Pachydiscus suchiaensis ID: 18-08-CP-002 |
Nostoceras hornbyense (Whiteaves, 1895) |
Pachydiscus suchiaensis ID: 18-08-CP-002 |
Nostoceras hornbyense (Whiteaves, 1895) |
Cadoceras (Paracadoceras) tonniense |
Harrison Lake, Forestry Road #17 |
Geologic Hammer for Harrison's Hard Matrix |
The faunal association at locality #17 near Harrison suggests a more precise correlation to Callomon's zonation; namely, the Cadoceras wosnessenskii Fauna B8(e) found in the Chinitna Formation, southern Alaska (Imlay, 1953b). The type specimen is USNM 108088, from locality USGS Mesozoic 21340, Iniskin Peninsula, found in a Callovian marine siliciclastic in the Chinitna Formation of Alaska.
Exploration of the geology around Harrison Lake has a long history with geologists from the Geological Survey of Canada studying geology and palaeontological exposures as far back as the 1880s. They were probably looking for coal exposures and where to route the planned Canadian Pacific Railway — or perhaps sought a glimpse of the wily but shy local Sasquatch — but happily, they found fossils.
The paleo outcrops were first mentioned in the Geological Survey of Canada's Director's Report in 1888 (Selwyn, 1888), then studied by Whiteaves a year later. Whiteaves identified the prolific bivalve Aucella (now Buchia) from several specimens collected in 1882 by A. Bowman of the Geological Survey of Canada.
The first detailed geological work in the Harrison Lake area was undertaken in a doctoral study by Crickmay (1925), who compiled a geological map, describing the stratigraphy and establishing the formational names, many of which we still use today. Crickmay went on to interpret the palaeogeography and structure of the region.Click to Enlarge |
If you would like to visit the site at Chinitna Bay, you'll want to hike into 59.9° N, 153.0° W: paleo-coordinates 31.6° N, 86.6° W.
If you're a keen bean for the Canadian site, you can drive the 30 km up Forestry Road #17, stopping just past Hale Creek at 49.5° N, 121.9° W: paleo-coordinates 42.5° N, 63.4° W, on the west side of Harrison Lake. You'll see Long Island to your right.
If you can pre-load the Google Earth map of the area you will thank yourself. This site is a great day trip from Vancouver or the Fraser Valley.
You will need a vehicle with good tires for travel on gravel roads. Search out the route ahead of time and share your trip plan with someone you trust telling them where you are going and when you plan to be back.
Access Forestry Road #17 at the northeast end of the parking lot from the Sasquatch Inn at 46001 Lougheed Hwy, Harrison Mills. Look for signs for the Chehalis River Fish Hatchery to get you started. NTS: 92H/05NW; 92H/05SW; 92H/12NW; 92H/12SW.
The first of the yummy fossil exposures (that are easily collected) are just north of Hale Creek on the west side of the road. There is active logging here so be very careful with kids and pets on the roadcut. Slides are also fairly common — and you may start a few if you hike the cliffs — so watch out for those below. Wear something brightly coloured so cars and trucks can see you.
You will want to look both in the bedrock, in the loose material that gathers in the ditches and for large dark grey boulders the size of dishwashers packed with Buchia — sometimes made entirely of these densely packed bivalves.
Buchia populated our Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous waters like a team sport. When they thrived they really thrived, building up large coquinas of the material that make up much of the rock you will find at Harrison and other sites in the Northern Hemisphere.
We use them as Index Fossils, fossils helpful for dating the age of rock because of their abundance and relatively short stratigraphic range, ie. they lived well, populated an area en masse then died out quickly — the ideal biostratigraphic index fossil.
What does that mean to you? Well, when you are out and about with friends and discover rocks with Buchia or made entirely of Buchia, you can casually say, "oh, this looks to be Upper Jurassic or Lower Cretaceous. Guys, come take a look. We're likely the first to lay eyes on this little clam for more than 160 million years." You'll impress the pants off them. Very high-five worthy.
