JOGGINS FOSSIL CLIFFS

Hylonomus lyelli, Ancestor of all dinosaurs

The fossil cliffs at Joggins are one of Canada's gems, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, you can visit to see our ancient world frozen in time. 

Preserved in situ is a snapshot of an entire food chain of a terrestrial Pennsylvanian Coal Age wetland.

The outcrop holds fossil plant life — including impressive standing lycopsid trees that formed the framework of these wetlands — decomposing detritivores in the invertebrates and tetrapods, the predatory carnivores of the day.

The Coal Age trees were fossilized where they stood 300-million-years ago with the remains of the earliest reptiles entombed within. The preservation is quite marvellous with the footprints of creatures who once lived in these wetlands are frozen where they once walked and the dens of amphibians are preserved with remnants of their last meal. 

Nowhere is a record of plant, invertebrate and vertebrate life within now fossilized forests rendered more evocatively. The fossil record at Joggins contains 195+ species of plants, invertebrates and vertebrates. The fossil plant life became the vast coal deposits for which this period of Earth's history is named. 

Recorded in the rock are vertebrate and invertebrate fauna both aquatic and terrestrial. This broad mix of specimens gives us a view into life back in the Pennsylvanian and sets us up to understand their ecological context.

Pennsylvanian Coal Age Ecosystem, 300-Million-Years-Old

The fossil record includes species first defined at Joggins, some of which are found nowhere else on Earth. 

It was here that Sir Charles Lyell, with Sir William Dawson, founder of modern geology, discovered tetrapods — amphibians and reptiles — entombed in the upright fossil trees. 

Later work by Dawson would reveal the first true reptile, Hylonomus lyelli, ancestor of all dinosaurs that would rule the Earth 100 million years later. 

This tiny reptile serves as the reference point where animals finally broke free of the water to live on land. This evolutionary milestone recorded at Joggins remains pivotal to understanding the origins of all vertebrate life on land, including our own species. 

Sir Charles Lyell, author of Principles of Geology, first noted the exceptional natural heritage value of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs, calling them “...the finest example in the world of a natural exposure in a continuous section ten miles long, occurs in the sea cliffs bordering a branch of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.” Indeed, the world-famous Bay of Fundy with its impressive tides, the highest in the world, and stormy nature exposed much of this outcrop. 

Geological accounts of the celebrated coastal section at Joggins first appear in the published literature in 1828–1829, by Americans C.T. Jackson and F. Alger, and by R. Brown and R. Smith, managers for the General Mining Association in the Sydney and Pictou coal fields. Brown and Smith’s account is the first to document the standing fossil trees.

Joggins Fossil Cliffs Map (Click to Enlarge)

Plan Your Joggins Fossil Cliffs Staycation

Joggins Fossil Cliffs is a Canadian gem — and they welcome visitors. They offer hands-on learning and discovery microscope activities in their Fossil Lab.

You can explore interpretive displays in the Joggins Fossil Centre before heading out to the beach and cliffs with an interpreter.

Their guided tours of the fossil site include an educational component that tells you about the geology, ecology, palaeontology and conservation of this very special site. 

Joggins / Chegoggin / Mi'kmaq L'nu

We know this area as Joggins today. In Mi'kmaw, the language spoken in Mi'kma'ki, the territory of the Mi'kmaq L'nu, the area bears another name, Chegoggin, place of fishing weirs.

Booking Your Class Field Trip

If you are a teacher and would like to book a class field trip, contact the Director of Operations via the contact information listed below. They will walk you through Covid safety and discuss how to make your visit educational, memorable and fun.

Know Before You Go

The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world. Beach walks are scheduled according to the tides and run regardless of the weather. Good low tides but raining, the beach walk goes on. Lovely and sunny but with a high tide, the beach walk must wait. So, you will want to dress for it as they will not be cancelled in the event of rain. Should severe weather be a factor, bookings may need to be rescheduled at the discretion of the Joggins staff.

Any questions about booking your school field trip? Feel free to email:  operations@jogginsfossilcliffs.net or call: 1 (902) 251-2727 EXT 222.

References & further reading:

Joggins Fossil Cliffs: https://jogginsfossilcliffs.net/cliffs/history/

Image: Hylonomus lyelli, Una ricostruzione di ilonomo by Matteo De Stefano/MUSEThis file was uploaded by MUSE - Science Museum of Trento in cooperation with Wikimedia Italia., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48143186

Image: Arthropleura: Par Tim Bertelink — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48915156

Joggins Map: Joggins Fossil Cliffs: https://jogginsfossilcliffs.net/cliffs/history/

ZENASPIS PODOLICA HEAD SHIELD

A Devonian bony fish mortality plate showing a lower shield of Zenaspis podolica (Lankester, 1869) from Lower Devonian deposits of Podolia, Ukraine.

Podolia or Podilia is a historic region in Eastern Europe, located in the west-central and south-western parts of Ukraine, in northeastern Moldova. Podolia is the only region in Ukraine where 420 million-year-old remains of ichthyofauna can be found near the surface, making them accessible to collection and study. Zenaspis is an extinct genus of jawless fish which thrived during the early Devonian. Being jawless, Zenaspis was probably a bottom feeder, snicking on debris from the seafloor similar to how flounder, groupers, bass and other bottom-feeding fish make a living.

For the past 150 years, vertebrate fossils have been found in more than 90 localities situated in outcrops along banks of the Dniester River and its northern tributaries, and in sandstone quarries. At present, the faunal list of Early Devonian agnathans and fishes from Podolia number seventy-two species, including 8 Thelodonti, 39 Heterostraci, 19 Osteostraci, 4 Placodermi, 1 Acanthodii, and 1 Holocephali (Voichyshyn 2001a).

In Podolia, Lower Devonian redbeds strata (the Old Red Formation or Dniester Series) are up to 1800 m thick and range from Lochkovian to Eifelian in age (Narbutas 1984; Drygant 2000, 2003).

In their lower part (Ustechko and Khmeleva members of the Dniester Series) they consist of lovely multicoloured, mainly red, fine-grained cross-bedded massive quartz sandstones and siltstones with seams of argillites (Drygant 2000).

We see fossils of Zenaspis in the early Devonian of Western Europe. Both Zenaspis pagei and Zenaspis poweri can be found up to 25 centimetres long in Devonian outcrops of Scotland.

Reference: Voichyshyn, V. 2006. New osteostracans from the Lower Devonian terrigenous deposits of Podolia, Ukraine. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 51 (1): 131–142. Photo care of the awesome Fossilero Fisherman.

OKANAGAN HIGHLAND FOSSIL LOCALITIES

Fossils from the Okanagan Highlands, an area centred in the Interior of British Columbia, provide important clues to our ancient climate. 

