STYXOSAURUS: ELASMO-TERROR OF ANCIENT SEAS

Styxosaurus, one of the large plesiosaurs in the family Elasmosauridae, takes on a giant octopus. 

Styxosaurus was an elasmosaur that appeared in the Late Cretaceous. 

The holotype specimen of Styxosaurus snowii was described by S.W. Williston from a complete skull and 20 vertebrae. Elasmosaurs typically have a neck that is at least half the length of the body, composed of 60-72 vertebrae.

They were very successful hunters, outcompeting ichthyosaurs who thrived in the Triassic but were replaced in the Jurassic and Cretaceous by these new aquatic beasties. 

Our ancient seas teemed with these predatory marine reptiles with their long necks and barrel-shaped bodies. Styxosaurus was around 11 metres (36 ft) long — and true to its family Elasmosauridae — about half of the length being composed of its 5.25 metres (17.2 ft) neck. Its sharp teeth were conical and were adapted to puncture and hold rather than to cut; like other plesiosaurs. 

Styxosaurus preferred to gulp down their food whole. They may have taken bits and pieces of a giant octopus similar to the one depicted but would have likely preferred a smaller prey that could be swallowed in one go.

ANCIENT MARINE PREDATORS: PLESIOSAURS

Plesiosaurus were a large, carnivorous air-breathing marine reptile with strong jaws and sharp teeth that moved through the water with four flippers. 

We see them arise in the fossil record some 203 million years ago and then go extinct 66 million years ago.

We had originally thought that this might not be the most aerodynamic design but it was clearly effective as they used the extra set to create a wee vortex that aided in their propulsion. 

In terms of mechanical design, they have a little something in common with an unlikely favourite of mine — dragonflies.

We have recreated plesiosaur movements and discovered that they were able to optimize propulsion to make use of their own wake. As their front flippers paddled in big circular movements, the propelled water created little whirlpools under their bellies. The back flippers would then paddle between these whirlpools pushing the plesiosaur forward to maximal effect. This use of air currents is similar to how dragonflies move through the air. 

They were very successful hunters, outcompeting ichthyosaurs who thrived in the Triassic but were replaced in the Jurassic and Cretaceous by these new aquatic beasties. 

Our ancient seas teemed with these predatory marine reptiles with their long necks and barrel-shaped bodies. Plesiosaurs were smaller than their pliosaur cousins, weighing in at about 450 kg or 1,000 lbs and reaching about 4.5 metres or 15 feet in length. For a modern comparison, they were roughly twice as long as a standard horse or about as long as a good size hippo.

CANADOCERAS YOKOYAMAI: HASLAM FORMATION

A lovely chunky slate grey handful of an ammonite is Canadoceras yokoyamai from Upper Cretaceous (Early Campanian) outcrops in the Haslam Formation of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. 

This gorgeous ammonite was found by Tim O'Bear and is now in the collections of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS), a regional paleontological society based in Courtenay.

This meaty cephalopod swam and hunted in our ancient oceans 80-84 million years ago and was once a leading candidate as the provincial fossil of British Columbia — an honour won by Shonisaurus sikanniensis.

The species is named for Matajirō Yokoyama, Professor of Geology and Palaeontology at the Imperial University of Tokyo, Japan. 

Yokoyama was born in the Nagasaki Prefecture on the 14th of June 1860 — the day slavery was abolished in the Neth Indies and the year Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States — a move that would lead to the beginning of the US Civil War the following year.

During his early life, the Meiji Restoration would begin the process of transforming Japan into a global imperial power. During the Restoration, Japan rapidly industrialized, adopting Western ideas and production methods. This shift in the cultural focus of his nation allowed him to pursue his studies in science — something encouraged in an emerging nation.

Matajirō Yokoyama (1860-1942)

Yokoyama did some wonderful work on the Cretaceous of Japan and opened up our understanding of the species on Vancouver Island. 

Through his research, we learned of the Japanese fauna and the extent of their occurrence. The range of Canadoceras yokoyamai extended from Alaska, the eastern coast of Vancouver Island, California to Santonian outcrops in the Yezo Group of Hokkaido in Japan’s northern islands. 

Within the Yezo Group, we find Canadoceras yokoyami amongst other ammonites, bivalves — and some wonderful marine reptiles — both mosasaurs and marine turtles.

Given that Canadoceras yokoyami arose, lived and died in a relatively short time frame — geologically speaking — they make excellent Index fossils. They can act as guides as to the age of the rocks in which they are preserved. This is helpful in the field. 

If you were to find a fossil in a rock of unknown age, you can look at the species and guess with relative certainty what age that rock likely is. 

References:

Matsumoto, T., 1954a [for 1953]: The Cretaceous system in the Japanese islands., pp. i–xiv + 1–324, pls. 1–20. The Japanese Society for the Promotion of Scientific Research, Ueno, Tokyo. (Reference No. 0219)

Tanabe, K., Ito, Y., Moriya, K. and Sasaki, T., 2000: Database of Cretaceous ammonite specimens registered in the Department of Historical Geology and Paleontology of the University Museum, University of Tokyo. The University Museum, The University of Tokyo, Material Reports, no. 37, pp. i–iv + 1–509. (Reference No. 0879)

Photo: Matajirō Yokoyama, Professor of Geology, Palaeontology and Mineralogy. 日本語: 横山又次郎 地質学古生物学及鉱物学教授 Tokyo Teikoku Daigaku (Imperial University of Tokyo). Ogawa Shashin Seihanjo, 1900 (reprint, Ryūkei Shosha, 2004).

OCEAN SUNFISH: MOLA MOLA

Mola mola (Linnaeus, 1758)

The massive docile ocean sunfish or common mola, Mola mola (Linnaeus, 1758) is one of the two heaviest known bony fish in the world — the other being the southern sunfish of the same genus. 

As a family, Molidae emerged between 45 million and 35 million years ago, well after the dinosaurs disappeared and at a time when whales still had legs. 

A group of pufferfishes — the kissing cousins to the Mola we know today and built like little tanks — left the safety of the coral reefs for the open ocean. 

They evolved and gave rise to Mola about 23 – 20.4 million years ago. These were followed by their still extant cousins, the Ranzania, 16 – 13.8 million years ago. The third genus of extant sunfish, Masturus, has not been identified in the fossil record (Carnevale et al. 2020) though we will keep looking and put that puzzle piece in its place in time.

When they are born, dozens would fit in the palm of your hand — each roughly the size of a pea. When they are youngsters, they are very curious and will swim up to you to take a wee nibble to figure out what you are. My mother had such a harmless bite when she was travelling as a girl. The bite left a tooth embedded in her leg that worked its way out a few weeks later. Not in any way perturbed, she speaks of her encounter fondly. 

As they grow, Mola take on a very roundish look and grow to a massive 247 to 1,000 kg (544 to 2,204 lbs) — that's one and a half times the size of a typical cow and bigger than a Grizzly Bear. The heaviest specimen on record is a bump-head sunfish, Mola alexandrini, caught off Kamogawa, Chiba, Japan, in 1996. It weighed 2,300 kilograms (5,070 pounds) and measured 2.72 metres (8 feet 11 inches) long.

The sheer size and thick skin of an adult of the species deter many smaller predators, but younger fish are vulnerable to predation by bluefin tuna and mahi-mahi. 

Adults are often consumed as tasty snacks by orca, sharks and sea lions — and sadly, by humans, particularly those from Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Fortunately, the EU has banned the sale of common mola and others within the family Molidae. 