And on a geeky language note, know that it gets easier. If you had never seen an apple and overhead folk talking about Granny Smith, Ambrosia, Gala or Honeycrisp, your eyes might glaze over. But consider how much knowledge you have that is specialized. You didn't study for it but just picked it up because you find it interesting.
Think of your knowledge of sports teams, boats, cars, Star Wars or the Marvel Universe. You know things, so many things. You'll find your inner fossil geek in time — probably with your first find. And that's the tip of the iceberg; first you, then your kids, your friends, your neighbour. Once you start is it easy to get hooked on the goodness. Fossil addiction is real and the only cure is to embrace your geek, get out there and do it. You've got this!
WHAT TO BRING:
As with all trips into British Columbia's wild places, you will want to dress for the weather. This is a good site for hiking boots, raingear, gloves, eye protection and a good geologic hammer and chisel. Fill your gas tank and pack a tasty lunch. You will definitely want to bring your camera for the blocks of Buchia too big to carry. If you take some good photos, I would love to see them.
Wear bright clothing and keep your head covered. If it is a larger group, those collecting below may want to consider hardhats in case of small rock falls. These are most often chunks of rock the size of your fist up to the size of a grapefruit — and they pack a punch.
Bring a colourful towel or something to lay your keepers on. Once you set down a rock, it is hard to find that keeper pile again as they often blend into the surroundings. I take the extra precaution of spraying the ends of my hammers and chisels with yellow fluorescent paint as I have set down too many and ended up leaving them in the field. I also always throw one of those lightweight yellow construction vests over whatever I am wearing so my crew and cars can spot me.
When you have finished for the day, you can compare your various treasures to see which ones you would like to keep. In British Columbia, you are a steward of the fossil, meaning these all belong to the province but you can keep them safe though cannot sell them or ship them outside British Columbia without a permit. You should be all set to celebrate a glorious day in the beautiful outdoors.
I have been asked about collecting four seasons. What do we do about the weather? We live in a rainforest so collecting in sun and rain means your field season is longer. Everyone has a preference. I prefer not to collect in the snow, but I have done. While sunny days are lovely, it can be easier to see the fossil specimens at Harrison when the rock is wet. So, do we do this in the rain? Heck, yeah.
Torrential rain? You, yes, once you're good and hooked. A casual friend or your kids, no. Choose your battles. A solid eight hours in the rain is on the losing end. They may come, but they'll likely never join you again — or speak to you.
Once you get home you can wash and ID your finds. I have put the scientific names here but if they occur as gobblygook, don't worry. Harrison does not have a huge variety of fossil fauna. Essentially, if your find is coiled and round, it is an ammonite. If it is long and straight, it is a belemnite. And if it looks like a wee fat baby oyster, it is Buchia. That is not always true, but it is mostly true.
If you find something you cannot ID, send me a photo on the Fossil Huntress Facebook page and I will help you to identify it.
Oh, and do be on the lookout for anything that looks like bone. This site is ripe for finding a marine reptile. Think plesiosaur, mosasaur, elasmosaur, you get the idea. Maybe the next Indiana Jones to get a new species named for them is you!
We sometimes find these lovelies enrolled or semi-enrolled with their impossibly thin genal spines lifted in the air. The Cheirurids appeared about 500 million years ago and died out about 390 million years ago. They are definitely a favourite!
With 52 species scattered across the Northern hemisphere, flying squirrels are by far the most successful group that took to the skies.
While not true flyers per se, these wee marsupials know how to skedaddle, coasting from tree to tree one giant leap of faith at a time.
And they are pretty cute if you look past their teeth and claws. Think adorable kamikaze pilot snugged inside a paper aeroplane with just enough Freddie Kruger to keep it interesting.
Their airborne manoeuvres are made possible by a half-plane, half-parachute body design — a bat-suit style membrane that puffs up into a parachute their feet and hands. They have evolved teensy but sturdy wrists strong enough to support long cartilaginous rods, making their personal brand of flight possible. Their wee specialized wrist bones are a distinctive feature as they do not share them with their non-flying brethren.
The origin of flying squirrels is a point of contention: while most genetic studies point towards the group splitting from tree squirrels about 23 million years ago, the oldest remains – mostly cheek teeth – suggest the animals were already soaring through forests 36 million years ago.