Okanagan Highlands refers to an arc of Eocene lakebed sites that extend from Smithers in the north, down to the fossil site of Republic Washington. 

The grouping includes the fossil sites of Driftwood Canyon, Quilchena, Allenby, Tranquille, McAbee, Princeton and Republic.

These fossil sites range in time from Early to Middle Eocene, and the fossil they contain give us a snapshot of what was happening in this part of the world because of the varied plant fossils they contain.

We can infer the difference in climates between the sites. McAbee was not as warm as some of the other Middle Eocene sites, a fact inferred by what we see and what is conspicuously missing. In looking at the plant species, it has been suggested that the area of McAbee had a more temperate climate, slightly cooler and wetter than other Eocene sites to the south at Princeton, British Columbia and Republic and Chuckanut, Washington. Missing are the tropical Sabal (palm), seen at Princeton and the impressive Ensete (banana) and Zamiaceae (cycad) found at Republic in north-central Washington, in the Swauk Formation near Skykomish and the Chuckanut Formation of northern Washington state.

CAMBRIAN FOSSILS NEAR CRANBROOK, BRITISH COLUMBIA

The partial specimen you see here is an Olenellus trilobite from the Eager Formation near Cranbrook, British Columbia.

It was exciting to crack open the rock and find a specimen, many specimens, more than half a billion years old. It is something we so rarely do but the opportunity is all around us in the many sedimentary rocks that outcrop near the surface around the globe. 

Near Cranbrook, the Eager Formation outcrops at several locations just outside of town. This particular lovely is from the Rifle Range locality and is in my collection at 98-CR-EF042 — meaning it was collected in 1998 and the 42nd find of the day. This is a prolific site and with diligent collecting, you can find many wonderful specimens of scientific and aesthetic value in the course of a day.

The Rifle Range locality sits on the Silhouette Rifle Range — which is literally on a rifle range where folks go to shoot at things.

The fossils we find here are just a shade older than those found at the Burgess Shale. Burgess is Middle Cambrian and the species match the Eager fauna one for one but the Eager fauna are much less varied. 

Olenellus is an extinct genus of redlichiid trilobites, early arthropods, that litter this glorious Cambrian site. Olenellus is the only genus currently recognised in the subfamily Olenellinae. The sister group called the Mesonacinae consists of the genera Mesonacis and Mesolenellus.

Olenellus range in size but are about 5 centimetres or 2.0 inches long on average. They lived during the Botomian and Toyonian stages, Olenellus-zone, 522 to 510 million years ago, in what is currently North America in what was part of the paleocontinent of Laurentia.

Olenellus are both common in and restricted to Early Cambrian rocks — 542 million to 521 million years old — and thus a useful Index Fossil for the Early Cambrian. 

Olenellus had a well-developed head, large and crescentic eyes, and a poorly developed, small tail. The fellow you see had a bit of his tail crushed as he turned to stone.

Trilobites were amongst the earliest fossils with hard skeletons. While they are extinct today, they were the dominant life form at the beginning of the Cambrian and it is what we find as the primary fossil in the fauna of the Eager Formation. 

A slightly crushed lingulida brachiopod

The Eager Formation has produced many beautifully preserved Wanneria, abundant Olellenus and a handful of rare and treasured Tuzoia and Anomalocaris claws. The shale matrix lends itself to amazing preservation. 

The specimens of Wanneria from here are impressively large. Some are up to thirteen centimetres long and ten centimetres wide. You find a mixture of complete specimens and head impressions from years of perfectly preserved moults.

From July 21 to 31, 2015, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), under the direction of Dr. Jean-Bernard Caron carried out a palaeontological dig at an exposure of the Eager Formation that outcrops between Cranbrook and  Fort Steele in the East Kootenay Region of British Columbia. 

The team included David George (APS), Dr. Bob Gaines (Pomona College), Dr. Jean-Bernard Caron (ROM), Dr. Gabriela Mangano (University of Saskatchewan), Maryam Akrami (ROM), Darrell Nordby (APS), Joe Moysiuk (University of Toronto), and local, Guy Santucci (APS and project field co-ordinator), and Dr. Mark Webster (University of Chicago).

Dr. Caron was interested in the fauna of the Eager Formation as there is an overlap with the Burgess Shale species — the Eager is a window into time 513 million years ago — 8 million years earlier than the Burgess. 

Lower Cambrian Brachiopod

They found the usual suspects, including multiple specimens of Wanneria dunnae and Olenellus ricei along with the rarer genus Mesonacis, in addition to specimens of the elusive Tuzoia. 

They also found a block with at least 112 individual trilobites (mostly moulted cephalons) of Olenellus ricei and Wanneria dunnae. 

The most exciting of their finds included a sponge, Anomalocaris, Morania (a cyanobacterial growth), and a hyolithid similar to the Burgess Haplophrentis.

They also found many trace fossils. There was a particularly fetching 30 cm trace fossil, likely from a large Wanneria, that I hope Dr. Mángano or one of her graduate students lend their gaze — Gabriela is a particularly good writer. 

She is co-editor of Palaios, in addition to being a member of the editorial board of a number of journals, including Journal of Paleontology, Paleontologia Electronica, Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, Ameghiniana, and Revista Brasilera de Paleontologia. Gabriela is a member of the Scientific Board of the UNESCO International Geoscience Program (IGCP), member of the SEPM Board, and Treasurer of the International Ichnological Association. Add all that to extensive fieldwork and supervising over fifteen graduate students and postdoctoral fellows — she's an amazing woman.

Their excavation of the site was thorough — reducing all of the potentially fossil-bearing strata to pieces the size or smaller than a dinner plate. The 2015 team used a backhoe to take off the weathered top layer and get down to the bedrock below.

It has been six years since their visit and we will hopefully see some worthy publications from their efforts. There had been talk of multiple publications stemming from the spectrum of species, a comparison to the Burgess fauna and papers on the trace fossils. I checked in with Joe Moysuik from the University of Toronto who had been on the dig in 2015. To his knowledge, no new papers have yet to be published — though, Caron has been a busy bee on a sexy new nektobenthic suspension feeder from the Burgess material. I am rather hoping their team sorts out the naming of some of the species and gets them to publication so we can finally put them to bed.

Days after my correspondence with Moysuik, Chris Jenkins, a Cranbrook local and huge contributor to our knowledge of Upper Cambrian trilobites, shared an exciting find. 

He and Don Askew had ventured out together for their first fossil field trip of 2021 — and made a rather auspicious start to the year. 