Of all the fish we have in our oceans, the common mola or sunfish has the most names I have ever come across. 

Many of the sunfish's various names allude to its round, flattened, moonish or millstone shape. Its scientific name, mola, is Latin for millstone. It is a rather good choice as the fish resembles a millstone you might use for grinding grain, in part because of its grey colour, rough texture, and rounded body. 

Its English name, sunfish, refers to the animal's habit of enjoying the sun's rays as it basks near the surface. Its common names in Dutch, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Russian, Greek, Norwegian, and German — maanvis, peixe lua, Poisson lune, pez luna, peix lluna, Pesce luna, рыба-луна, φεγγαρόψαρο, månefisk and Mondfisch, respectively — mean moonfish, in reference to its round moonish shape. 

In German or auf Deutsch, the common mola is also known as Schwimmender Kopf or swimming head. In Polish, it is named samogłów, meaning head alone or only head, because it lacks a true tail. In Swedish, Danish and Norwegian it is known rather unflatteringly as klumpfisk, in Dutch klompvis, in Finnish möhkäkala — all of which mean lump fish. 

The Chinese translation of its name is fān chē yú 翻車魚, meaning toppled wheel fish — perhaps as a wee homage to the original Latin mola or millstone. 

By any name, we find these gentle giants cruising through tropical and temperate waters around the world where they have thrived for many millions of years.

PHRAGMOTEUTHIS CONOCAUDA

Phragmoteuthis conocauda

A superb specimen of Phragmoteuthis conocauda, (Quenstedt, 1846-49). These ancient marine lovelies had an internal phragmocone and ten arms.

Phragmoteuthis is a genus of extinct coleoid cephalopod known from the late Triassic to the Lower Jurassic. Its soft tissue has been preserved wonderfully. Some rare specimens contain intact ink sacs, arm hooks, and others, gills.

There are some wonderful specimens from the Carnian, Late Triassic outcrops near Lunz, in Lower Austria with wee arm hooks and ink sacs, though the ink now looks like an agglomerate of grains. 

In Toarcian deposits in Southwestern Germany, we find fragments of Phracmoteuthis concocauda with bits of gill preserved. They look remarkably like the gills of octopod and vampyromorph colcoids.

Palaeontologist Jurji (Jura) Jeletzky characterized phragmoteuthids as having a large tripartite, fanlike pro-ostracum forming the longest portion of the shell, attached to about three-quarters of the circumference of a comparatively small breviconic phragmocone with short camerae and superficially belemnitid-like siphuncle.

Add that to an absent or much-reduced rostrum at the apical part of the phragmocone, belemnite-like arm hooks, an ink sack, beaks resembling those of recent teuthids, and a muscular mantle.

Think early squid. These are their great great grandparents. 

This specimen is in the collections of the University of Oslo Natural History Museum, Norway's oldest and largest museum of natural history in the lovely neighbourhood of Tøyen near Grünerløkka in Oslo. If you visit, check out the nearby Munch Museum to see some of Edvard Munch's work.

WEST COAST KAYAKING

 

FIRST NATION POLES IN STANLEY PARK

Totem, Welcome & Mortuary Poles at Stanley Park

If you visit Brockton Point in Stanley Park, there are many carved red cedar First Nation poles for you to admire.  

What you are viewing are replicas of First Nation welcome and totem poles that once stood in the park but have been returned to their homes within the province's diverse First Nation communities — or held within museum collections. 

Some of the original totems came from Alert Bay on Cormorant Island, near the Port McNeill on the north coast of Vancouver Island. Others came from communities in Haida Gwaii — and still more from the Wuikinuxv First Nations at Rivers Inlet on British Columbia's central west coast — home of the Great Bear Rainforest with her Spirit Bears.

The exception is the most recent addition carved by Robert Yelton in 2009. Robert is a First Nation carver from the Squamish Nation and his original welcome pole graces Brockton Point, the original settlement site of a group of Squamish-Portuguese settlers.  

If you look at the photo above, the lovely chocolate, red and turquoise pole on the right is a replica of the mortuary pole raised to honour the Raven Chief of Skedans or Gida'nsta, the Haida phrase for from his daughter, the title of respect used when addressing a person of high rank. Early fur traders often took the name of the local Chief and used it synonymously as the place names for the sites they visited — hence Skedans from Gida'nsta.

Chief Skedans Mortuary Pole

Chief Skedans, or Qa'gials qe'gawa-i, to his children, lived in Ḵ’uuna Llnagaay, or village at the edge, in Xaayda Kil — a village on the exposed coast of Louise Island — now a Haida Heritage Site.  

There are some paintings you may have seen by Emily Carr of her visits to the site in 1912, She used the phonetic Q'una from Q:o'na to describe both the place name and title of her work. 

Carr's paintings of the totems have always looked to me to be a mash-up — imagine if painter Tamara de Lempicka and photographer Edward Curtis had a baby — not pretty, but interesting.

Some called this area, Huadju-lanas or Xu'adji la'nas, which means Grizzly-Bear-Town, in reference to resident grizzly bear population and their adornment of many totems and artwork by the local artists.

Upon Chief Skedan's death, the mortuary pole was carved both to honour him and provide his final resting place. Dates are a bit fuzzy, but local accounts have this as sometime between 1870-1878 — and at a cost of 290 blankets or roughly $600 in today's currency. 

The great artistry of the pole was much admired by those in the community and those organizing the celebrations for the 1936 Vancouver Golden Jubilee — witnessed by  350,000 newly arrived residents.

Negotiations were pursued and the pole made its way down from Haida Gwaii to Stanley Park in time for the celebrations. The original totem graced Stanley Park for a little over twenty years before eventually making its way back to Haida Gwaii. It was returned to the community with bits of plaster and shoddy paint marring the original. These bits were scraped off and the pole welcomed back with due ceremony. 

In 1964, respected and renowned Northwest Coast master carver, Bill Reid, from the Kaadaas gaah Kiiguwaay, Raven/Wolf Clan of T'anuu, Haida Gwaii and Scottish-German descent, was asked to carve this colourful replica. 

Mountain Goat Detail, Skedans Mortuary Pole

Reid carved the totem onsite in Stanley Park with the help of German carver Werner True. Interestingly, though I looked at length for information on Werner True, all I can find is that he aided Bill Reid on the carving for a payment of $1000.

Don Yeomans, Haida master carver, meticulously recarved the moon crest in 1998. If you have admired the totem pole in the Vancouver Airport, you will have seen some of Yeoman's incredible work. 

The crest is Moon with the face, wings, legs and claws of a mighty and proud Thunderbird with a fairly smallish hooked beak in a split design. We have Moon to thank for the tides and illuminating our darkest nights. As a crest, Moon is associated with transformation and acting as both guardian and protector.

The original pole had a mortuary box that held the Chief's remains. The crest sits atop a very charming mountain goat. I have included a nice close-up here of the replica for you to enjoy. 

Mountain Goats live in the high peaks of British Columbia and being so close to the sky, they have the supernatural ability to cross over to the sky world. They are also credited as being spirit guardians and guides to First Nation shamans.

I love his horns and tucked in cloven hooves. There is another pole being carved on Vancouver Island that I hope to see during its creation that also depicts a Mountain Goat. With permission and in time, I hope to share some of those photos with you. 

Mountain Goat is sitting atop Grizzly Bear or Huaji or Xhuwaji’ with little human figures placed in his ears to represent the Chief's daughter and son-in-law, who raised the pole and held a potlatch in his honour. 