Troublesome are the findings from studies that show the dental features used to distinguish between gliding and non-gliding squirrels may actually be shared by the two groups.In 2002, the digging of a dumpsite in Barcelona, Spain unearthed a peculiar skeleton. As the bones were extracted one by one they found first a tail, then two thigh bones — big enough that they initially thought they might belong to a small primate.
Once they were all removed and re-articulated, you could see that they belonged to a rodent.
As the specimen was being prepared and the associated matrix screen-washed for loose bits, they discovered the wee wrist bones. From the mud emerged the minuscule specialized wrist bones that confirmed this was the skeleton of Miopetaurista neogrivensis, an extinct flying squirrel.
Fossil flying squirrel Miopetaurista neogrivensis |
Evolutionary analyses — the sexy science combining molecular and paleontological data — told a new story, flying squirrels evolved from tree squirrels as far back as 31 to 25 million years ago, and possibly even earlier.
We also confirmed that Miopetaurista is closely related to Petaurista, a modern group of giant flying squirrels.
Their skeletons are so similar, in fact, that the large extant species that inhabit the tropical and subtropical forests of Asia today should be considered living fossils.
Molecular and paleontological data are often at odds, but this fossil shows that they can be reconciled and combined to retrace history.
There is still more to be done to tease out the lineage of these gliding mammals. Discovering older fossils, or even transitional forms could help to retrace how flying squirrels took a leap from the rest of their evolutionary tree.
Flying squirrels are the only group of gliding mammals with remarkable diversity and a wide geographical range. However, their evolutionary story is not well known. Thus far, the identification of extinct flying squirrels has been exclusively based on dental features, which, contrary to certain postcranial characters, are not unique to them.
While best efforts are made, fossils attributed to this clade may indeed belong to other squirrel groups. The oldest fossil skeleton of a flying squirrel (11.6 Ma) displays the gliding-related diagnostic features shared by extant forms and allows for a recalibration of the divergence time between the tree and flying squirrels.
Phylogenetic analyses combining morphological and molecular data generally support older dates than previous molecular estimates (~23 Ma), being congruent with the inclusion of some of the earliest fossils (~36 Ma) into this clade. They also show that flying squirrels experienced little morphological change for almost 12 million years.
Image: The fossil flying squirrel Miopetaurista neogrivensis
(a) Reconstruction of the skeleton based in the partial skeleton IPS56468 from Abocador de Can Mata. Missing elements are based on extant giant flying squirrel Petaurista petaurista and are coloured in blue.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.39270.001 / https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.39270.002
Stromness Whaling Station |
The carving depicts a grizzly bear and is titled in pencil on the reverse. Works by this artist rarely if ever come up for sale. This rare piece will make a fine addition to anyone's collection. Martin was born in 1879 in Fort Rupert, British Columbia, to parents of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation.
He was the son of Yaxnukwelas, a high-ranking First Nation Kwakiutl from Gilford Island. His mother was Q'omiga, also known by her English name, Sarah Finlay, who was the daughter of a Kwakwaka'wakw woman and a Scottish man working with the Hudson's Bay Company.
Martin's father died when he was in his teen years. His mother married Yakuglas, also known in English as Charlie James. Martin's mother wanted her son to become a woodcarver and song maker, and held rituals to ensure this future
While still young, Martin regularly participated in the rituals, songs, arts, and traditions of the local Kwakwaka'wakw and North Coastal culture. This formed the basis of his knowledge of the Northwest Coast style, and he applied it to design, carving, and painting and lifelong song making. Martin was raised in the potlatch tradition practiced by the Kwakwaka'wakw, and all aspects of their culture.
As a boy Martin had been apprenticed as a carver to a paternal uncle. His stepfather Charlie James, a noted Northwestern artist, was his principal influence in honing his natural talent. Martin developed as one of the first traditional artists to adopt many types of Northwest Coast sculptural and painting styles.
