A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to
attend the Canadian Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Kelowna, BC.
It was a fantastic meeting full of Canadians, and people working in Canada on
vertebrate palaeo including some of the fields brightest minds. We had 2 full
days devoted to talks and posters, ranging from fish to mammals and everything
in between – lots of dinosaurs, marine reptiles, pterosaurs (from me of
course), ichnology (fossil trackways), crocodiles, teeth,
macroevolution, and the list goes on. I won’t discuss the research presented as
much of it is currently unpublished, in prep or in press, but I can tell you
that there is a lot of awesome stuff coming out of Canada in palaeontology
right now.
In the last talk, David Evans from the
Royal Ontario Museum talked about how we’re in another “golden age” of dinosaur
discovery in Canada, and I think this is an important and interesting idea. He
had a neat graph that showed new dinosaur species named over time, and we’re
currently on a strong upward trend even when comparing to the early 1900’s when
dinosaur hunting in Canada was getting going with the likes of Barnum Brown,
Lawrence Lambe and more.
Of course this is something that can be
said with the entire world, with new fossil-rich areas being found in China,
Brazil, Africa, etc. However, I think it’s important to highlight and remind
people just how significant Canada is in understanding the history of the Earth
and in palaeontology. We have numerous world famous fossil sites representing
almost animals from the earliest existence up to the most recent fossils, from
vertebrates to invertebrates to plants, and several very important sites from
coast to coast. There are too many to list, but here are a handful of sites or
significant fossil finds from Canada that are extremely important in
understanding the past and how our world came to be how it is today.
- The Burgess Shale – I’m sure
most of you have heard of this - up in the Rocky Mountains of Yoho National
Park, British Columbia, an exquisite fossiliferous area represents some of the
earliest recognizable animals from the Middle Cambrian, from a time known as
the Cambrian Explosion. This period represents a time of significant evolution,
and these fossils show us what the Cambrian seas would have looked like, with
some of the first vertebrates like Pikaia,
and numerous arthropods like Hallucinogenia
(named because it is so weird you just must be hallucinating), and Anomalocaris. The reason this is so
significant is that these animals are known almost exclusively from soft
tissues, which are difficult to preserve in the fossil record. Yet here,
thousands of soft-bodied organisms are preserved that give us a window into an
early stage of evolution in many animal groups. Recognised for it’s importance,
the Burgess Shale is part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks UNESCO World
Heritage Site named in 1984.
Anomalocaris reconstruction by Nobu Tamura - Dinosaur Provincial Park – And
of course I have to talk about this as well. Dinosaur Provincial Park (DPP) is
located in southern Alberta, and is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, known
for – you guessed it – dinosaur fossils. From the Late Cretaceous, this area is
one of (if not THE) best place in the world to view the ecosystems from this
time period. Not just dinosaurs are found here, but also turtles, pterosaurs,
crocodilians, mammals, plants, and more. Basically anything you would expect to
be in that kind of ecosystem is represented, from big animals like T. rex and Triceratops to smaller dinos like Saurornitholestes (although the smaller the animal the less common
they are). Dinosaurs have been coming out of DPP for well over 100 years, and
with the continued field work of groups like Phil Currie and the University of
Alberta, David Evans at the Royal Ontario Museum, and of course the Royal
Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller where most of the material is housed, it’s not
going to stop anytime soon. If you want to hear more about the dinosaurs in
Alberta and DPP, check out my Palaeocast episode with Phil Currie.
Hoodoos in Dinosaur Provincial Park. Photo by Joanne Merriam - Ellesmere Island – Up in the
frozen north of Nunavut lies a large island where several fossils have been
found. While not traditionally thought of as a fantastic place to look for
fossils, northern Canada has yielded a significant number of things like plesiosaurs,
dinosaurs, and from Ellesmere Island – Tiktaalik.
Tiktaalik is an amazing fossil, what
we might call a “transition fossil”. From the Late Devonian period, long before
dinosaurs when animals were just starting to colonise the land, Tiktaalik shows a perfect ocean to land
transition, somewhere between a water-dwelling fish and a land-dwelling
tetrapod (four-legged animals). It had fish gills, scales, and fins, but a
mobile neck and pectoral girdle, ribs, and lungs of a tetrapod, as well as many
bones and joints that lie somewhere in between. It is a true mosaic of features
and just might be somewhere in the middle of fish and tetrapod, which has led
to the term “fishapod”.
Reconstruction of Tiktaalik by Obsidian Soul. 