Beneath the great bear is Seal or Killer Whale in his grasp. The inscription in the park says it is a Killer Whale but I am not sure about that interpretation — both the look and lore make Seal more likely. Perhaps if Killer Whale were within Thunderbird's grasp — maybe. 

Though it is always a pleasure to see Killer Whale carved in red cedar, as the first whales came into being when they were carved in wood by a human — or by Raven — then magically infused with the gift of life.

Siwash Rock on the northern end of Third Beach, Stanley Park

The ground these totems sit upon is composed of plutonic, volcanic and sedimentary layers of rock and exhibits the profound influences of glaciation and glacial retreat from the last ice age. 

Glacial deposits sit atop as a mix of clay, sand, cobbles and larger boulders of glacial till. 

There are a few areas of exposed volcanics within the park that speak to the scraping of the glaciers as they retreated about 12,500 years ago. 

The iconic moss and lichen coated Siwash Rock on the northern end of Third Beach is one of the more picturesque of these. It is a basaltic and andesitic volcanic rock — a blend of black phenocrysts of augite cemented together with plagioclase, hornblende and volcanic glass.

Images not shown: 

Do check out the work of Emily Carr and her paintings of Q:o'na from the 1940s. I'll share a link here but do not have permission to post her works. http://www.emilycarr.org/totems/exhibit/haida/ssintro.htm

STANLEY PARK: HIDDEN HISTORY

Anavitrinella pampinaria / Dan Bowden Photography

A Common grey moth of the family Geometridae. We begin to see them in the fossil record some 200 million years ago. 

These lovelies live in North America from Mexico to Alaska and do a wonderful job at camouflage. 

While not a perfect hiding spot, this fellow has chosen to settle in for the evening on a young yellow cedar tree, Chamaecyparis nootkatensis, in Vancouver's Stanley Park — a 405-hectare urban forest in Vancouver, B.C. that became a provincial park in 1887. 

This area was once the exclusive domain of the Coast Salish First Nations —  xʷmə?kʷəyəm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations until the early 1800s. 

Blending into that mix in the mid-1800s was a group of mixed Portuguese-Squamish settlers who called the eastern shores of the park at Brockton Point home from the mid-1800s to the 1930s. 

Brockton Point. City of Vancouver Archives, CVA 677-228

On the park's northern shores, there were well established Squamish First Nations villages — Whoi Whoi known today as Lumberman's Arch and Chaythos, which we now call Prospect Point. 

There was also a well-established Hawaiian settlement at Kanaka Ranch closer to the park's entrance near Coal Harbour. 

Many individuals from Vancouver's growing Chinese population lived peacefully alongside squirrels, coyotes, racoons and other wildlife within the natural beauty of the park. Enticed to British Columbia by the lure of gold but finding the riches far less than expected, they took to the forest in Stanley Park to make out of the way homes for themselves. That, of course, did not last. All of the residents in and around the newly minted park were ousted with ill regard for their welfare. 

You may know of one of the families, Khatsahlano, from whence my community of Kitsilano gets its name. August Jack Khatsahlano (July 16, 1877 – June 5, 1971), lived in Whoi Whoi alongside eleven other families. August Jack Khatsahlano or X̱ats'alanexw, was born in the village of Xwayxway on the peninsula that is now Stanley Park, Vancouver/Chaythoos, British Columbia.

He was the son of Supple Jack "Khay- Tulk" of Chaythoos and Sally "Owhaywat" from the Yekwaupsum Reserve north of Squamish, British Columbia. His grandfather was Chief Khahtsahlano of Senakw (Snauq or Sun'ahk) who migrated from his home at Toktakanmic on the Squamish River to Chaythoos, from whence he inherited his name. The suffix lan-ogh means man. In an interview with Vancouver's first archivist, Khatsahlano recounts:

Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC

“When they make [the] Stanley Park road, we were eating [breakfast] in our house. Someone make noise outside; chop our house. We were inside the house when the surveyors came along, and they chop the corner of our house while we were eating inside.”

You can imagine taking just what you can carry and walking into the unknown of where you will sleep that night and make a home in the future. It saddens me that we treat people so poorly, historically and now. 

We also treat our wildlife poorly. There are plans to capture and kill the coyotes in Stanley Park today as they are a nuisance to those visiting the park. We might consider that we are a nuisance to them. 

The only real winners in Stanley Park are the trees, birds and insects, including lovelies like this grey moth. In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest and part of my heritage, yellow cedar is dixw, and a moth is ma̱stła̱ḵ̕wa or ma̱stła̱ḵ̕wani. 

The thin, greyish-brown and scaly bark provides a pretty good cover. He was caught unawares and photographed beautifully by the hugely talented, Dan Bowden on a visit to the city.

HETEROMORPH AMMONITE: AINOCERAS

A wee baby deep chocolate Ainoceras sp. heteromorph ammonite from Vancouver Island. This adorable corkscrew-shaped ammonite is an extinct marine mollusc related to squid and octopus.  

Within their shells, they had a number of chambers, called septa, filled with gas or fluid that were interconnected by a wee air tube. By pushing air in or out, they were able to control their buoyancy in the water column. These little cuties were predators who hunted in Cretaceous seas.

They lived in the last chamber of their shells, continuously building new shell material as they grew. As each new chamber was added, the squid-like body of the ammonite would move down to occupy the final outside chamber. 

Not all ammonites have this whacky corkscrew design. Most are coiled and some are even shaped like massive paperclips. This one is so remarkable, so joyously perfect my internal thesaurus can’t keep up.

ABALONE: GWA'LIT'SA

Abalone is the common name for a group of large marine snails — gastropod molluscs in the genus Haliotis, family Haliotidae.

Haliotis once contained six subgenera but these are now grouped together as alternate representations of Haliotis. 

In the Pacific Northwest, our rocky shores are home to the Northern or Pinto abalone, Haliotis kamtschatkana. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, abalone are known as gwa'lit̕sa.

They range from Mexico to Alaska and are the only abalone species found in Washington state, British Columbia and Alaska. Abalone prefer to live amongst the cold waters and high surf of rocky reef habitats. They are easily harvested as their sweet spot is water between 3-18 meters or 10-60 feet deep.  

The shells of abalones have a low, open spiral structure, and are characterized by several open respiratory pores in a row near the shell's outer edge. The thick inner layer of the shell is composed of nacre or mother-of-pearl. Their iridescent nacre is gorgeous and runs from white to blue to green. Both their meat and their shells are highly prized. 

The Northern or Pinto abalone is protected today. Those looking to use the shell for decorative purposes must now look to California or New Zealand. The California abalone is more colourful than its northern cousin and has long been preferred by First Nations artists, particularly for the large earrings favoured by women of rank amongst First Nation clans.

AIOLOCERAS BESAIRIEI: VIPS COLLECTION

Aioloceras besairiei (Collingnon, 1949)

Beauty is a stimulant that is administered through the eyes.

And just look at this beauty. This gorgeous burnt orange and creamy visual feast is the ammonite Aioloceras besairiei (Collingnon, 1949) from the Upper Cretaceous (Lower Albian) Boeny region of Madagascar. 

This is specimen #00783B in the collections of the Vancouver Palaeontological Society, (VIPS). The chambers have a wonderful calcite filling best viewed by carefully slicing these specimens in two. 

There is a small imperfection near the centre that renders this ammonite its signature mark of perfection. This lovely is in my care as a study specimen. 