He carved his first commissioned totem pole in Alert Bay c1900, and titled it "Raven of the Sea." Martin also restored and repaired many carvings and sculptures, totem poles, masks, and various other ceremonial objects. He gained fame for holding the first public potlatch since the governmental potlatch ban of 1885.
He was awarded with a medal by the Canadian Council.[2] In 1947, Martin was hired by the Museum of Anthropology at UBC for restoration and replica work.
During this time, Martin lived on the university campus, and continued to paint and carve small works during the night. Gwaxwiwe' hamsiwe' (mask of the raven man-eater) by Mungo Martin at the Seattle Art Museum Later, Martin was hired in 1952 by the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, British Columbia to create works of Northwest Coastal Art as display pieces and examples. The final result was a huge totem pole, carved out of cedar, standing 160 feet tall. It was raised in 1956 and remained standing until 2000.[3]
He also constructed Wawadit'la, a Kwakwaka'wakw "big house", at Thunderbird Park in front of the museum. During this time he and American anthropologist Bill Holm became fast friends and Martin designed a Kwak'waka'wakw big house on the coast in Washington State.
Martin was also the designer and principal carver of the famous Totem Pole in Windsor Great Park in the United Kingdom. The Totem Pole was a gift from the people of Canada to HM The Queen in June, 1958. Standing 100 feet high, there is one foot for every year, and marks the centenary of British Columbia, which was named by Queen Victoria and proclaimed a Crown Colony on November 19, 1858. It is now the Pacific Coast Province of Canada.
The figures on the pole reading from the top are, Man with large hat, Beaver, Old Man, Thunderbird, Sea Otter, The Raven, The Whale, Double headed Snake, Halibut Man and Cedar Man. Each figure represents the mythical ancestor of a clan. The pole was carved from a single log of Western Red Cedar and weighs 27,000 pounds. It was cut from a tree 600 years old from the forests of the Queen Charlotte Islands, 500 miles north of Vancouver.
When Martin went to work for the museum in Victoria, his son David and his family, and relatives Henry and Helen Hunt (Helen was Martin's wife's granddaughter) and their family joined him in living in James Bay near Thunderbird Park and the focus of the work to be done. His son David, and Henry Hunt, and even Henry's son Tony who was only twelve when the families engaged in this undertaking, became apprentices. Martin trained his son David in his craft but David died in 1959. Henry's sons Stanley Hunt and Richard Hunt are also professional carvers.
In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakiutl First Nations of the Pacific Northwest — or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala — sockeye salmon are known as ma̱łik.
For the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, people of the confluence, of the Interior of British Columbia, near Kamloops, salmon was the most important of the local fishing stock and the salmon fishing season was a significant social event that warranted the nomination of a Salmon Chief who directed the construction of the hooks, weirs and traps and the distribution of the catch.
In the Interior of the province, archaeological evidence dates the use of salmon as a food source back a mere 3,500 years. While the First Nation groups have an oral history telling us they have lived here since always, 3,500 years falls short of the mark.
The truth, it seems, needed to be teased from the rock. Sheri Burton and Catherine Carlson were able to isolate and amplify mitochondrial DNA from the salmon remains at archaeological sites near Kamloops. The DNA came from the species as Oncorhynchus nerka or Sockeye salmon, preserved in concretion and collected along the southern shores of Kamloops Lake.
The concretions were originally dated as Miocene (24 – 5.5 million years old) by the Geological Survey of Canada, based on pollen grain analysis. However, many local experts, including UBC geology professor W.R. (Ted) Danner (my mentor), W.H. Mathews and Richard Hughes, suspected the remains were much more recent, perhaps the Late Pleistocene. It was a topic that provided lively debate for many years and much pounding on tables during dinner. But it was not until the early 1990s that Catherine Carlson and Ken Klein found definitive proof of this.
Oncorhynchus nerka |
For those on either side of the debate, the results were startling — 18,000 years. It is likely that erosion during the time of deposition had carried pollen down from Miocene layers in surrounding hills, to be deposited around the dead fish, causing the initial over-estimation of the age of the concretions.