The two had met some 10 years previous when Don, an avid outdoorsman and Jenkins' neighbour, had wandered over to see what all the rocks were about in Jenkins' yard. 

Tales of trilobites and a lifelong friendship ensued. It was also the beginnings of shared fieldwork. This time, it was to outcrops of the Eager Formation just outside of Cranbrook. Together, the two unearthed a three-foot-wide band of Eager Formation bedrock. Not unusual in and of itself — but instead of the usual trilobites — this rock revealed several varieties of Lower Cambrian brachiopods. 

Jenkins shared photos of at least three different types of brachiopods — potentially new fauna for the Eager. Although they superficially resemble the molluscs that make modern seashells, they are not related. Brachiopods were the most abundant and diverse fossil invertebrates of the Paleozoic — over 4500 genera known; the number of species is far greater. So, naturally, we had expected to find brachiopods in the Eager Formation as they were abundant in Lower Cambrian seas — but so far they had eluded us.

And, interestingly, the rock containing the brachiopods is devoid of any trilobite specimens — not a one. Have they found a wee slip of the Eager Formation that records a nearshore environment or have they stumbled across a segment that records another time period altogether?

The brachiopods you see in the photos above are roughly 1/4 inch to 3/4 inches. Should Caron and team return to the site, these new brachiopods will be of great interest as they look to rewrite the geology and palaeontology of the site and region. 

OYSTERS ON THE HALF SHELL

One of the now rare species of oysters in the Pacific Northwest is the Olympia oyster, Ostrea lurida, (Carpenter, 1864).  

While rare today, these are British Columbia’s only native oyster. 

Had you been dining on their brethren in the 1800s or earlier, it would have been this species you were consuming. Middens from Port Hardy to California are built from Ostrea lurida.

These wonderful invertebrates bare their souls with every bite. Have they lived in cold water, deep beneath the sea, protected from the sun's rays and heat? Are they the rough and tumble beach denizens whose thick shells tell us of a life spent withstanding the relentless pounding of the sea? Is the oyster in your mouth thin and slimy having just done the nasty—spurred by the warming waters of Spring? 

Is this oyster a local or was it shipped to your current local and, if asked, would greet you with "Kon'nichiwa?" Not if the beauty on your plate is indeed Ostrea lurida. 

Oyster in Kwak'wala is t̕łox̱t̕łox̱

We have been cultivating, indeed maximizing the influx of invasive species to the cold waters of the Salish Sea for many years. 

But in the wild waters off the coast of British Columbia is the last natural abundant habitat of the tasty Ostrea lurida in the pristine waters of  Nootka Sound. 

The area is home to the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations who have consumed this species boiled or steamed for thousands of years. Here these ancient oysters not only survive but thrive — building reefs and providing habitat for crab, anemones and small marine animals. 

Oysters are in the family Ostreidae — the true oysters. Their lineage evolved in the Early Triassic — 251 - 247 million years ago. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest and my family, an oyster is known as t̕łox̱t̕łox̱. 

I am curious to learn if any of the Nuu-chah-nulth have a different word for an oyster. If you happen to know, I would be grateful to learn.

BONE VERSUS HORN

The skulls of many dinosaurs had bumps, crests or horns for display, scaring rivals and impressing potential mates.

Instead of the sharp nose horn of many of their large plant-eating cousins, Pachyrhinosuaurs had a big, bony lump on their snout.

Pachyrhinosaurus were ceratopsian dinosaurs that lived in North America during the Late Cretaceous. 

Unlike their Triceratops cousins, Pachyrhinosaurus can be distinguished by their large lumps or bosses over their nose rather than horns.

The first fossil specimens were found in western Canada in Alberta by Charles M. Sternberg in 1946 and named in 1950. Charles Mortram Sternberg (1885–1981) was an American-Canadian fossil collector and palaeontologist, and son of the famous Charles Hazelius Sternberg (1850-1943) who worked with Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel C. Marsh, and for the British Museum, the San Diego Natural History Museum and other museums. 

Late in his career, Charles M. collected and described Pachyrhinosaurus, Brachylophosaurus, Parksosaurus and Edmontonia. A contemporary author wrote, "No published study of Canadian dinosaurs is possible today without citing one or another of Sternberg's papers. 

Over a dozen partial skulls and a large assortment of other fossils from various species have been found in Alberta and Alaska. A great number were not available for study until the 1980s, resulting in a relatively recent increase of interest in Pachyrhinosaurus.

Three species have been identified. P. lakustai, from the Wapiti Formation, the bonebed horizon of which is roughly equivalent age to the upper Bearpaw and lower Horseshoe Canyon Formations, is known to have existed from about 73.5–72.5 million years ago. P. canadensis is younger, known from the lower Horseshoe Canyon Formation, about 71.5–71 Ma ago and the St. Mary River Formation. 

Fossils of the youngest species, P. perotorum, have been recovered from the Prince Creek Formation of Alaska, and date to 70–69 Ma ago. The presence of three known species makes this genus the most speciose among the centrosaurines.

DELGADOCRINUS OPORTOVINUM

This exceptionally well-preserved crinoid, Delgadocrinus oportovinum, was found on October 11, 1905, by Nery Delgado during his work mapping the geology and paleontology of Portugal.

His find resulted in the creation of a new family, Delgadocrinoinidae, a new genus and a new species.

Ausich et al. published on New and Revised Occurrences of Ordovician Crinoids from Southwestern Europe in the Journal of Paleontology, November 2007. In their work, they honour Delgado. His find was the first record of an Ordovician crinoid from Portugal, Delgadocrinus oportovinum, marking it as the oldest known crinoid from the Iberian Peninsula, Arenigian/Oretanian boundary, early Darriwilian.

The team took a comprehensive look at the Ordovician crinoids of southwestern Europe, including taxa based on articulated crowns and stems. This summary incorporates new material, new localities, and a revision of some southwestern Europe occurrences and is well worth a read. The Type Specimen you see here is now housed in the Natural History Museum of Lisbon. Luis Lima shared a photo of his recent visit to their beautiful collections and kindly granted permission to share the photo.

Reference: Ausich, William & Sá, Artur & Gutiérrez-Marco, Juan. (2007). New and revised occurrences of Ordovician crinoids from southwestern Europe. Journal of Paleontology - J PALEONTOL. 81. 1374-1383. 10.1666/05-038.1.

SAYWARD FOSSILS OF VANCOUVER ISLAND

Coroniceras sp. from Sayward, British Columbia

This yummy Lower Jurassic ammonite with the creamy dark chocolate colouring is from an all but inaccessible outcrop of the Upper Sinemurian, Bonanza Group,  Harbledownense Zone, Memekay River area, near Sayward, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. 