Tiktaalik fossil from Ellesmere Island. Image by Eduard Solà. - Carboniferous of Nova Scotia – There are two sites in Nova Scotia, both dating to different parts of the Carboniferous Period that deserve a mention. The first one is the oldest of the two sites, found at Blue Beach. This is not publicly or scientifically well known, but represents an important period in tetrapod evolution, as it represents part of a time period known as ‘Romer’s Gap’. During the Early Carboniferous, there are a conspicuously low number of tetrapod fossils or sites bearing these known from around the world, leading palaeontologists to wonder what happened during this time. Is this actually a gap where few tetrapods existed? Or is it some kind of bias preventing them from being preserved or found? Well thanks to some fossils recently described from Blue Beach, we are starting to understand this period a bit better, and the evidence is suggesting the gap is not a real gap in tetrapod evolution
- Later on in the Carboniferous brings us to Joggins Fossil Cliffs. Here fossils of tetrapods, fish, and much more are found, often within fossilized "tree" stumps (actually a club moss or lycopodiphyte Sigillaria, which is a tree-like plant). This area was a lush, forested swampland 310 million years ago, from the so-called "Coal Age", known for the large number of coal seams produced by the coalified. The trees are preserved in situ, meaning they are in their life position, standing upright. Often, these trees are hollowed out, and vertebrate fossils are found within the tree trunks, including amphibians and some of the earliest reptiles, including Hylonomus, the first indisputable reptile from fairly complete remains, and Archaeothyris and Protoclepsydrops, the earliest synapsid reptiles.
- Mistaken Point, Newfoundland – Here we have fossils from the earliest of animal evolution, the Ediacaran. These rocks date from the Precambrian, approximately 550 million years old. Mistaken Point has some of the most diverse and well-preserved fossil assemblages from this time period, an important time in organism evolution on Earth. The fossils consist of imprints of soft-bodied organisms, unlike anything alive today, typically of frond-like and leafy forms with or without stalks, some with branching network-like forms, and others more like spindle-shapes with pointed ends. The exact affinities of these fossils are still poorly understood and heavily studied, but it is difficult when they are so unlike anything today or even other fossils. This is definitely an important locality in understanding the history of our planet.
The 'spindle-shaped' fossil Fractofusus from Mistaken Point
(Image by MistakenPoint)
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| Hylonomus by Nobu Tamura |
Of course this is not it for important
Canadian fossil localities. From East to West, North to South, every province
and territory has it’s share: the Peace Region of northeast BC is known from
some of the best ichnological finds with dinosaur, bird, and more footprints,
as well as body fossils from the Late Cretaceous of the small islands of Denman
and Hornby; Alberta has some fantastic palaeobotany sites such as Joffre Bridge
of Paleocene age as well as amazing ammonites that have been preserved in such a
way that the gemstone ‘ammolite’ is a favourite in jewelry; Saskatchewan has
it’s share of Late Cretaceous dinosaur and marine vertebrate finds, as well as some mammal fossils from the Cypress Hills Formation; Manitoba is home to the Pierre Shale Formation, a marine formation known for many marine fossils including the Tylosaurus, a mosasaur, including 'Bruce' who is the largest mosasaur on display in the world at 13 m long; Ontario is home to the Gunflint Chert, an early Proterozoic (approx. 1.8 billion years old) site with some of the earliest fossils of cyanobacteria; Migwasha National Park in Quebec is home to more Devonian aged fossils including fish that are thought to be ancestral to tetrapods, and well preserved plant spores; Prince Edward Island was recently in the news for a new find, the only reptile known from the specific time period 300 million years ago; the Yukon is best known for it's Pleistocene Ice-Age fossil mammal sites including mammoths; and finally the Northwest Territories has a number of Paleozoic sites with marine invertebrate fauna such as brachiopods, trilobites, corals, and also marine vertebrates like acanthodian fishes.
Canada is full of fossils, and is very important palaeontologically speaking for a number of different plant and animal groups, ages, and evolutionary questions. This is by far not a comprehensive list, but just a few examples of what Canada has to offer in palaeontology. Let me know of any other famous ones I’ve missed – I’m always interested in hearing about Canadian palaeo and I’m sure there are some out there I haven’t heard of…
Canada is full of fossils, and is very important palaeontologically speaking for a number of different plant and animal groups, ages, and evolutionary questions. This is by far not a comprehensive list, but just a few examples of what Canada has to offer in palaeontology. Let me know of any other famous ones I’ve missed – I’m always interested in hearing about Canadian palaeo and I’m sure there are some out there I haven’t heard of…