This lovely specimen is Oncorhynchus nerka, a Late Pleistocene Fossil Sockeye Salmon, from the fine-grained, silty clays on the south shore of Kamloops Lake, British Columbia, Canada. The site was originally collected in the 1970s by the late geologist and palaeontologist Richard Hughes. I was introduced to the site much later after its rediscovery by Catherine Carlson and Kenneth Klein in the fall of 1991 with the help of local and gracious host, Bill Huxley.
They later wrote up and published a chapter in Rolf Ludvigsen's "Life in Stone: A Natural History of British Columbia's Fossils." It was Huxley who shared its location with John Leahy — a local Kamloops resident and avid fossil hunter — and him with me.
This specimen was collected by John in the 1990s, his tenth partial salmon from this site and the sole one in my collection.
An age of 18,000 plus years sets the fossils firmly as the only salmonids of the Late Pleistocene in North America, a very significant find. The date also changed our ideas about the early climate of the Interior; the Thompson Valley could not have been covered by glacial ice for as long as originally thought. Indeed, it makes the Interior ice-free only 2,000 years after the Last Glacial Maximum and some 4,000 years before our western continental coastline and the Rocky Mountain Foothills.
It has long been accepted that the most recent series of ice ages began approximately 1.6 million years ago, beginning as ice accumulations at higher altitudes with the gradual cooling of the climate. Four times the ice advanced and receded, most recently melting away somewhere around 10,000 years ago. Ice retreated from southwestern British Columbia and the Puget Sound area around 15,000 years ago.
In the southern Interior, ice built up first in the northern Selkirk Mountains, then slowly flowed down into the valleys. Once the valleys were filled, the depth of the ice increased until it began to climb to the highlands and finally covered most of the Interior of British Columbia. Between ice advances, there were times when the Kamloops area was ice-free and the climate warm and hospitable.
Glacial ice was believed to have initiated its most recent retreat from the South Thompson area around 11,000 to 12,000 years ago, but salmon remains from 18,000 years ago suggest that it may have actually begun its northwest decline much earlier — and presenting the possibility of a much warmer climate in the Interior than archaeologists or geologists had originally thought.
Eighteen thousand-year-old salmon also challenge the archaeological notion that the First Nation people of the Interior have had access to salmon as a significant protein source for only a few thousand years.
In the popular view, people living in the Okanagan and Thompson Valleys were felt to have moved to settlements that were semi-permanent about 4,500 years ago. By that time they would have had a seasonally regulated diet composed primarily of salmon and supplemented by local game — deer, elk, small mammals — and available shellfish, birds and plant foods, roots and berries. If salmon were present much earlier, it is possible that this pattern of food utilization may have arisen earlier than thought.
Richard Hughes had originally identified the fossilized Kamloops salmon as Oncorhynchus nerka or Sockeye salmon, the same species found in the 3,500-year-old archaeological sites. But, using the carbon-13 isotope ratio, Klein and Carlson were able to determine that these salmon did not feed on protein from a marine source and relied solely on a freshwater diet.
In other words, they could not have spent part of their life in the ocean, as modern Sockeye salmon do. Based on the specimens’ smaller heads and stunted bodies, the longest measuring in at a pint-sized 11.5 cm, Klein and Carlson feel that the fossils are likely Kokanee — a modern landlocked variety of Sockeye.
If you are wondering about the traditional First Nation use of salmon, this McGill University link is outstanding:http://traditionalanimalfoods.org/fish/searun-fish/page.aspx?id=6446
Eastern Grey Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis |
One of the little animals I see daily are the very busy, highly comic rodents we know as squirrels. They spend their days gathering food and their nights resting from all their hard work.
My neighbourhood has mostly Eastern grey squirrels, Sciurus carolinensis (Gmelin, 1788) who come in a colour palette of reddish-brown, grey and black.
These cuties have bushy tails and a spring in their step — racing around gathering nuts, teasing dogs and generally exuding cuteness.
We find the first fossil evidence of tree squirrels in the Pleistocene.
At least twenty specimens have been found of Sciurus carolinensis in Pleistocene outcrops in Florida on the eastern coast of the United States. Over time, their body size grew larger then shrunk down to the 400 to 600 g (14 to 21 oz) weight we see them today.