This area is home to the We Wai Kai and Wei Wai Kum First Nations and lands of the K'omoks whose culture thrives and reflects the natural rugged beauty of the central island region.

I passed through Sayward earlier this month on the way to northern Vancouver Island. 

It is rugged, remote and beautiful. Think trees and valleys for as far as the eye can see. Some of those hillsides on the horizon contain wonderful fossils, including this Coroniceras sp. with the truly marvellous keel.

By the time these ammonites were being buried in sediment, Wrangellia, the predominately volcanic terrane that now forms Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii, had made its way to the northern mid-latitudes.

Within the basal part of the sequence, sedimentary beds are found interbedded with lapilli and crystal tuffs. Here you'll see maroon tuffaceous sandstone, orange-grey sandstone, granule sandstone and conglomerate. Within them we find ammonites nestled in with gastropods and pelecypods. 

While the fossiliferous outcrop is quite small, the Bonanza group is much larger, estimated to be at least 1000 metres thick. The site is quite small and in an active logging area, so the window to collect was limited. The drive up the mountain was thrilling as there had just been heavy rains and the road was washed out and narrowed until it was barely the width of our wheelbase and very, very steep. Closer to the top it narrowed to be just shy of the width of the vehicle — thrilling, to say the least. 

So scary that my passengers all got out as there was a high probability of going head-first over the edge. I was navigating by some handwritten field notes and a wee map on a paper napkin that should have read, "park at the bottom and hike up." 

Did we park at the bottom and hike up? No, we did not. 

The torrential rains of the Pacific Northwest had been working their magic on the hillside and slowly washing out the road until it slowly became more of a trail.

At the base of the hillside all looked well. Giddy for the fossils to come, we ventured off with a truck full of enthusiasm. Within 15 minutes of steep elevation gain, we had a wonderful view of the valley below. We were halfway up the mountain before I realized the error of my ways. The road twisted and turned then slowly narrowed to the width of my tires. Too narrow to turn around, so the only way was up. 

Graham Beard from Qualicum Beach was the fellow who showed me the site and drew the wee map for me. I cannot recall everyone on the trip, but Perry Poon was there — he shot a video of the drive up that he described as thrilling. I have never seen it but would like to one day — and so was Patricia Coutts with her lovely Doberman. 

She and I had just done a trip up to Goldbridge where the cliff we were on had turned into a landslide into a ravine so she was feeling understandably cautious about the power of Mother Nature. 

Picture the angle, the hood of my jeep riding high and hiding what remained of the road beneath and a lovely stick shift that made you roll backwards a wee bit with every move to put it into gear. So, without being able to see the very narrow path beneath, I had to just keep going. 

Both Perry and Patricia helped with filling in the potholes so my tires would have something to grip. 

I bent the frame on the jeep heading up and had some explaining to do when I returned it to the car rental place. 

As I recall, I wasn't in my ordinary vehicle but a rental because my car had been stolen the weekend before when I was away with John Fam and Dan Bowen collecting at Jurassic Point, an epic fossil site accessible only by boat on our wild west coast.

Fortuitous timing really, as they stole my car but I had unloaded my precious fossil collecting gear out of the trunk just days before.  

In the end, we found what we were looking for. Memekay yields a mix of ammonites, gastropods and bivalves. 

Many of them are poorly preserved. It was a hell of a ride but well worth the effort as we found some great fossils and with them more information on the palaeontology and geology of Vancouver Island. Just look at the keel on this beauty.

I would share the site information but it is now covered over with debris and inaccessible. One day, this whole region will be developed and the site will be opened up again. Until then, we'll have to enjoy what has been unearthed.

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.

JURASSIC STARFISH

This beautiful fossil brittle star with his slender whip-like arms is from Jurassic outcrops of Portugal and hails from the collection of Vitor Miranda. I've also included some photos of his colourful modern relatives.

At a glance, sea stars and brittle stars look quite similar. These echinoderms generally have five radiating arms (or a multiple thereof) and creep along on the seafloor using their arms for locomotion. And they come in wonderful colours.

Sea stars and brittle stars look similar and are related but are actually quite different.

Both sea stars and brittle stars are in the phylum Echinodermata, which also includes sea cucumbers, sea urchins, sand dollars and sea lilies. The most common brittle star is the long-armed brittle star, Amphipholis squamata, a gray-blue, luminescent (glowing) species.

Echinoderms can be found making a living in our oceans and are known for their five-point radial symmetry and unique water vascular system. They typically have a tough, spiny surface, which inspired their name. In Greek, echinos means “spiny” and derma means “skin.”

A neat little evolutionary feature of these lovelies is their ability to regrow lost body parts, and sea stars and brittle stars can regrow arms if broken off or eaten.

Within the phylum, sea stars and brittle stars are in different classes. Sea stars are in the class Asteroidea, where brittle stars are in Ophiuroidea, which also includes basket stars.

To tell the two apart, first, look at their bodies. The modern brittle star you see to the right looks delicate, almost spindly. The sea stars you see below are more robust. Their fundamental structure is different, especially when you look at where the arms connect to the center of the body. Brittle stars have tube feet along their arms that sense light and scent.

Sea stars have thicker, triangular-shaped arms that are typically their widest at the point of connection to the center of the body. They can be found in blue, red, orange, purple, pink, white and a mixture of those same colours.

Brittle stars, on the other hand, have much thinner, more delicate arms that appear more snake-like. Their arms connect to a central disk but do not touch one another.

Sea stars rely on their water vascular system to move. The water vascular system includes a number of small tube feet that become stiff when water is pushed into them, allowing the sea star to move on a conveyor belt-like rotation of feet.

Although brittle stars also have a water vascular system, they twist and bend their long arms to move, instead. This means that they can move much more quickly than sea stars, especially when trying to escape a predator. Handy that!

DOUVILLEICERAS MAMMILLATUM

Some lovely examples of Douvilleiceras mammillatum (Schlotheim, 1813), ammonites from the Lower Cretaceous (Middle-Lower Albian) Douvilliceras inequinodum zone of Ambarimaninga, Mahajanga Province, Madagascar.

The genus Douvilleiceras range from Middle to Late Cretaceous and can be found in Asia, Africa, Europe and North and South America. 

We have beautiful examples in the early to mid-Albian from the archipelago of Haida Gwaii in British Columbia. Joseph F. Whiteaves was the first to recognize the genus from Haida Gwaii when he was looking over the early collections of James Richardson and George Dawson. The beauties you see here measure 6cm to 10cm.