Madagascar is an island country is about 400 kilometres off the coast of East Africa in the Indian Ocean and a wonderful place to explore off the beaten track. Exotic, beautiful and geologically interesting — it remains high on my bucket list to explore. 

Madagascar has some of the most pleasing of all the fossil specimens I have ever seen. This beauty is no exception. The shell has a generally small umbilicus, arched to acute centre and falcoid ribs that spring in pairs from the umbilical tubercles then disappear on the outer whorls. Take that magical body plan with its pleasing symmetry and add an infilling with spectacular calcite — spectacular! 

It is rightfully Aioloceras besairiei — and correctly labelled as such by the VIPS — but some specimens I have looked at earlier were marked as a Cleoniceras besairiei. This is impossible, of course, as Cleoniceras and Grycia are not present in Madagascar. This lovely, seen in cross-section, is now far from home and in my collection to enjoy for a time before returning to Courtenay on Vancouver Island. 

Aioloceras besairiei are within beudanticeratinae. Cleoniceras and Grycia are the boreal genera. If you would like to see — or argue — the rationale on the name, consider reading Riccardi and Medina's riveting work from back in 2002, or Collingnon from 1949.

The beauty you see here measures in at a whopping 23 cm. It hails from the youngest or uppermost subdivision of the Lower Cretaceous. I had originally thought this locality was older, but dating reveals it to be from the Lower Albian, approximately 113.0 ± 1.0 Ma to 100.5 ± 0.9 Ma. This locality produces ammonites that are beyond measure in their singular beauty. 

Aioloceras are found in the Cretaceous of Madagascar at geo coordinates 16.5° S, 45.9° E: paleo-coordinates 40.5° S, 29.3° E.; and in four localities in South Africa: at locality 36, near the Mzinene River at 28.0° S, 32.3° E: paleo-coordinates 48.6° S, 7.6° E. 

We find them near the Mziene River, at a second locality north of Hluhluwe where the Mzinene Formation overlies the Aptian-Albian Makatini Formation at 28.0° S, 32.3° E: paleo-coordinates 48.6° S, 7.6° E; and at Haughton Z18, on the Pongola River in the Albian III, Tegoceras mosense beds at 27.3° S, 32.2° E: paleo-coordinates 48.0° S, 7.8° E.

If you happen to be trekking to Madagascar, know that it's big. It is 592,800 square kilometres (or  226,917 square miles), making it the fourth-largest island on the planet — bigger than Spain, Thailand, Sweden and Germany. So, enjoy your time and wear comfortable shoes. 

If you are interested in learning more about this species, check out the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part L (Ammonoidea). R.C. Moore (ed). Geological Soc of America and Univ. Kansas Press (1957), p L394. Or head over to look at the 2002 paper from Riccardi and Medina. 2002. Riccardi, A., C. & Medina, F., A. The Beudanticeratinae and Cleoniceratinae (Ammonitina) from the Lower Albian of Patagonia in Revue de Paléobiologie - 21(1) - Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de la ville de Genève, p 313-314 (=Aioloceras besairiei (COLLIGNON, 1949). You have Bertrand Matrion to thank for the naming correction. Good to have friends in geeky places!

Collignon, M., 1933, Fossiles cenomaniens d’Antmahavelona (Province d’ Analalave, Madagascar), Ann. Geol. Serv. Min. Madagascar, III, 1934 Les Cephalopods du Trias inferieur de Madagascar, Ann. Paleont. XXII 3 and 4, XXII 1.

Besairie, H., 1971, Geologie de Madagascar, 1. Les terrains sedimentaires, Ann. Geol. Madagascar, 35, p. 463.

J. Boast A. and E. M. Nairn collaborated on a chapter in An Outline of the Geology of Madagascar, that is very readable and cites most of the available geologic research papers. It is an excellent place to begin a paleo exploration of the island.

If you happen to parle français, check out: Madagascar ammonites: http://www.ammonites.fr/Geo/Madagascar.htm

BLUE DRAGON SEA SLUG

This otherwordly fellow, straight out of a novel, is Glaucus atlanticus — the Blue Dragon Sea Slug. And what an amazing wee little dragon this is. Folk sometimes refer to them as sea swallow, blue angel, blue glaucus, dragon slug, blue dragon, blue sea slug and blue ocean slug. 

By any name, they are a very pleasing addition to our planet. Glaucus atlanticus are a species of small, blue sea slug, a pelagic aeolid nudibranch — a shell-less gastropod mollusc in the family Glaucidae.

Nudibranchs likely date back as far as the Early Jurassic, some180 million years ago. This was around the time that the supercontinent of Pangea was breaking apart to form the modern continents and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The date is an estimate built upon the evolutionary lineages of their closest relatives, in part because the soft-bodied nature of nudibranchs means they do not fossilize well.

These sea slugs are pelagic — they float upside down by using the surface tension of the water to stay up near the surface where they drift along, carried by the winds and ocean currents. Glaucus atlanticus makes use of countershading: the blue side of their body faces upwards, blending in with the blue of the water. The silver/grey side of the sea slugs faces downwards, blending in with the sunlight reflecting on the ocean's surface when viewed facing upwards underwater, helping them avoid becoming a tasty snack.

Glaucus atlanticus feed on other pelagic creatures, including the Portuguese man o' war and other venomous siphonophores. This sea slug stores stinging nematocysts from the siphonophores within its own tissues as a defence against predators. Humans handling the slug may receive a very painful and potentially dangerous sting. Good on you little Dragon!

SERENE SIRENIA

This adorable aquatic vacuum is a dugong. I had always grouped the dugongs and manatees together. There are slight differences between these two but both 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 — similar to whales — 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. 

We find dugongs today in waters near northern Australia and parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. 

They inhabit rivers and shallow coastal waters, making the best use of their fusiform bodies that lack dorsal fins and hind limbs. I have 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.

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 have 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 and yet they live on.

ICE AGE MANATEES

Manatees do not live year-round in Texas, but these gentle sea cows are known to occasionally visit, swimming in for a summer vacation and returning to warmer waters for the winter. 

Interestingly, we have recently found fossil evidence for manatees along the Texas coast dating back to the most recent ice age. 

The discovery raises questions about whether manatees have been visiting for thousands of years, or if an ancient population of ice age manatees once called Texas home.

The findings were published in Palaeontologia Electronica by lead author Christopher Bell, a professor at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences with co-authors Sam Houston State University Natural History Collections curator William Godwin and SHSU alumna Kelsey Jenkins — now a graduate student at Yale University — and SHSU Professor Patrick Lewis.

The eight fossils described in the paper include manatee jawbones and rib fragments from the Pleistocene, the geological epoch of the last ice age. Most of the bones were collected from McFaddin Beach near Port Arthur and Caplen Beach near Galveston during the past 50 years by amateur fossil collectors who donated their finds to the SHSU collections.

The Jackson Museum of Earth History at UT holds two of the specimens. A lower jawbone fossil, which was donated to the SHSU collections by amateur collector Joe Liggio, jumpstarted the research.

Manatee jawbones have a distinct S-shaped curve that immediately caught Godwin's eye. But Godwin said he was met with scepticism when he sought other manatee fossils for comparison. He recalls reaching out to a local fossil enthusiast who told him point-blank, "there are no Pleistocene manatees in Texas."