Eastern grey squirrels have two breeding seasons in December-January and June-July. This year has been unseasonably warm. On Vancouver Island, the Eastern Greys bred again in early September. One wonders if the heat dome killed off the July litter, and with the return of more favourable weather, the parents have been induced to breed again.
While they are not native to Vancouver, they are plentiful. They were introduced to the region over a hundred years ago and have been happily multiplying year upon year.
Our native species are the smaller, reddish-brown rather shy Douglas squirrels and the nocturnal Northern Flying Squirrels.
Shadow tails — Sciurus, is derived from two Greek words, skia, meaning shadow, and oura, meaning tail. The name choice has a certain poetic appeal. It alludes to squirrels sitting in the shadow of their tails. I prefer to think of it as meaning something closer to stealth ninja — but that's just me.
The specific epithet, carolinensis, refers to the Carolinas on the eastern seaboard of the United States, an area that includes both North and South Carolina. It was here that the species was first recorded and still rather common. In the United Kingdom and Canada, Sciurus carolinensis is referred to as the Eastern grey or grey squirrel — and though adorable is an invasive species. In the United States, eastern is used to differentiate the species from the Western Gray or Silver-Gray squirrel, Sciurus griseus, (Ord, 1818).
The Ord here, of course, is George Ord, the American zoologist who named the species based on notes recorded by Lewis and Clark in the early 1800s. If you fancy a read, check out his article from 1815, "Zoology of North America." It is charming and anachronistic in equal parts and the first systemic zoology of America by an American.
In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, use the word ta̱minasux̱, to point out that "that is a squirrel."
The word for shadow in Kwak'wala is gagumas and tail is ha̱t̕sa̱x̱ste' — so I will think of these wee wonders of the Order Rodentia in the family Sciuridae as Gagumas ha̱t̕sa̱x̱ste' of Khahtsahlano.
A simple search will show you a vast array of pearls being used for their ornamental value in cultures from all over the world. I suppose the best answer to why they are appealing is just that they are.
If you make your way to Paris, France and happen to visit the Louvre's Persian Gallery, do take a boo at one of the oldest pearl necklaces in existence — the Susa necklace. It hails from a 2,400-year-old tomb of long lost Syrian Queen. It is a showy piece with three rows of 72 pearls per strand strung upon a bronze wire.
That queen knew how to accessorize.
I imagine her putting the final touches of her outfit together, donning the pearls and making an entrance to wow the elite of ancient Damascus. The workmanship is superb, intermixing pure gold to offset the lustre of the pearls. It is precious and ancient, crafted one to two hundred years before Christ. Perhaps a gift from an Egyptian Pharaoh or from one of the Sumerians, Eblaites, Akkadians, Assyrians, Hittites, Hurrians, Mitanni, Amorites or Babylonian dignitaries who sued for peace but brought war instead.
Questions, good questions, but questions without answers. So, what can we say of pearls? We do know what they are and it is not glamorous. Pearls form in shelled molluscs when a wee bit of sand or some other irritant gets trapped inside the shell, injuring the flesh. As a defensive and self-healing tactic, the mollusc wraps it in layer upon layer of mother-of-pearl — that glorious shiny nacre that forms pearls.
They come in all shapes and sizes from minute to a massive 32 kilograms or 70 pounds. While a wide variety of our mollusc friends respond to injury or irritation by coating the offending intruder with nacre, there are only a few who make the truly gem-y pearls. These are the marine pearl oysters, Pteriidae and a few freshwater mussels. Aside from Pteriidae and freshwater mussels, we sometimes find less gem-y pearls inside conchs, scallops, clams, abalone, giant clams and large marine gastropods.
Pearls are made up mostly of the carbonate mineral aragonite, a polymorphous mineral — same chemical formula but different crystal structure — to calcite and vaterite, sometimes called mu-calcium carbonate.These polymorphous carbonates are a bit like Mexican food where it is the same ingredients mixed in different ways.
Visually, they are easy to tell apart — vaterite has a hexagonal crystal system, calcite is trigonal and aragonite is orthorhombic.