UK ROLLED TRILOBITE

A lovely rolled trilobite, Calymene blumenbachii,  from outcrops in the UK. This wee beauty is in the collections of the deeply awesome Theresa Paul Spink Dunn — or perhaps in her daughter Layla's collections as she is quite the budding palaeontologist. This Silurian beauty is from the Homerian, Wenlock Series, Wrens Nest, Dudley, UK.

Calymene blumenbachii, sometimes erroneously spelled blumenbachi, is a species of trilobite found in the limestone quarries of the Wren's Nest in Dudley, England.

Nicknamed the Dudley Bug or Dudley Locust by an 18th-century quarryman, it became a symbol of the town and featured on the Dudley County Borough Council coat-of-arms. Calymene blumenbachii is commonly found in Silurian rocks (422.5-427.5 million years ago) and is thought to have lived in the shallow waters of the Silurian, in low energy reefs.

This particular species of Calymene — a fairly common genus in the Ordovician-Silurian — is unique to the Wenlock series in England and comes from the Wenlock Limestone Formation in Much Wenlock and the Wren's Nest in Dudley. These sites seem to yield trilobites more readily than any other areas on the Wenlock Edge, and the rock here is dark grey as opposed to yellowish or whitish as it appears on other parts of the Edge, just a few miles away, in Church Stretton and elsewhere. This suggests local changes in the environment in which the rock was deposited. The Wenlock Edge quarry is closed now to further collecting but may be open to future research projects. We shall have to see.

SQUIRRELS: SHADOW TAILS

One of the little animals I see daily in Kitsilano, Vancouver, are the very busy, highly comic rodents we know as squirrels. 

They spend their days busily gathering and caching food and their nights resting from all that hard work. 

My neighbourhood has mostly Eastern Gray squirrels, Sciurus carolinensis (Gmelin, 1788) who come in a colour palette of reddish-brown, grey (British spelling) and black. 

These cuties have bushy tails and a spring in their step — racing around gathering nuts, finding secret hiding spots to cache them, 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 Gray squirrels have two breeding seasons in December-January and June-July. This past year was warm. On Vancouver Island, the Eastern Grays 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, Tamiasciurus douglasii (Bachman, 1839), and the nocturnal Northern Flying Squirrels, Glaucomys sabrinus (Shaw, 1801).  

Sciurus, is derived from two Greek words, skia, meaning shadow, and oura, meaning tail. The name choice is poetic, alluding to squirrels sitting in the shadow of their tails. 

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 Gray 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, anachronistic and the first systemic zoology of America by an American. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nation, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, we use the word ta̱minasux̱, to say: "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 the Gagumas ha̱t̕sa̱x̱ste' of Khahtsahlano. 

EOCENE CRYPTODIRAN TURTLE

An Eocene Cryptodiran Fossil Turtle, Baena arenosa, from fine-grained lime mud outcrops in the Green River Formation, Wyoming, USA.

This fellow, with the extra-long tail, marks the last of his lineage. The now extinct family Baenidae appeared first in the Jurassic and died out at the end of the Eocene. We've found specimens of Baena, along with 14 other species of turtles in seven genera and five families in the Lower Eocene San Jose Formation, San Juan Basin of New Mexico.

This specimen is from the Green River Formation of Wyoming which was once the bottom of one of an extensive series of Eocene lakes. The Green River Formation is particularly abundant in beautifully preserved fossil fish, eleven species of reptiles including a 13.5ft crocodile, an armadillo-like mammal, Brachianodon westorum, bats, birds and other fresh-water aquatic goodies.

This specimen of a beautiful Baena was found and prepped by the Green River Stone Company. They purchased their private 12-acre quarry about 20 years ago. It's at the Eocene lake's centre, shared with Fossil Butte National Monument about 24 kilometres (15 miles) west of Kemmerer, Lincoln County, Wyoming.

TRUMPET CALLS FROM THE CRETACEOUS

Reconstruction of Prosaurolophus maximus

When this good looking fellow was originally described by Brown, Prosaurolophus maximus was known only from a skull and jaw. Half of the skull was badly weathered at the time of examination, and the level of the parietal was distorted and crushed upwards to the side. 

You can imagine that these deformations in preservation created some grief in the final description.

Prosaurolophus maximus was a large-headed duckbill dinosaur, or hadrosaurid, in the ornithischian family Hadrosauridae.

The most complete Prosaurolophus maximus specimen had a massive skull an impressive 0.9 metres (3.0 ft) long that graced a skeleton about 8.5 metres (28 ft) long. 

He had a small, stout, triangular crest in front of his eyes. The sides of the crest are concave, forming depressions. 

The crest grew isometrically — without changing in proportion — throughout the lifetime of each individual, leading one to wonder if Prosaurolophus had had a soft tissue display structure such as inflatable nasal sacs. We see this feature in hooded seals, Cystophora cristata, who live in the central and western North Atlantic today. Prosaurolophus maximus may have used their inflatable nasal sac for a display to warn a predator or to entice the ladies, attracting the attention of a female.

The different bones of the skull are easily defined with the exception of the parietal and nasal bones. Brown found that the skull of the already described genus Saurolophus was very similar overall, just smaller than the skull of Prosaurolophus maximus. The unique feature of a shortened frontal in lambeosaurines is also found in Prosaurolophus maximus, and the other horned hadrosaurines Brachylophosaurus, Maiasaura, and Saurolophus. Although they lack a shorter frontal, the genera Edmontosaurus and Shantungosaurus share an elongated dentary structure.

Prosaurolophus maximus, Ottawa Museum of Nature

Patches of preserved skin are known from two juvenile specimens, TMP 1998.50.1 and TMP 2016.37.1; these pertain to the ventral extremity of the ninth through fourteenth dorsal ribs, the caudal margin of the scapular blade, and the pelvic region. 

Small basement scales (scales that make up the majority of the skin surface), 3–7 millimetres (0.12–0.28 in) in diameter, are preserved on these patches - this is similar to the condition seen in other saurolophine hadrosaurs.

More uniquely, feature scales (larger, less numerous scales which are interspersed within the basement scales) around 5 millimetres (0.20 in) wide and 29 millimetres (1.1 in) long are found interspersed in the smaller scales in the patches from the ribs and scapula (they are absent from the pelvic patches). 

Similar scales are known from the tail of the related Saurolophus angustirostris (on which they have been speculated to indicate pattern), and it is considered likely adult Prosaurolophus would've retained the feature scales on their flanks like the juveniles.

Image: Three-dimensional reconstruction of Prosaurolophus maximus. Created using the skull reconstructions in the original description as reference. (Fig. 1 and 3 in Brown 1916). According to Lull and Wright (1942), the muzzle was restored too long in its original description. The colours and/or patterns, as with nearly all reconstructions of prehistoric creatures, are speculative. Created & uploaded to Wikipedia by Steveoc 86.

