Fossil Huntress — Palaeo Sommelier

In this episode, you'll hear about some wonderful free Zoom Fossil Talks in March and May 2024. There is no need to register. You can head on over to www.fossiltalksandfieldtrips.com and note the talk dates and times. The link will be shared live on the site on the day of the talk. Upcoming Free Fossil Lectures via Zoom: Sun, March 24, 2024, 2PM PST — Dan Bowen — Struck by Lightning: The Mary Anning Story ​Learn about the history of Mary Anning from Dan Bowen, Chair of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS) and British Columbia Palaeontological Alliance (BCPA). Mary Anning was an English fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist who became known worldwide for her discoveries in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England. Sat, May 4, 2024, 1PM PST — Jean-Bernard Caron, Lower Cambrian Cranbrook Lagerstätte in the East Kootenay region of south-eastern British Columbia, Canada Jean-Bernard Caron is a French and Canadian palaeontologist and curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He will share his insights on the weird and wonderful marine fossil fauna from the many outcrops of the Lower Cambrian Eager Formation near the town of Cranbrook. His team did some extensive field work—particularly at the Silhouette Range locality—a few summers ago and we are keen to hear the results of their efforts.  The fossils we find in the Eager Formation are slightly older than those found at the Burgess Shale Lagerstätte. Burgess is Middle Cambrian and the species match the Eager fauna one for one but the Eager fauna are much less varied.  The specimens we find are wonderfully preserved and a few have recently been re-named. Learn about new insights into the species we find here and more about the diverse team that has been studying them. Sound the horns, beat the drums and stomp your feet—it's official! The Puntledge Elasmosaur is now British Columbia's Provincial Fossil.  Mike Trask found the first elasmosaur in 1988 while exploring the Puntledge River with his daughter.  He found the first terrestrial dinosaur remains from Vancouver Island and coined the term "sabre-toothed salmon" of legendary fame. It was Mike's twin brother Pat Trask, who led the excavation of the juvenile elasmosaur from the Trent River back in August 2020. Many talented souls from the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society and Courtenay Museum joined him.   Visit www.fossiltalksandfieldtrips.com for Free VIPS Paleo Talks & ARCHEA at www.fossilhuntress.blogspot.com or www.fossilhuntress.com for more yummy goodness!

Victoria is a vertebrate palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist and is the leading expert on the palaeobiology of the armoured dinosaurs known as ankylosaurs. She has named several new species of ankylosaurs, studied how they used and evolved their charismatic armour and weaponry, and investigated how their biogeography was shaped by dispersals between Asia and North America. British Columbia has a rich fossil record spanning over 500 million years of the history of life on Earth. Victoria’s research at the Royal BC Museum will investigate how the ancient plants and animals that lived here responded to changing climates, shifting continents, and mass extinctions. The Carbon Creek Basin site is located just west of Hudson’s Hope in the Peace River area and boasts nearly 1,200 dinosaur tracks from at least 12 different types of dinosaurs—including two dinosaur track types that have not been observed at any other site in the Peace Region

Vancouver Island holds many wonderful fossils and incredible folk excited to explore them. 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 pterygoid teeth projecting back into the roof of their mouths that acted as guards against escaping prey. The jawbones Rick found were exposed just up to the hinge. Given the size, this toothy fellow could have been as much as seven (7) metres long and weighed up to a tonne.