But an examination of the fossils by Bell and Lewis proved otherwise. The bones belonged to the same species of manatee that visits the Texas coast today, Trichechus manatus. An upper jawbone donated by U.S. Rep. Brian Babin was found to belong to an extinct form of the manatee, Trichechus manatus bakerorum.

The age of the manatee fossils is based on their association with better-known ice age fossils and paleo-Indian artefacts that have been found on the same beaches.

It is assumed that the cooler ice age climate would have made Texas waters even less hospitable to manatees than they are today. But the fact that manatees were in Texas — whether as visitors or residents — raises questions about the ancient environment and ancient manatees. The Texas coast stretched much farther into the Gulf of Mexico and hosted wider river outlets during the ice age than it does today. Either the coastal climate was warmer than is generally thought, or ice age manatees were more resilient to cooler temperatures than manatees of today.

Subsurface imaging of the now flooded modern continental shelf reveals both a greater number of coastal embayments and the presence of significantly wider channels during ice age times.

If there was a population of ice age manatees in Texas, it is entirely plausible that they would have ridden out winters in these warmer river outlets similar to how they do today in Florida and Mexico.

Reference: Christopher Bell, William Godwin, Kelsey Jenkins, Patrick Lewis. First fossil manatees in Texas: Trichechus manatus bakerorum in the Pleistocene fauna from beach deposits along the Texas Coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Palaeontologia Electronica, 2020; DOI: 10.26879/1006

SHORE CRAB: CARCINUS MAENAS / KU'MIS

European Green Shore Crab / Carcinus maenas

The adaptable European Green Shore Crab, Carcinus maenas, lives in a wide range of environments from fully marine to brackish estuaries.

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakiutl First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, this brave fellow is ḵ̓u'mis — and in Norwegian, he is called krabbe.

They make a living off the seafloor, dining on worms, molluscs, small crustaceans and any number of bits and pieces that fall their way.

Shore Crabs are euryhaline, meaning they can tolerate a wide range of salinities (4 to 52 %), and survive in temperatures of zero to 30 °C (32 to 86 °F). This adaptability gives them a very wide range and competitive edge. This fellow is from the chilly waters of central Norway. The ability to eat pretty near anything and survive in extremely cold climates means he'll do quite well beneath the ice this winter.

GULLS: TSIK'WI

A gull cries in protest at not getting his share of a meal

Gulls, or colloquially seagulls, are seabirds of the family Laridae in the suborder Lari. 

The Laridae are known from not-yet-published fossil evidence from the Early Oligocene — 30–33 million years ago. 

Three gull-like species were described by Alphonse Milne-Edwards from the early Miocene of Saint-Gérand-le-Puy, France. 

Another fossil gull from the Middle to Late Miocene of Cherry County, Nebraska, USA, has been placed in the prehistoric genus Gaviota. 

These fossil gulls, along with undescribed Early Oligocene fossils are all tentatively assigned to the modern genus Larus. Among those of them that have been confirmed as gulls, Milne-Edwards' "Larus" elegans and "L." totanoides from the Late Oligocene/Early Miocene of southeast France have since been separated in Laricola.

Gulls are most closely related to the terns in the family Sternidae and only distantly related to auks, skimmers and distantly to waders. 

A historical name for gulls is mews, which is cognate with the German möwe, Danish måge, Swedish mås, Dutch meeuw, Norwegian måke/måse and French mouette. We still see mews blended into the lexicon of some regional dialects.

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, gulls are known as t̕sik̕wi. Most folk refer to gulls from any number of species as seagulls. This name is a local custom and does not exist in the scientific literature for their official naming. Even so, it is highly probable that it was the name you learned for them growing up.

If you have been to a coastal area nearly everywhere on the planet, you have likely encountered gulls. They are the elegantly plumed but rather noisy bunch on any beach. You will recognize them both by their size and colouring. 

Gulls are typically medium to large birds, usually grey or white, often with black markings on the head or wings. They typically have harsh shrill cries and long, yellow, curved bills. Their webbed feet are perfect for navigating the uneven landscape of the foreshore when they take most of their meals. 

Most gulls are ground-nesting carnivores that take live food or scavenge opportunistically, particularly the Larus species. Live food often includes crab, clams (which they pick up, fly high and drop to crack open), fish and small birds. Gulls have unhinging jaws which allow them to consume large prey which they do with gusto. 

Their preference is to generally live along the bountiful coastal regions where they can find food with relative ease. Some prefer to live more inland and all rarely venture far out to sea, except for the kittiwakes. 

The larger species take up to four years to attain full adult plumage, but two years is typical for small gulls. Large white-headed gulls are typically long-lived birds, with a maximum age of 49 years recorded for the herring gull.

Gulls nest in large, densely packed, noisy colonies. They lay two or three speckled eggs in nests composed of vegetation. The young are precocial, born with dark mottled down and mobile upon hatching. Gulls are resourceful, inquisitive, and intelligent, the larger species in particular, demonstrating complex methods of communication and a highly developed social structure. Many gull colonies display mobbing behaviour, attacking and harassing predators and other intruders. 

Certain species have exhibited tool-use behaviour, such as the herring gull, using pieces of bread as bait with which to catch goldfish. Many species of gulls have learned to coexist successfully with humans and have thrived in human habitats. Others rely on kleptoparasitism to get their food. Gulls have been observed preying on live whales, landing on the whale as it surfaces to peck out pieces of flesh. They are keen, clever and always hungry.

CAVE BEAR: URSUS URALENSIS

This glorious and slightly terrifying skull is from a fossil cave bear, Ursus uralensis, from Pleistocene deposits in Russia.

Both the cave bear and the brown bear are thought to be descended from the Plio-Pleistocene Etruscan bear, Ursus etruscus, that lived about 5.3 Mya to 100,000 years ago. 

The last common ancestor of cave bears and brown bears lived between 1.2–1.4 Mya. The immediate precursor of the cave bear was probably Ursus deningeri, the Deninger's bear — a species restricted to Pleistocene Europe about 1.8 Mya to 100,000 years ago. 

The transition between Deninger's bear and the cave bear is given as the last interglacial, although the boundary between these forms is arbitrary, and intermediate or transitional taxa have been proposed, Ursus spelaeus deningeroides, while other authorities consider both taxa to be chronological variants of the same species.

Cave bears found in different regions vary in age, thus facilitating investigations into evolutionary trends. The three anterior premolars were gradually reduced, then disappeared, possibly in response to a largely vegetarian diet. 

In a fourth of the skulls found in the Conturines, the third premolar is still present, while more derived specimens elsewhere lack it. The last remaining premolar became conjugated with the true molars, enlarging the crown and granting it more cusps and cutting borders. This phenomenon, called molarization, improved the mastication capacities of the molars, facilitating the processing of tough vegetation. This allowed the cave bear to gain more energy for hibernation while eating less than its ancestors.

A lone Grizzly Bear / Na̱ndzi

In 2005, scientists recovered and sequenced the nuclear DNA of a cave bear that lived between 42,000 and 44,000 years ago. 

The procedure used genomic DNA extracted from one of the animal's teeth. Sequencing the DNA directly (rather than first replicating it with the polymerase chain reaction), the scientists recovered 21 cave bear genes from remains that did not yield significant amounts of DNA with traditional techniques.

This study confirmed and built on results from a previous study using mitochondrial DNA extracted from cave bear remains ranging from 20,000 to 130,000 years old. 