As pearls fossilize, the aragonite usually gets replaced by calcite, though sometimes by vaterite or another mineral. When we are very lucky, that aragonite is preserved with its nacreous lustre — that shimmery mother-of-pearl we know and love.
Molluscs have likely been making pearls since they first evolved 530 million years ago. The oldest known fossil pearls found to date, however, are 230-210 million years old.
This was the time when our world's landmass was concentrated into the C-shaped supercontinent of Pangaea and the first dinosaurs were calling it home. In the giant ancient ocean of Panthalassa, ecosystems were recovering from the high carbon dioxide levels that fueled the Permian extinction. Death begets life. With 95% of marine life wiped out, new species evolved to fill each niche.
While this is where we found the oldest pearl on record, I suspect we will one day find one much older and hopefully with its lovely great-great grandmother-of-pearl intact.
Dove Creek Mosasaur (Tylosaur) found by Rick Ross, VIPS |
Glyptoxoceras heteromorph found by Rick Ross, VIPS |
T. proriger specimen found with a plesiosaur in its stomach |
This little cutie is a hermit crab and he is wearing a temporary home borrowed from one of our mollusc friends.
His body is a soft, squishy spiral that he eases into the perfect size shell time and time again as he grows. His first choice is always the empty shell of a marine snail but will get inventive in a pinch — nuts, wood, serpulid worm tubes, aluminium cans or wee plastic caps.
They are inventive, polite and patient. I think of them as I hunt for elusive parking in Kitsilano and watch friends lining up for scarce apartment rentals.
You see, a hermit crabs' desire for the perfect bit of real estate will have them queueing beside larger shells — shells too large for them — to wait upon a big hermit crab to come along, discard the perfect home and slip into their new curved abode. This is all done in an orderly fashion with the hermit crabs all lined up, biggest to smallest to see who best fits the newly available shell.
There are over 800 species of hermit crab — decapod crustaceans of the superfamily Paguroidea. Their lineage dates back to the Jurassic, 200 million years ago. Their soft squishy, weakly calcified bodies do not fossilize all that often but when they do the specimens are spectacular. Think of all the species of molluscs these lovelies have had a chance to try on — including ammonites — and all the shells that were never buried in sediment to become fossils because they were harvested as homes.
On the shores of British Columbia, the hermit crab I come across the most is the Grainyhand hermit crab, Pagurus granosimanus. These wee fellows have tell-tale orange-brown antennae and olive green legs speckled with blue or white dots.
In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, a shell is known as x̱ala̱'is and gugwis means house on the beach. I do not know the Kwak’wala word for hermit crab, so I will think of these cuties as x̱ala̱'is gugwis — envisioning them finding the perfect sized shell on the surf worn shores of Tsax̱is, Fort Rupert, Vancouver Island.
Eype is a small village that hugs the English Channel in southwest Dorset near the town of Bridport on the infamous Jurassic Coast. Picture creamy rust-coloured sand, a shelved shingle bank backed by a massive cliff-face and the constant rush of waves.
Aside from the surf, this is a quiet hamlet and a wonderful place to explore along the pebble beach. You'll want to stay well away from the cliffs as rock slides happen quickly and the debris field is much wider than you would think.
Prepping these lovelies is a tricky business as the flanges are very delicate. You can see that many of the ornamental rings are intact. The specimen itself is amazing but the level of patience and skill that went into the preparation of this lovely cephalopod is world-class.
Photo: Specimen: 16 cm (just over 6 inches) at its widest point. Craig Chivers, Natural Selection Fossils. If you would like to see more of Craig's work, head on over to his website: naturalselection fossils.com or check out his Instagram account @naturalselectionfossils. You will drool over the incredible ammonites, marine reptile material and some bivalves — plus some paleo art thrown in for good measure.
Lytoceras sp. Photo: Craig Chivers |
The concretion prior to prep |
Both bear families descend from a common ancestor, Ursavus, a bear-dog the size of a raccoon who lived more than 20 million years ago. Seems an implausible lineage given the size of their very large descendants.
An average Grizzly weighs in around 800 lbs (363 kg), but a recent find in Alaska tops the charts at 1600 lbs (726 kg).