BELEMNITES: SQUID-LIKE CEPHALOPODS

Lower Jurassic Belemnites, Photo: Georg Laki

Belemnitida is an extinct order of squid-like cephalopods that swam our ancient seas from the Late Triassic to Late Cretaceous. 

Unlike squid, belemnites had an internal skeleton that made up the cone and it is this hard part that we often find fossilized. 

The parts are, from arms to tip: the tongue-shaped pro-ostracum, the conical phragmocone, and the pointy guard.  

When you find these as fossils, it is not intuitive as to what kind of animal they came from. This is the internal hard part of a rather soft, squishy squid-like fellow. 

Because the softer bits are often scavenged and decay, we rarely see them fossilized. Instead, we get what looks like a pointy selection of cigar-shaped goodies that are all that is left of these marine cephalopods. 

We find this fossil in many places around the world. Some friends shared where they have personally found them which I thought might be of interest to you. Arno Martini has found them in northern California, Anne Glenn finds them in Wyoming, Marco Valentin has an enviable collection from Hannover, Misburg, Germany, Juanjo Ugalde Robledo finds them in La Rioja, Spain, Barbara Hnb finds them in Normandy, Patrick Buster finds them in the Navesink Formation of New Jersey, Kim Pervis shared a monograph on Mississippian Belemnites by Rousseau. 

Georg Laki has collected many of their number in the Early Jurassic (Sinemurian/Pliensbachian) of South Luxembourg at Gasperich. I included a photo of Georg's belemnites (with permission) here for you to enjoy. He has a lovely collection that shows the variety of these fossils. 

Anatomy of a Belemnite Fossil

Other notable finds are from Scott Carpenter and his daughter who collect them on the Jurassic Coast, Gabriel Santos who collects them in Peniche, Portugal and Rossi Franco shared a belemnite he found in the building materials used to construct the Bank of Italy in Genoa. 

There are also some wonderfully preserved plates of multiple Jurassic belemnites from Mistelgau, Germany you may want to take a boo at. Imagine slate grey to honey brown Youngibelus and Paxillosus clusters on a beige matrix. Quite stunning. 

I have found them around British Columbia, as has Lloyd Rempel, including at Harrison Lake, British Columbia, Canada. 

ANCIENT ARMADILLOS

Glyptodonts are the early ancestors of our modern armadillos that roamed North and South America during the Pleistocene. 

Armadillos, both living and extinct, range in size from the size of an armoured car to the size of a small, family dog. As they evolved over time, the smaller they have become. 

Glyptodonts became extinct at the end of the last ice age. They, along with a large number of other megafaunal species, including pampatheres, the giant ground sloths, and the Macrauchenia, left this Earth but their bones tell a story of brief and awesome supremacy.

Today, Glyptodonts live on through their much smaller, more lightly armoured and flexible armadillo relatives. They defended themselves against Sabre Tooth Cats and other predators but could not withstand the arrival of early humans in the Americas. Archaeological evidence suggests that these humans made use of the animal's armoured shells and enjoyed the meat therein. Glyptodonts possessed a tortoise-like body armour, made of bony deposits in their skin called osteoderms or scutes. Beneath that hard outer coating was a food source that our ancestors sought for their survival.

Each species of glyptodont had a unique osteoderm pattern and shell type. With this protection, they were armoured like turtles; glyptodonts could not withdraw their heads, but their armoured skin formed a bony cap on the top of their skull. Glyptodont tails had a ring of bones for protection. Doedicurus possessed a large mace-like spiked tail that it would have used to defend itself against predators and, possibly, other Doedicurus. Glyptodonts had the advantage of large size.

Many, such as the type genus, Glyptodon, were the size of modern automobiles. The presence of such heavy defences suggests they were the prey of a large, effective predator. At the time that glyptodonts evolved, the apex predators in the island continent of South America were phorusrhacids, a family of giant flightless carnivorous birds.

The ancient Armadillo Glyptodon asper

In physical appearance, glyptodonts superficially resembled the much earlier dinosaurian ankylosaurs and, to a lesser degree, the recently extinct giant meiolaniid turtles of Australia.

These are examples of the convergent evolution of unrelated lineages into similar forms. The largest glyptodonts could weigh up to 2,000 kilograms. Like most of the megafauna in the Americas, they all became extinct at the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. The deeper you get in time, the larger they were. Twenty thousand years ago, they could have ambled up beside you in what would become Argentina and outweighed a small car.

A few years back, some farmers found some interesting remains in a dried-out riverbed near Buenos Aires. The find generated a ton of palaeontological excitement. Fieldwork revealed this site to contain two adults and two younger specimens of an ancient armadillo. These car-size beasties would have been living and defending themselves against predators like Sabre Tooth Cats and other large predators of the time by employing their spiked club-like tails and thick bony armour.

Glyptodonts were unlikely warriors. They were grazing herbivores. Like many other xenarthrans, they had no incisor or canine teeth but had a number of cheek teeth that would have been able to grind up tough vegetation, such as grasses. They also had distinctively deep jaws, with large downward bony projections that would have anchored their powerful chewing muscle.

Image Two: By Arentderivative work: WolfmanSF (talk) -  http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Glyptodon-1.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=665483

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.

LIMESTONE AND SALT: HALLSTATT

Hallstatt Salt Mines, Austria / Permian Salt Diapir

The Hallstatt Limestone is the world's richest Triassic ammonite unit, yielding specimens of more than 500 ammonite species.

Along with diversified cephalopod fauna  — orthoceratids, nautiloids, ammonoids — we also see gastropods, bivalves, especially the late Triassic pteriid bivalve Halobia (the halobiids), brachiopods, crinoids and a few corals. We also see a lovely selection of microfauna represented. 

For microfauna, we see conodonts, foraminifera, sponge spicules, radiolaria, floating crinoids and holothurian sclerites —  polyp-like, soft-bodied invertebrate echinozoans often referred to as sea cucumbers because of their similarities in size, elongate shape, and tough skin over a soft interior. 

Franz von Hauer’s exhaustive 1846 tome describing Hallstatt ammonites inspired renowned Austrian geologist Eduard Suess’s detailed study of the area’s Mesozoic history. That work was instrumental in Suess being the first person to recognize the former existence of the Tethys Sea, which he named in 1893 after the sister of Oceanus, the Greek god of the ocean. As part of the Northern Limestone Alps, the Dachstein rock mass, or Hoher Dachstein, is one of the large karstic mountains of Austria and the second-highest mountain in the Northern Limestone Alps. It borders Upper Austria and Styria in central Austria and is the highest point in each of those states.