Both show that the cave bear was more closely related to the brown bear and polar bear than it was to the American black bear, but had split from the brown bear lineage before the distinct eastern and western brown bear lineages diversified and before the split of brown bears and polar bears. The divergence date estimate of cave bears and brown bears is about 1.2–1.4 Mya. However, a recent study showed that both species had some hybridization between them.

We are blessed to have them living amongst us today on the rugged west coast of British Columbia. In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakiutl First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, this big fellow is na̱ndzi — a lovely, large peaceful bear.

MUSKOX: CAPRINAE

Look at this soulful fellow. He is a muskox who spends his days slowly meandering through these gorgeous fields eating his fill of nutritious plants on the open tundra. They are social animals, moving together in large herds. 

As a member of the subfamily Caprinae of the family Bovidae, the muskox is more closely related to sheep and goats than to oxen. It has been placed in its own genus, Ovibos — Latin for sheep-ox. It is one of the two largest extant members of Caprinae, along with the similarly sized takin.

While the takin and muskox were once considered possibly closely related, the takin lacks common ovibovine features, such as the muskox's specialized horn morphology, and genetic analysis shows that their lineages actually separated early in caprine evolution. 

Instead, the muskox's closest living relatives appear to be the gorals of the genus Naemorhedus, nowadays common in many countries of central and east Asia. The vague similarity between takin and muskox must therefore be considered an example of convergent evolution.

The modern muskox is the last member of a line of ovibovines that first evolved in temperate regions of Asia and adapted to a cold tundra environment late in its evolutionary history. They lived alongside our lovely Mammoths and would have competed for the same plant resources as those much larger beasts. 

Muskox ancestors with sheep-like high-positioned horns — horn cores being mostly over the plane of the frontal bones, rather than below them as in modern muskoxen — first left the temperate forests for the developing grasslands of Central Asia during the Pliocene, expanding into Siberia and the rest of northern Eurasia. 

Later migration waves of Asian ungulates, including the high-horned muskox, reached Europe and North America during the first half of the Pleistocene. The first well-known muskox, the "shrub-ox" Euceratherium, crossed to North America over an early version of the Bering Land Bridge two million years ago and prospered in the American southwest and Mexico. Euceratherium was larger yet more lightly built than modern muskoxen, resembling a giant sheep with massive horns, and preferred hilly grasslands.

A genus with intermediate horns, Soergelia, inhabited Eurasia in the early Pleistocene, from Spain to Siberia, and crossed to North America during the Irvingtonian (1.8 million years to 240,000 years ago), soon after Euceratherium. Unlike Euceratherium, which survived in America until the Pleistocene-Holocene extinction event, Soergelia was a lowland dweller that disappeared fairly early, displaced by more advanced ungulates, such as the "giant muskox" Praeovibos (literally "before Ovibos"). 

The low-horned Praeovibos was present in Europe and the Mediterranean 1.5 million years ago, colonized Alaska and the Yukon one million years ago and disappeared half a million years ago. Praeovibos was a highly adaptable animal that appears associated with cold tundra (reindeer) and temperate woodland (red deer) faunas alike. 

During the Mindel glaciation 500,000 years ago, Praeovibos was present in the Kolyma river area in eastern Siberia in association with many Ice Age megafauna that would later coexist with Ovibos, in the Kolyma itself and elsewhere, including wild horses, reindeer, woolly mammoth and stag-moose. 

It is debated, however, if Praeovibos was directly ancestral to Ovibos, or both genera descended from a common ancestor since the two occurred together during the middle Pleistocene. Defenders of ancestry from Praeovibos have proposed that Praeovibos evolved into Ovibos in one region during a period of isolation and expanded later, replacing the remaining populations of Praeovibos.

Two more Praeovibos-like genera were named in America in the 19th century, Bootherium and Symbos, which are now identified as the male and female forms of a single, sexually dimorphic species, the "woodland muskox", Bootherium bombifrons. Bootherium inhabited open woodland areas of North America during the Late Pleistocene, from Alaska to Texas and maybe even Mexico, but was most common in the Southern United States, while Ovibos replaced it in the tundra-steppe to the north, immediately south of the Laurentian ice sheet.

Modern Ovibos appeared in Germany almost one million years ago and were common in the region through the Pleistocene. Muskoxen had also reached the British Isles. Both Germany and Britain were just south of the Scandinavian ice sheet and covered in the tundra during cold periods, but Pleistocene muskoxen are also rarely recorded in more benign and wooded areas to the south like France and Green Spain, where they coexisted with temperate ungulates like red deer and aurochs. Likewise, the muskox is known to have survived in Britain during warm interglacial periods.

Today's muskoxen are descended from others believed to have migrated from Siberia to North America between 200,000 and 90,000 years ago, having previously occupied Alaska (at the time united to Siberia and isolated periodically from the rest of North America by the union of the Laurentide and Cordilleran Ice Sheets during colder periods) between 250,000 and 150,000 years ago. 

After migrating south during one of the warmer periods of the Illinoian glaciation, non-Alaskan American muskoxen would be isolated from the rest in the colder periods. The muskox was already present in its current stronghold of Banks Island 34,000 years ago, but the existence of other ice-free areas in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago at the time is disputed.

Along with the bison and the pronghorn, the muskox was one of a few species of Pleistocene megafauna in North America to survive the Pleistocene/Holocene extinction event and live to the present day. The muskox is thought to have been able to survive the last glacial period by finding ice-free areas (refugia) away from prehistoric peoples.

Fossil DNA evidence suggests that muskoxen were not only more geographically widespread during the Pleistocene, but also more genetically diverse. During that time, other populations of muskoxen lived across the Arctic, from the Ural Mountains to Greenland. By contrast, the current genetic makeup of the species is more homogenous. Climate fluctuation may have affected this shift in genetic diversity: research indicates colder periods in Earth's history are correlated with more diversity and warmer periods with more homogeneity.

ORIGINS OF THE WOOLLY MAMMOTHS

Woolly Mammoths, Mammuthus primigenius,  have always held wonder for me. These massive, hairy — and likely very smelly beasts — lived alongside us for a time. 

If you stood beside him and reached way up, you might be able to touch his tusks but likely not reach up to his mouth or even his eyes. 

He had a shaggy coat of light or dark coloured hair with long outer hair strands covering a dense thick undercoat. His oil glands would have worked overtime to secrete oils, giving him natural waterproofing. Some of the hair strands we have recovered are more than a meter in length. These behemoth proboscideans boasted long, curved tusks, little ears, short tails and grazed on leaves, shrubs and grasses that would have been hard work to get at as much of his world was covered in ice and snow during his reign.

We first see Woolly Mammoths in northeastern Siberia dating back 700,000 years. We find them in East Asia as far back as 800,000 years ago. They arose from the massive steppe mammoths, Mammuthus trogontherii, slowly evolving traits we see in this older species to the mammoths we think of today. 

Over time, their body size shrank and their teeth and tusks evolved to take advantage of the tough vegetation available to those few animals who could chew their way through ice and snow and work these tundra grasses into a digestible form. 

The enamel plates of their cheek teeth multiplied while the enamel itself became thinner. Tusks slowly took on more of a curved to act as ploughs for the snow. 

Those smaller than their predecessors, they were still formidable. Their size offered protection against predators once full grown. Sadly for the juveniles, they offered tasty prey to big cats like Homotherium who roamed these ancient grasslands alongside them.