A Taste for Studies: Tortoise Urine, Armadillos, Fried Tarantula & Goat Eyeballs While eating study specimens is not in vogue today, it was once common practice for researchers in the 1700-1880s. Charles Darwin belonged to a club dedicated to tasting exotic meats, and in his first book wrote almost three times as much about dishes like armadillo and tortoise urine than he did on the biogeography of his Galapagos finches. One of the most famously strange scientific meals occurred on January 13, 1951, at the 47th Explorers Club Annual Dinner (ECAD) when members purportedly dined on a frozen woolly mammoth. The prehistoric meat was supposedly found on Akutan Island in Alaska, USA, by the eminent polar explorers' Father Bernard Rosecrans Hubbard, “the Glacier Priest,” and Captain George Francis Kosco of the US Navy. This much-publicized meal captured the public’s imagination and became an enduring legend and source of pride for the Club, popularizing an annual menu of “exotics” that continues today, making the Club as well-known for its notorious hors d’oeuvres like fried tarantulas and goat eyeballs as it is for its notable members such as Teddy Roosevelt and Neil Armstrong. The Yale Peabody Museum holds a sample of meat preserved from the 1951 meal, interestingly labeled as a South American Giant Ground Sloth, Megatherium, not Mammoth. The specimen of meat from that famous meal was originally designated BRCM 16925 before a transfer in 2001 from the Bruce Museum to the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History (New Haven, CT, USA) where it gained the number YPM MAM 14399. The specimen is now permanently deposited in the Yale Peabody Museum with the designation YPM HERR 19475 and is accessible to outside researchers. The meat was never fixed in formalin and was initially stored in isopropyl alcohol before being transferred to ethanol when it arrived at the Peabody Museum. DNA extraction occurred at Yale University in a clean room with equipment reserved exclusively for aDNA analyses. In 2016, Jessica Glass and her colleagues sequenced a fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome-b gene and studied archival material to verify its identity, which if genuine, would extend the range of Megatherium over 600% and alter views on ground sloth evolution. Their results showed that the meat was not Mammoth or Megatherium, but a bit of Green Sea Turtle, Chelonia mydas. So much for elaborate legends. The prehistoric dinner was likely meant as a publicity stunt. Glass's study emphasizes the value of museums collecting and curating voucher specimens, particularly those used for evidence of extraordinary claims. Not so long before Glass et al. did their experiment, a friend's mother (and my kayaking partners) served up a steak from her freezer to dinner guests in Castlegar that hailed from 1978. Tough? Inedible? I have it on good report that the meat was surprisingly divine. Reference: Glass, J. R., Davis, M., Walsh, T. J., Sargis, E. J., & Caccone, A. (2016). Was Frozen Mammoth or Giant Ground Sloth Served for Dinner at The Explorers Club?. PloS one, 11(2), e0146825. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0146825

Predators and Prey in our Devonian Seas. It is here we see the first tetrapods — land-living vertebrates — appeared during the Devonian, as did the first terrestrial arthropods, including wingless insects and the earliest arachnids. In the oceans, brachiopods flourished. Crinoids and other echinoderms, tabulate and rugose corals, and ammonites were also common... and a mighty one-ton eating machine that ruled our ancient seas.

In the late 1930s, our understanding of the transition of fish to tetrapods — and the eventual jump to modern vertebrates — took an unexpected leap forward. The evolutionary a'ha came from a single partial fossil skull found on the shores of a riverbank in Eastern Canada.  Meet the Stegocephalian, Elpistostege watsoni, an extinct genus of finned tetrapodomorphs that lived during the Late Givetian to Early Frasnian of the Late Devonian — 382 million years ago.  Elpistostege watsoni — perhaps the sister taxon of all other tetrapods — was first described in 1938 by British palaeontologist and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Thomas Stanley Westoll. Westoll's research interests were wide-ranging. He was a vertebrate palaeontologist and geologist best known for his innovative work on Palaeozoic fishes and their relationships with tetrapods.  As a specialist in early fish, Westoll was asked to interpret that single partial skull roof discovered at the Escuminac Formation in Quebec, Canada. His findings and subsequent publication named Elpistostege watsoni and helped us to better understand the evolution of fishes to tetrapods — four-limbed vertebrates — one of the most important transformations in vertebrate evolution.  www.fossilhuntress.com

North America's Rocky Mountain Trench, also known as the Valley of a Thousand Peaks, is a large valley on the western side of the northern part of North America's Rocky Mountains. This massive rift valley stretches all the way from the British Columbia-Yukon border south to the St. Ignatius area and can be seen from space.