This mighty beast stood 12' 6' high at the shoulder, 14' to the top of his head and is one of the largest grizzlies ever recorded. This past September, the King of the forest was seen once again in the Washington Cascades -- the first sighting in over 50 years.
Grizzly Bears in First Nation Lore and Language
In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakiutl First Nations of the Pacific Northwest — or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala — a grizzly bear is known as na̱n and the ornamental grizzly bear headdress worn by the comic Dluwalakha grizzly bear dancers in the Grizzly Bear Dance, Gaga̱lalał, is known as na̱ng̱a̱mł.
There is another grizzly bear who features in the Hamatsa dance, known as Nanes Bakbakwalanooksiwae, a high-ranking figure who has no mask — instead, the dancers paint their faces dark red to symbolize a hungry bear mouth and dance in costumes made of bearskin with terrifying long wooden claws.
Indian Residential Schools (Click to Enlarge) |
This was not to give them an education but to strip them of their culture. It was not lost as a by-product of attending — it was the sole reason for their attending.
Impossible you say. Well, it happened. And we are reaping the fall out to this day.
The legal term Indian is both political & racist. Canada's Indigenous population are First Nation, Métis & Inuit.
Today, all Canadians share in a historic time of healing, thoughtful dialogue, and helping to bring forth the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.
They are members of the Order Medullosales — closely related to modern-day cycads.
These extinct ferns lived 310 million years ago during the Great Coal Age — a timeframe that includes the Pennsylvanian and Mississippian periods when much of the Earth's coal was formed.
As ferns, trees and other plant matter decayed, vast deposits of peat accumulated. Floodwaters brought silt deposits, covering and intermingling with the decaying peat. Time and pressure turned that mixture to the coal we mine today.
Back when they were alive, Pennsylvania was largely a tropical swamp with ferns towering at more than 50 feet high. They dominated the landscape, lived and died a full 185 million years before the first of our lovely flowering plants had even arrived.
Bottlenose dolphins first appeared during the Miocene and swam the shallow seas of this region.
We still find them today in warm and temperate seas worldwide though unlike narwhal, beluga and bowhead whales, Bottlenose dolphins avoid the Arctic and Antarctic Circle regions.
Their name derives from the Latin tursio (dolphin) and truncatus for their characteristic truncated teeth. In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest — and part of my heritage — dolphin are hatsawe'.
On the north end of Vancouver Island, we have pods of 50-100 Pacific White-Sided dolphins, cousins of the Bottlenose, who frolic and jump alongside your boat if you are out on the water. Similar to their southern cousins, Pacific White-Sided dolphins feed on salmon, herring, pilchards, anchovies, needlefish, squid, shrimp, pollock, sablefish, rock cod and other small fish — a tasty menu that reflects my own.
Bottlenose dolphins are the most common dolphin species in the Pacific Northwest but do not often venture farther north than Oregon. We have two populations of bottlenose dolphins here, the California coastal population and those that prefer to live offshore. It is as exciting to see them playing in our oceans today as it is to see the fossil remains of their ancestors from the Brown Bank sediments of the North Sea.
Brown Bank, North Sea, Pleistocene Dredging Area |
Many waterworn vertebrae from the Harbour Porpoise Phocoena sp., (Cuvier, 1816), Bottlenose dolphin Tursiops sp. (Gervais, 1855), and Beluga Whale, Delphinapterus sp. (Lacépède, 1804) are found by fishermen as they dredge the bottom of the Brown Bank, one of the deepest sections of the North Sea.
The North Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean located between the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Sea in the north.
The fishermen use small mesh trawl nets that tend to scoop up harder bits from the bottom. This technique is one of the only ways this Pleistocene and other more recent material is recovered from the seabed, making them relatively uncommon. The most profitable region for fossil mammal material is in the Brown Bank area of the North Sea. I have circled this area on the map below to give you an idea of the region.
Found by Fishermen in the North Sea. Using a small mesh trawl net is often the only time these come up from the seabed, hence they are uncommon. Size: 17.0cm. Age: 30-40,000 Years old.