The Mammoths of the Steppe spread to the northern areas of Eurasia, down through Europe, into the British Isles to Spain and crossed over to populate North America via the Bering Isthmus. It was the lowered sea levels during the last Ice Age that exposed dry land between Asia and the Americas. Here in this flat, grassy treeless plain known as the Bering Land Bridge or Isthmus, animals, including humans, could migrate from Europe west into North America.

The woolly mammoth coexisted with our ancestors who made good use of their bones and tusks for tools, housing, art and food. The last of their lineage died out relatively recently on Wrangel Island until 4,000 years ago — a time when we were making our first harps and flutes in Egypt, dams, canals and stone sculptures in Sumer, using numbers for the first time and using tin to make tools.

DUGONG: SEA COW

One of the most delightful creatures to ever grace this planet is the dugong — a species of sea cow found throughout the warm latitudes of the Indian and western Pacific Oceans. 

It is one of four living species of the order Sirenia, which also includes three species of manatees — their large, fully aquatic, mostly herbivorous marine mammal cousins.

The closest living relatives of sirenians are elephants. Manatees evolved from the same land animals as elephants over 50 million years ago. 

If not for natural selection, we might have a much more diverse showing of the Sirenia as their fossil lineage shows a much more diverse group of sirenians back in the Eocene than we have today. It is the only living representative of the once-diverse family Dugongidae; its closest modern relative, Steller's sea cow, was hunted to extinction in the 18th century. 

While only one species of the dugong is alive today – a second, the Steller's sea cow only left this Earth a few years ago. Sadly, it was hunted to extinction within 27 years of its discovery – about 30 species have been recovered in the fossil record

The first appearance of sirenians in the fossil record was during the early Eocene, and by the late Eocene, sirenians had significantly diversified. Inhabitants of rivers, estuaries, and nearshore marine waters, they were able to spread rapidly.

The most primitive sirenian known to date, Prorastomus, was found in Jamaica, not the Old World; however, more recently the contemporary Sobrarbesiren has been recovered from Spain. The first known quadrupedal sirenian was Pezosiren from the early Eocene. 

The earliest known sea cows, of the families Prorastomidae and Protosirenidae, are both confined to the Eocene and were about the size of a pig, four-legged amphibious creatures. 

By the time the Eocene drew to a close, the Dugongidae had arrived; sirenians had acquired their familiar fully aquatic streamlined body with flipper-like front legs with no hind limbs, powerful tail with horizontal caudal fin, with up and down movements which move them through the water, like cetaceans.

The last of the sirenian families to appear, Trichechidae, apparently arose from early dugongids in the late Eocene or early Oligocene. The current fossil record documents all major stages in hindlimb and pelvic reduction to the extreme reduction in the modern manatee pelvis, providing an example of dramatic morphological change among fossil vertebrates.

Since sirenians first evolved, they have been herbivores, depending on seagrasses and aquatic angiosperms, tasty flowering plants of the sea, for food. To the present, almost all have remained tropical — with the notable exception of Steller's Sea Cow — marine, and angiosperm consumers. Sea cows are shallow divers with large lungs. They have heavy skeletons to help them stay submerged; the bones are pachyostotic (swollen) and osteosclerotic (dense), especially the ribs which are often found as fossils.

Eocene sirenians, like Mesozoic mammals but in contrast to other Cenozoic ones, have five instead of four premolars, giving them a 3.1.5.3 dental formula. Whether this condition is truly primitive retention in sirenians is still under debate.

Although cheek teeth are relied on for identifying species in other mammals, they do not vary to a significant degree among sirenians in their morphology but are almost always low-crowned —brachyodont — with two rows of large, rounded cusps — bunobilophodont. The most easily identifiable parts of sirenian skeletons are the skull and mandible, especially the frontal and other skull bones. With the exception of a pair of tusk-like first upper incisors present in most species, front teeth — incisors and canines — are lacking in all, except the earliest sirenians.

TITANITES: THE FERNIE AMMONITE

Titanites occidentalis, Fernie Ammonite

The Fernie ammonite, Titanites occidentalis, from outcrops on Coal Mountain near Fernie, British Columbia, Canada. 

This beauty is the remains of a carnivorous cephalopod within the family Dorsoplanitidae that lived and died in a shallow sea some 150 million years ago.

If you would like to get off the beaten track and hike up to see this ancient beauty, you will want to head to the town of Fernie in British Columbia close to the Alberta border. 

There was some active logging along the hillside in 2021, so if you are looking at older directions on how to get to the site be mindful that many of the trailheads have been altered and a fair bit of bushwhacking will be necessary to get to the fossil site proper. That being said, the loggers did give the ammonite a wide berth and have left it intact.

Driving to the trail base is along an easy access road just east of town along Fernie Coal Road. There are some nice exposures of Cretaceous plant material on the north side (left-hand side) of the road as you head from Fernie towards Coal Creek. I recently drove up to Fernie to look at Cretaceous plant material and locate the access point to the now infamous Late Jurassic (Tithonian) Titanites (S.S. Buckman, 1921) site. While the drive out of town is on an easy, well-maintained road, the slog up to the ammonite site is a steep 3-hour push.

Fernie, British Columbia, Canada

The first Titanites occidentalis was about one-third the size and was incorrectly identified as Lytoceras, a fast-moving nektonic carnivore. The specimen you see here is significantly larger at 1.4 metres (about four and a half feet) and rare in North America. 

Titanites occidentalis, the Western Giant, is the second known specimen of this extinct fossil species. The first was discovered in 1947 in nearby Coal Creek by a British Columbia Geophysical Society mapping team. When they first discovered this marine fossil high up on the hillside, they could not believe their eyes — both because it is clearly marine at the top of a mountain and the sheer size of this ancient beauty.

In the summer of 1947, a field crew was mapping coal outcrops for the BC Geological Survey east of Fernie. One of the students reported finding “a fossil truck tire.” Fair enough. The similarity of size and optics are pretty close to your average Goodridge. 

A few years later, GSC Paleontologist Hans Frebold described and named the fossil Titanites occidentalis after the large Jurassic ammonites from Dorset, England. The name comes from Greek mythology. Tithonus, as you may recall, was the Prince of Troy. He fell in love with Eos, the Greek Goddess of the Dawn. Eos begged Zeus to make her mortal lover immortal. Zeus granted her wish but did not grant Tithonus eternal youth. He did indeed live forever — ageing hideously. Ah, Zeus, you old trickster. It is a clever play on time placement. Dawn is the beginning of the day and the Tithonian being the latest age of the Late Jurassic. Clever Hans!

HIKING TO THE FERNIE AMMONITE

From the town of Fernie, British Columbia, head east along Coal Creek Road towards Coal Creek. The site is 3.81 km from the base of Coal Creek Road to the trailhead as the crow flies. I have mapped it here for you in yellow and added the wee purple GPS marker for the ammonite site proper. There is a nice, dark grey to black roadcut exposure of Cretaceous plants on the north side of the dirt road that is your cue to pull over and park.  

You access what is left of the trailhead on the south side of the road. You will need to cross the creek to begin your ascent. There is no easy way across the creek and you'll want to tackle this one with a friend when the water level is low. 

The beginning of the trail is not clear but a bit of searching will reveal the trailhead with its telltale signs of previous hikers. This is a 1-2 hour moderate 6.3-kilometre hike up & back bushwhacking through scrub and fallen trees. Heading up, you will make about a 246-metre elevation gain. You will likely not have a cellular signal up here but if you download the Google Map to your mobile, you will have GPS to guide you. The area has been recently logged so much of the original trail has been destroyed. There may now be easier vehicle access up the logging roads but I have not driven them since the logging and new road construction.

