Fossil Huntress — Palaeo Sommelier

The Great Karoo was formed in a vast inland basin starting 320 million years ago, at a time when that part of Gondwana which would eventually become Africa, lay over the South Pole. The Karoo records a wonderful time in our evolutionary history when the world was inhabited by interesting amphibians and mammal-like reptiles — including the apex predators of the day, the Gorgons. Gorgons or Gorgonop...

Marble Canyon in British Columbia, Canada is a lovely place to hike. Here you can see some of the oldest freshwater stromatolites on Earth and one of our oldest lifeforms. The canyon's name comes from the brilliant limestone of its walls. The bedrock is microcrystalline limestone (sedimentary rock) rather than marble (metamorphic rock). The rocks found here tell of the forming of British Columbia....

Australia has always held appeal as a country with weird and wonderful wildlife. This is as true today as it was back in the Pleistocene — 2.5 million years ago to 11,500 years ago. 

Plate tectonics looks at Earth’s outer layer. It is made up of large, moving pieces called plates. All of Earth’s land and water sit on these plates. The plates are made of solid rock. Under the plates is a weaker layer of partially melted rock. The plates are constantly moving over this weaker layer. Think of the Earth as an egg. The outer hard shell is the lithosphere or "hard rock" and the next...

Amber is fossilized tree resin that has been appreciated for its colour and natural beauty since the Neolithic. We find amber around the globe, generally in rocks that are Cretaceous or younger. Tree resin or sap is essential to a tree. Roots take up water and nutrients, and these need to be spread throughout the tree. Sap is the viscous liquid that carries these yummy minerals and nutrients to ar...

One of the classic Vancouver Island fossil localities is the Santonian-Maastrichtian, Upper Cretaceous Haslam Formation Motocross Pit near Brannen Lake, Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. The quarry is no longer active as such though there is a busy little gravel quarry a little way down the road closer to Ammonite falls near Benson Creek Falls. Today it is an active Motocross site. Beneath the cr...

Koala, Phasscolarctos cinereus , are truly adorable marsupials native to Australia. These cuddly "teddy bears" are not bears at all. Koalas belong to a group of mammals known as marsupials. Fossil remains of Koala-like animals have been found dating back to 25 million years ago. As the climate changed and Australia became drier, ancient vegetation evolved to what we know as eucalyptus, becoming th...

Bears are one of my favourite mammals. Had they evolved in a slightly different way, we might well have chosen them as pets instead of the dogs so many of us have in our lives today. For them and for us, I think things worked out for the best that they enjoy the rugged wild country they call home. Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. They are classified as caniforms or doglike carni...

The upper Oligocene Sooke Formation that outcrops on southwestern Vancouver Island, British Columbia is a wonderful place to collect and especially good for families. As well as amazing west coast scenery, the beach site outcrop has a lovely soft matrix with well-preserved fossil molluscs, often with the shell material preserved (Clark and Arnold, 1923). While the site has been known since the 189...

This is a tale of friendship, tragic loss and fossil bees — and an introduction to one of the most delightful paleo enthusiasts to ever walk the planet — Rene Savenye. Rene and I enjoyed many years of waxing poetic about our shared love of palaeontology and natural history. Rene was a mountain goat in the field, stalking the hills in his signature red t-shirt. He was tremendously knowledgeable abo...

Part of our ability to date the rock sequences we see in the world and determine which are older and which younger has to do with simple observation. We see that older rocks contain trilobites and a wee bit above those we see ammonites, then clams and oysters in newer sediments. For a long time, this simple observation held us in good stead. We had a relative timescale for the Earth and this allow...

Our World has shifted dramatically over time. Our great land masses and oceans have moved, grown, shrunk, come together and pulled apart over the Earth's history. It is the fossils that have helped shape our understanding of this tremendous story of upheaval. Part of understanding fossils has been simple observation. We find fossilized shells on mountain tops — quite unexpectedly — and this makes...

Alberta is a gorgeous province in western Canada that borders British Columbia & Saskatchewan. Here you can see the glorious Canadian Rocky Mountains, Beautiful Wildlife & the Badlands with their Dinosaur remains at Dinosaur Provincial Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site near the town of Brooks), and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller. Dinosaur Provincial Park contains...