Parts of the massif also lie in the state of Salzburg, leading to the mountain being referred to as the Drei-Länder-Berg or three-state mountain. Seen from the north, the Dachstein massif is dominated by the glaciers with the rocky summits rising beyond them. By contrast, to the south, the mountain drops almost vertically to the valley floor. The karst limestones and dolomites were deposited in our Mesozoic seas. The geology of the Dachstein massif is dominated by the Dachstein-Kalk Formation — the Dachstein limestone — which dates back to the Triassic.

Hallstatt and the Hallstatt Sea, Austria

There were several phases of mountain building in this part of the world pushing the limestone deposits 3,000 metres above current sea level. The rock strata were originally deposited horizontally, then shifted, broken up and reshaped by the erosive forces of ice ages and erosion.

The Hallstatt mine exploits a Permian salt diapir that makes up some of this area’s oldest rock. 

The salt accumulated by evaporation in the newly opened, and hence shallow, Hallstatt-Meliata Ocean. This was one of several small ocean basins that formed in what is now Europe during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic when the world’s landmasses were welded together to form the supercontinent Pangea. 

Pangea was shaped like a crescent moon that cradled the famous Tethys Sea. Subduction of Tethyian oceanic crust caused several slivers of continental crust to separate from Pangea, forming new “back-arc basins” (small oceans formed by rifting that is associated with nearby subduction) between the supercontinent and the newly rifted ribbon continents.

The Hallstatt-Meliata Ocean was one such back-arc basin. As it continued to expand and deepen during the Triassic, evaporation ceased and reefs flourished; thick limestone deposits accumulated atop the salt. When the Hallstatt-Meliata Ocean closed in the Late Jurassic, the compression squeezed the low-density salt into a diapir that rose buoyantly, injecting itself into the Triassic limestones above.

The Hallstatt salt diapir and its overlying limestone cap came to rest in their present position in the northern Austrian Alps when they were shoved northward as nappes (thrust sheets) during two separate collision events, one in the Cretaceous and one in the Eocene, that created the modern Alps. It is from the Hallstatt salt diapir that Hallstatt, like so many cities and towns, gets its name.

Deposits of rock salt or halite, the mineral name of sodium chloride with the chemical formula of NaCl, are found and mined around the globe. These deposits mark the dried remains of ancient oceans and seas. Names of rivers, towns and cities in Europe — Salzburg, Halle, Hallstatt, Hallein, La Salle, Moselle — all pay homage to their connection to halite and salt production. The Greek word for salt is hals and the Latin is sal. The Turkish name for salt is Tuz, which we see in the naming of Tuzla, a salt-producing region of northeastern Bosnia-Herzegovina and in the names of towns that dot the coast of Turkey where it meets the Black Sea. Hallstatt with its salt diapir is no exception.

The salt-named town of Hallstatt sits on the shores of the idyllic Hallstätter Sea at the base of the Dachstein massif. Visiting it today, you experience a quaint traditional fishing village built in the typical upper Austrian style. Tourism drives the economy as much as salt as this area of the world is picture-perfect from every angle.

Space is at a minimum in the town. For centuries, every ten years the local cemetery exhumes the bones of those buried there and moves them to an ossuary to make room for new burials. The Hallstatt Ossuary is called Karner, Charnel House, or simply Beinhaus (Bone House). Karners are places of secondary burials. They were once common in the Eastern Alps, but that custom has largely disappeared.

Hallstatt Beinhaus Ossuary, Hallstatt, Austria

A collection of over 700 elaborately decorated skulls rest inside the ossuary. They are lined up on rows of wooden shelves that grace the walls of the chapel. Another 500 undecorated skulls, bare and without any kind of adornment, are stacked in the corners.

Each is inscribed and attached to a record with the deceased's name, profession and date of death. The Bone House is located in a chapel in the basement of the Church of Saint Michael. The church dates from the 12th century CE. 

Decorating the skulls was traditionally the job of the local gravedigger and an honour granted to very few. At the family's request, garlands of flowers were painted on the skulls of deceased as decorative crowns if they were female. The skulls of men and boys were painted wreaths of oak or ivy.

Every building in Hallstatt looks out over the Hallstätter Sea. This beautiful mountain lake considered one of the finest of Austria's Salzkammergut region. It lies at the northern foot of the Dachstein mountain range, sitting eight-and-a-half kilometres long and two kilometres wide. The shoreline is dotted by the villages of  Obertraun, Steeg, and Hallstatt.

The region is habitat to a variety of diverse flora and fauna, including many rare species such as native orchids, in the wetlands and moors in the south and north.

Linked by road to the cities of Salzburg and Graz, Hallstatt and its lake were declared one of the World Heritage sites in Austria in 1997 and included in the Hallstatt-Dachstein Salzkammergut Alpine UNESCO World Heritage Site. The little market village of Hallstatt takes its name from the local salt mine.

Hallstatt, Salzkammergut region, Austria

The town is a popular tourist destination with its quaint shops and terraced cafes. In the centre of town, the 19th-century Evangelical Church of Hallstatt with its tall, slender spire is a lakeside landmark. You can see it here in the photo on the left.

Above the town are the Hallstatt Salt mines located within the 1,030-meter-tall Salzburg Salt Mountain. They are accessible by cable car or a three-minute journey aboard the funicular railway. There is also a wonderful Subterranean Salt Lake.

In 1734, there was a corpse found here preserved in salt. The fellow became known as the Man in Salt. Though no archaeological analysis was performed at the time — the mummy was respectfully reburied in the Hallstatt cemetery — based on descriptions in the mine records, archaeologists suspect the miner lived during the Iron Age. This Old Father, Senos ph₂tḗr, 'ɸatīr 'father' may have been a local farmer, metal-worker, or both and chatted with his friends and family in Celtic or Proto-Celtic.

Salt mining in the area dates back to the Neolithic period, from the 8th to 5th Centuries BC. This is around the time that Roman legions were withdrawing from Britain and the Goths sacked Rome. In Austria, agricultural settlements were dotting the landscape and the alpine regions were being explored and settled for their easy access to valuable salt, chert and other raw materials.

The salt-rich mountains of Salzkammergut and the upland valley above Hallstatt were attractive for this reason. The area was once home to the Hallstatt culture, an archaeological group linked to Proto-Celtic and early Celtic people of the Early Iron Age in Europe, c.800–450 BC.

Bronze Age vessel with cow and calf

In the 19th century, a burial site was discovered with 2,000 individuals, many of them buried with Bronze Age artefacts of amber and ivory.

It was this find that helped lend the name Hallstatt to this epoch of human history. The Late Iron Age, between around 800 and 400 BC, became known as the Hallstatt Period.