If you are coming in from out of town, the closest airport is Cranbrook. Then it is about an hour and change to Fernie and another 15-minutes or so to park near the site.

You will want to leave your hammers with your vehicle (no need to carry the weight) as this site is best enjoyed with a camera. 

This is a site you will want to wear hiking boots to access. Know that these will get wet as you cross the creek. 

If you would like to see the ammonite but are not keen on the hike, a cast has been made by fossil preparator Rod Bartlett is on display at the Courtenay Museum in Courtenay, Vancouver Island, Canada. 

As your feet move up the hillside, you can imagine this land 10,000 years ago, rising above great glaciers. Where footfalls trace the steps of those that came before you. This land has been home to the Ktunaxa or Kukin ʔamakis First Nations whose oral history have them living here since time immemorial. Like them, take only what you need and no more than the land offers — packing out anything that you packed in. 

Fernie Ammonite Palaeo Coordinates: 49°29'04"N 115°00'49"W

AMMONITE: INDEX FOSSILS AS TIME KEEPERS

Argonauticeras besairei, José Juárez Ruiz

An exceptional example of the fractal building of an ammonite septum, in this clytoceratid Argonauticeras besairei from the awesome José Juárez Ruiz.

Ammonites were predatory, squidlike creatures that lived inside coil-shaped shells.

Like other cephalopods, ammonites had sharp, beak-like jaws inside a ring of squid-like tentacles that extended from their shells. 

They used these tentacles to snare prey, — plankton, vegetation, fish and crustaceans — similar to the way a squid or octopus hunt today.

Catching a fish with your hands is no easy feat, as I am sure you know. But the Ammonites were skilled and successful hunters. They caught their prey while swimming and floating in the water column. 

Within their shells, they had a number of chambers, called septa, filled with gas or fluid that were interconnected by a wee air tube. By pushing air in or out, they were able to control their buoyancy in the water column.

They lived in the last chamber of their shells, continuously building new shell material as they grew. As each new chamber was added, the squid-like body of the ammonite would move down to occupy the final outside chamber.

They were a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. 

These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids — octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish) than they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species.

The Ammonoidea can be divided into six orders:

• Agoniatitida, Lower Devonian - Middle Devonian
• Clymeniida, Upper Devonian
• Goniatitida, Middle Devonian - Upper Permian
• Prolecanitida, Upper Devonian - Upper Triassic
• Ceratitida, Upper Permian - Upper Triassic
• Ammonitida, Lower Jurassic - Upper Cretaceous

Ammonites have intricate and complex patterns on their shells called sutures. The suture patterns differ across species and tell us what time period the ammonite is from. If they are geometric with numerous undivided lobes and saddles and eight lobes around the conch, we refer to their pattern as goniatitic, a characteristic of Paleozoic ammonites.

If they are ceratitic with lobes that have subdivided tips; giving them a saw-toothed appearance and rounded undivided saddles, they are likely Triassic. For some lovely Triassic ammonites, take a look at the specimens that come out of Hallstatt, Austria and from the outcrops in the Humboldt Mountains of Nevada.

Hoplites bennettiana (Sowby, 1826) Christophe Marot

If they have lobes and saddles that are fluted, with rounded subdivisions instead of saw-toothed, they are likely Jurassic or Cretaceous. If you'd like to see a particularly beautiful Lower Jurassic ammonite, take a peek at Apodoceras. Wonderful ridging in that species.

One of my favourite Cretaceous ammonites is the ammonite, Hoplites bennettiana (Sowby, 1826). This beauty is from Albian deposits near Carrière de Courcelles, Villemoyenne, near la région de Troyes (Aube) Champagne in northeastern France.

At the time that this fellow was swimming in our oceans, ankylosaurs were strolling about Mongolia and stomping through the foliage in Utah, Kansas and Texas. Bony fish were swimming over what would become the strata making up Canada, the Czech Republic and Australia. Cartilaginous fish were prowling the western interior seaway of North America and a strange extinct herbivorous mammal, Eobaatar, was snuffling through Mongolia, Spain and England.

In some classifications, these are left as suborders, included in only three orders: Goniatitida, Ceratitida, and Ammonitida. Once you get to know them, ammonites in their various shapes and suturing patterns make it much easier to date an ammonite and the rock formation where it is found.

Ammonites first appeared about 240 million years ago, though they descended from straight-shelled cephalopods called bacrites that date back to the Devonian, about 415 million years ago, and the last species vanished in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

They were prolific breeders that evolved rapidly. If you could cast a fishing line into our ancient seas, it is likely that you would hook an ammonite, not a fish. They were prolific back in the day, living (and sometimes dying) in schools in oceans around the globe. We find ammonite fossils (and plenty of them) in sedimentary rock from all over the world.

In some cases, we find rock beds where we can see evidence of a new species that evolved, lived and died out in such a short time span that we can walk through time, following the course of evolution using ammonites as a window into the past.

For this reason, they make excellent index fossils. An index fossil is a species that allows us to link a particular rock formation, layered in time with a particular species or genus found there. 

Generally, deeper is older, so we use the sedimentary layers of rock to match up to specific geologic time periods, rather like the way we use tree rings to date trees. A handy way to compare fossils and date strata across the globe.

References: Inoue, S., Kondo, S. Suture pattern formation in ammonites and the unknown rear mantle structure. Sci Rep 6, 33689 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep33689

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep33689?fbclid=IwAR1BhBrDqhv8LDjqF60EXdfLR7wPE4zDivwGORTUEgCd2GghD5W7KOfg6Co#citeas

Photos: Argonauticeras besairei from the awesome José Juárez Ruiz.

Photo: Hoplites bennettiana from near Troyes, France. Collection de Christophe Marot

PSEUDOTHURMANNIA PICTETI

Pseudothurmannia is a genus of extinct cephalopods belonging to the subclass Ammonoidea and included in the family Crioceratitidae of the ammonitid superfamily Ancylocerataceae.

Ammonites have intricate and complex patterns on their shells called sutures. The suture patterns differ across species and tell us what time period the ammonite is from.

We can see from the suture patterns shown here and by comparing it to others that are similar that this fast-moving nektonic carnivore lived in the Cretaceous, from the Hauterivian to the Barremian.

Like other cephalopods, ammonites had sharp, beak-like jaws inside a ring of squid-like tentacles that extended from their shells. They used these tentacles to snare prey — plankton, vegetation, fish and crustaceans — similar to the way a squid or octopus hunt today.

Catching a fish with your hands is no easy feat, as I'm sure you know. Ammonites were skilled and successful hunters. They caught their prey while swimming and floating in the water column. 

Within their shells, they had a number of chambers, called septa, filled with gas or fluid that were interconnected by a wee air tube. By pushing air in or out, they were able to control their buoyancy in the water column. They lived in the last chamber of their shells, continuously building new shell material as they grew. As each new chamber was added, the squid-like body of the ammonite would move down to occupy the final outside chamber.

Shells of Pseudothurmannia can reach a diameter of about 4–12 centimetres (1.6–4.7 in). They show flat or slightly convex sides, with dense ribs and a subquadrate whorl section.

We find fossils of Pseudothurmannia in Cretaceous outcrops in Antarctica, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Spain, Russia and the United States. The specimen you see here is in the collection of the deeply awesome Manuel Peña Nieto from Córdoba, Spain and is from the Lower Cretaceous of Mallorca.