch in consultation with members of the Shuswap Nation and Bonaparte Band. Bonaparte's traditional territory is located within the Shuswap Nation. Local members of the Bonaparte Band are Secwepemc. They would like to share the spiritual significance of the area from a Secwepemc First Nation perspective and see McAbee as an indigenous tourism destination. So it looks like it will be paleontology, archaeology with a cultural focus to add spice. In any case, fossil viewing, and hopefully supervised collecting will continue with oversight to ensure significant fossil finds make their way to science.

It would be good to see McAbee take a page out of the Courtney and District Museum's playbook. You'll recall that it was the Puntledge Elasmosaur that sparked the expansion of that museum and inspired a whole host of outreach and educational programs. The Courtenay Museum has been offering paid guided tours to the elasmosaur heritage site for over a dozen years. 

They are members of the British Columbia Paleontological Alliance (BCPA), a union of professional and amateur paleontological organizations working to advance the science of paleontology in the province by fostering public awareness, scientific collecting and education, and by promoting communication among all those interested in fossils. Within that context, the Courtenay Museum are bound both by the BCPA constitution and bylaws, and of course, the laws around fossil collecting in British Columbia.

One of the sister sites to McAbee, the Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park Fossil Beds, offers an honours system for their site. Visitors may handle and view fossils but are asked to not take them home. Both Driftwood Canyon and McAbee are part of an arc of Eocene lakebed sites that extend from Smithers in the north, down to the fossil site of Republic Washington, in the south. The grouping includes the fossil sites of Driftwood Canyon, Quilchena, Allenby, Tranquille, McAbee, Princeton and Republic. Each of these localities provides important clues to our ancient climate.

The fossils range in age from Early to Middle Eocene. McAbee had a more temperate climate, slightly cooler and wetter than other Eocene sites to the south at Princeton, British Columbia, Republic in north-central Washington, in the Swauk Formation near Skykomish and the Chuckanut Formation of northern Washington state. The McAbee fossil beds consist of 30 metres of fossiliferous shale in the Eocene Kamloops Group.

The fossils are preserved here as impressions and carbonaceous films. We see gymnosperm (16 species); a variety of conifers (14 species to my knowledge); two species of ginkgo, a large variety of angiosperm (67 species); a variety of insects and fish remains, the rare feather and a boatload of mashed deciduous material. Nuts and cupules are also found from the dicotyledonous Fagus and Ulmus and members of the Betulaceae, including Betula and Alnus.

We see many species that look very similar to those growing in the Pacific Northwest today. Specifically, cypress, dawn redwood, fir, spruce, pine, larch, hemlock, alder, birch, dogwood, beech, sassafras, cottonwood, maple, elm and grape. If we look at the pollen data, we see over a hundred highly probable species from the site. Though rare, McAbee has also produced spiders, birds (and lovely individual feathers) along with multiple specimens of the freshwater crayfish, Aenigmastacus crandalli.

For insects, we see dragonflies, damselflies, cockroaches, termites, earwigs, aphids, leafhoppers, spittlebugs, lacewings, a variety of beetles, gnats, ants, hornets, stick insects, water striders, weevils, wasps and March flies. The insects are particularly well-preserved. Missing are the tropical Sabal (palm), seen at Princeton and the impressive Ensete (banana) and Zamiaceae (cycad) found at Eocene sites in Republic and Chuckanut, Washington.

McAbee is located just east of Cache Creek, just north of and visible from Highway 1/97. 14.5 km to be exact and exactly the distance you need to drink one large coffee and then need a washroom. You'll be pleased to know they have installed one at the site. McAbee is a site for hiking boots, hand, head and eye protection. They have a few resident rattlesnakes and prickly cacti to keep you on your toes. Keep yourself safe and well-hydrated.

As you drive up, you'll see telltale hoodoos on the ridge to let you know you've reached the right spot. If you have a GPS, pop in these coordinates and you're on your way. 50°47.831′N 121°8.469′W.