For its rich history, natural beauty and breathtaking mountainous geology, Hallstatt is a truly irresistible corner of the world.

Salzbergstraße 1, 4830 Hallstatt.  https://www.salzwelten.at/en/home/

Photo: Bronze vessel with cow and calf, Hallstatt by Alice Schumacher - Naturhistorisches Museum Wien - A. Kern – K. Kowarik – A. W. Rausch – H. Reschreiter, Salz-Reich. 7000 Jahre Hallstatt, VPA 2 (Wien, 2008) Seite 133 Abbildung 6. Hallstatt Village & Ossuary Photos: P. McClure Photography ca. 2015.

Bernoulli D, Jenkyns HC (1974) Alpine, Mediterranean, and Central Atlantic Mesozoic facies in relation to the early evolution of the Tethys. Soc Econ Paleont Mineral Spec Publ 19:129–160

Bernoulli D, Jenkyns H (2009) Ancient oceans and continental margins of the Alpine-Mediterranean Tethys: deciphering clues from Mesozoic pelagic sediments and ophiolites. Sedimentology 56:149–190

SUNSETS AND SUPERNOVAE

Sunsets — pure visual poetry: peaceful, meditative, mesmerizing.

What is sunlight, actually? Yes, it's light from the Sun but so much more than that. Sunlight is both light and energy. Once it reaches Earth, we call this energy, "insolation," a fancy term for solar radiation. The amount of energy the Sun gives off changes over time in a never-ending cycle.

Solar flares (hotter) and sunspots (cooler) on the Sun's surface impact the amount of radiation headed to Earth. These periods of extra heat or extra cold (well, cold by Sun standards...) can last for weeks, sometimes months. The beams that reach us and warm our skin are electromagnetic waves that bring with them heat and radiation, by-products of the nuclear fusion happening as hydrogen nuclei fuse and shift violently to form helium, a process that fires every star in the sky.

Our bodies convert the ultraviolet rays to Vitamin D. Plants use the rays for photosynthesis, a process of converting carbon dioxide to sugar and using it to power their growth (and clean our atmosphere!) That process looks something like this: carbon dioxide + water + light energy — and glucose + oxygen = 6 CO2(g) + 6 H2O + photons → C6H12O6(aq) + 6 O2(g).

Photosynthetic organisms convert about 100–115 thousand million metric tonnes of carbon to biomass each year, about six times more power than used us mighty homo sapien sapiens. Our plants, forests and algae soak up this goodness and much later in time, we harvest this energy from fossil fuels.

We've yet to truly get a handle on the duality between light as waves and light as photons. The duality of the two-in-oneness of light; of their waves and alter-ego, particle photons is a physicists delight. Einstein formulated his special theory of relativity in part by thinking about what it would be like to ride around on these waves. What would space look and feel like? How would time occur? It bends the mind to consider. His wave-particle view helped us to understand that these seemingly different forms change when measured. To put this in plain English, they change when viewed, ie. you look them "in the eye" and they behave as you see them.

Light fills not just our wee bit of the Universe but the cosmos as well, bathing it in the form of cosmic background radiation that is the signature of the Big Bang and the many mini-big bangs of supernovae as they go through cycles of reincarnation and cataclysmic death — exploding outward and shining brighter than a billion stars.

In our solar system, once those electromagnetic waves leave the Sun headed for Earth, they reach us in a surprising eight minutes. We experience them as light mixed with the prism of beautiful colours. But what we see is actually a trick of the light. As rays of white sunlight travel through the atmosphere they collide with airborne particles and water droplets causing the rays to scatter.

We see mostly the yellow, orange and red hues (the longer wavelengths) as the blues and greens (the shorter wavelengths) scatter more easily and get bounced out of the game rather early.

PISTA DE BAILE JURÁSICA

This busy slate grey dinosaur trackway from the Iberian Peninsula looks more like a dance floor than the thoroughfare it is. 

The numerous theropod dinosaur tracks — with a few enormous sauropod tracks thrown in for good measure — cover the entire surface. 

The local soil has a bit of rusty iron ore in it that highlights each print nicely when the soil is blown into the depressions the tracks left. 

The dinosaurs crossed this muddy area en masse sometime back in the Jurassic.

The Iberian Peninsula is the westernmost of the three major southern European peninsulas — the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan. It is bordered on the southeast and east by the Mediterranean Sea, and on the north, west, and southwest by the Atlantic Ocean. The Pyrenees mountains are situated along the northeast edge of the peninsula, where it adjoins the rest of Europe. Its southern tip is very close to the northwest coast of Africa, separated from it by the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea.

The Iberian Peninsula contains rocks of every geological period from the Ediacaran to the recent, and almost every kind of rock is represented. To date, there are 127 localities of theropod fossil finds ranging from the Callovian-Oxfordian — Middle-Upper Jurassic — to the Maastrichtian (Upper Cretaceous), with most of the localities concentrated in the Kimmeridgian-Tithonian interval and the Barremian and Campanian stages. The stratigraphic distribution is interesting and suggests the existence of ecological and/or taphonomic biases and palaeogeographical events that warrant additional time and attention.

As well as theropods, we also find their plant-eating brethren. This was the part of the world where the last of the hadrosaurs, the duck-billed dinosaurs, lived then disappeared in the Latest Cretaceous K/T extinction event 65.5 million years ago.

The core of the Iberian Peninsula is made up of a Hercynian cratonic block known as the Iberian Massif. On the northeast, this is bounded by the Pyrenean fold belt, and on the southeast, it is bounded by the Baetic System. These twofold chains are part of the Alpine belt. To the west, the peninsula is delimited by the continental boundary formed by the magma-poor opening of the Atlantic Ocean. The Hercynian Foldbelt is mostly buried by Mesozoic and Tertiary cover rocks to the east but nevertheless outcrops through the Sistema Ibérico and the Catalan Mediterranean System. The photo you see here is care of the awesome Pedro Marrecas from Lisbon, Portugal. Hola, Pista de baile jurásica!

Pereda-Suberbiola, Xabier; Canudo, José Ignacio; Company, Julio; Cruzado-Caballero, Penélope; Ruiz-Omenaca, José Ignacio. "Hadrosauroid dinosaurs from the latest Cretaceous of the Iberian Peninsula" Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29(3): 946-951, 12 de septiembre de 2009.

Pereda-Suberbiola, Xabier; Canudo, José Ignacio; Cruzado-Caballero, Penélope; Barco, José Luis; López-Martínez, Nieves; Oms, Oriol; Ruíz-Omenaca, José Ignacio. Comptes Rendus Palevol 8(6): 559-572 septiembre de 2009.