Brown Bank in the North Sea is a treasure trove of Miocene and Pleistocene Fossil Mammal material. It is also a great place to unearth archaeological remains. Until sea levels rose at the end of the last Ice Age, between 8-10,000 years ago, an area of land connected Great Britain to Scandinavia and the continent. Here our relatives lived their lives, hunted local animals and all species left remai...

We live on a beautiful and ever-evolving planet — both in its geography, living and extinct species. Whether you study palaeontology (Brits & Canadians) or paleontology (USA and much of the rest of the world...) much of our Earth's history is dramatic in its changing role call for living and extinct species. We have had Five Mass Extinction Events in the Earth's 3.5 billion year history. These...

We live on an amazing planet with a 4.5 billion year history of life evolving from a single cell to multicellular life to the sheer volume of diversity of species we see through time and walking the Earth today.  How do we know the timeline for this? How do we date the rock units and mountains and stones beneath our feet? We use simple observation out in the field to look at rock and observe...

For the ARCHEA blog post on Megalodon, I wanted to choose a human to give that mighty shark a true sense of scale. And in choosing a human, I thought I'd choose a truly awesome one to introduce to all of you. Everyone, meet Cam Muskelly.  Cam Muskelly is an award-winning Avocational Palaeontologist & Geologist in Georgia, in the southeastern United States. Cam is a Science Writer, Fossil...

23-million-years ago to just over 3-million-years ago, the apex predator of the seas was the hulking cousin to today's Great White Shark. That big beastie was Otodus megalodon — the largest shark to ever swim our seas and the largest fish as well. This big boy swam in at a whopping fifty-tonnes and grew to 18 metres in length — twice the size of an ankylosaur or triceratops and larger than a Tyran...

The Dove Creek Mosasaur, which includes the teeth and lower jawbone of a large marine reptile was discovered by Rick Ross of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society, during the construction of the Inland Highway, near the Dove Creek intersection on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Mosasaurs had a hinged jaw that allowed them to swallow prey larger than themselves. They evolved special pte...

You may have seen some lovely plant material in dark nodules of siderite or iron carbonate coming from the Mazon Creek Fossil Beds. the Mason Creek Biota are lovely fossil lagerstätte found in northeastern Illinois. These marine and terrestrial fossils are preserved in ironstone concretions that tell the tale of our world some 309 million years ago — back in the Carboniferous.

God Jul & the Very Best of the Holiday Season to You & Yours.  However you celebrate, sending you love and light for a wonderful holiday season with family and friends. Merry Ho Ho. Joyeux Noël. Chag Urim Sameach. Seku Kulu. Vrolijk Kerstfeest. Prettige Kerst. Wesołych Świąt. Nadelik Lowen. Glædelig Jul. Hyvää joulua. Bon Natale. Feliz Natal. Frohe Weihnachten. Mele Kalikimaka. Gleðil...

Join in for a chilly visit to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard between mainland Norway and the North Pole. This one of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas with rugged terrain, glaciers and polar bear. The rocks here house beautiful Triassic ammonoids, bivalves and primitive ichthyosaurs.  To see some of the fossils from here, visit: https://fossilhuntress.blogspot.com/2020/12/ammono...

Kazakhstan Fossils and Geology: This morning on the ARCHEA Blog I shared a tasty block of Semenovites (Anahoplites) cf. michalskii ammonites that hail from Cretaceous, Albian deposits that outcrop on the Mangyshlak Peninsula on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea, in beautiful Kazakhstan. Present-day Kazakhstan is made up of several micro continental blocks that were broken up in the Cambrian and...

Happy Winter Solstice 2020 — Welcome to Season Two.  The Winter Solstice marks the shortest day and longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. It is a time for celebration, family, candles and reflecting on the blessings of the year.  I'm wishing you and yours the very best as we navigate the end of 2020 and look forward to a bright and happy 2021 — a year filled with fossils...

Meet Carnotaurus sastrei , a genus of large theropod dinosaurs that roamed the southern tip of Argentina, South America during the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 69.9 million years ago. His name means "flesh-eating bull,' and he lives up to it with his pointed teeth and bull-like horns.