We sometimes find fossils preserved by pyrite. They are prized as much for their pleasing gold colouring as for their scientific value as windows into the past. If you have pyrite specimens and want to stop them from decaying, you can give them a 'quick' soak in water (hour max) then wash them off, and dry them thoroughly in a warm oven. Cool, then soak in pure acetone for a couple of days. Then soak in paraloid, a thermoplastic resin surface coating or acetone for a couple of days. Keep them in a sealed container with a desiccant pack afterwards to keep them dry — or leave them out on display to enjoy knowing that the decay will come in time. We do this with cut flowers so why not fossils sometimes? A friend gives her pyrite fossils on display a quick thumb wipe with vaseline or petroleum jelly. I'm not sure if the hydrocarbons there will play nice over time but they will act as a protective barrier.  

This is a blast from the past and the tale of how I was bitten and smitten by the mineral bug. I hope you enjoy this story from my youth growing up on the northern end of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada—and the minerals that can be found there.

Extinct Giants: The Woolly Mammoths. These massive beasts roamed the icy cold tundra of Europe, Asia, and North America from about 300,000 years ago up until about 10,000 years ago making a living by digging through the snow and ice to get to the tough grasses beneath. The last known group of woolly mammoths survived until about 1650 B.C.—over a thousand years after the Pyramids at Giza were built. Will we bring them back? I cannot say for sure but they are a captivating animal in our Earth's history.

Learn all about the gear you might need out in the field fossil collecting. What you'll need depends on where you collect and what time of year you go but this will get you started and set up for success.

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/ammonoids-and-bivalves-of-svalbard.html

Joe Moysiuk is a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist, with research interests in macroevolution, evolutionary developmental biology, and the origin of animal life. He has extensive experience with fossils from the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, Canada, one of the world’s most significant fossil sites. As part of his continuum of Burgess Shale-related research, he is currently pursuing a PhD focusing on the earliest evolution of today’s most diverse animal group: the arthropods. Link to Video of the Talk on ARCHEA: https://youtu.be/4UZ-QwgDozk

Welcome to Season Seven of the Fossil Huntress Podcast. In this episode you’ll hear about the many yummy fossil projects and field trips over the past few months including a trip to Vancouver Island’s Wild West Coast, great talks & a TV project.

Kirk Johnson is a geologist, paleobotanist, and the Sant Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. His research focuses on fossil plants and the extinction of the dinosaurs, and he is known for his scientific articles, popular books, museum exhibitions, documentaries, and collaborations with artists.   Bright, funny and a delightful human being, Kirk Johnson is a leader in his field and beyond. He has collaborated on numerous projects including two recent documentaries, “Making North America” (2015) and “Polar Extremes” (2019).  His recent books include “Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline: The Travels of an Artist and a Scientist along the Shores of the Prehistoric Pacific” (2018); “Visions of Lost Worlds, the Paleoart of Jay Matternes” (2019); and “Trees are made of Gas, The Story of Carbon and Climate” (2021). The video version of this talk with visuals will be up on YouTube. Head to www.fossiltalksandfieldtrips.com or www.fossilhuntress.com and click the YouTube link.

2022 Palaeontology / Paleontology Lecture Series with all of you. Zoom Link: www.fossiltalksandfieldtrips.com SPRING 2022 Kicking off 2022 is Danna Staaf, the Cephalopodiatrist with Cephalopods are the New Dinosaurs, Sun, February 12, 2022 at 2PM PST. Cephalopods, Earth's first truly substantial animals, are still among us. Their fascinating family tree is a whose-who of squid, octopus, cuttlefish, nautilus, and their brethren. Cephalopods number more than 800 species with new species still being found. As the inventors of swimming, cephalopods presided over the sea for millions of years. When fish eventually evolved jaws, the cephalopods had to up their game.   Sunday, March 20, 2022, 2PM — Kirk Johnson — A Lucky Paleontologist & the Tale of Three Splendid Canadian Fossils. Join us for a talk with the Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History & Paleontologist who has led expeditions in eighteen US states and eleven countries Sunday, April 24, 2022, 2PM PST — John-Paul Zonneveld — Brave New World: Recovery from the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction & the Significance of Marine Faunas in Northeastern British Columbia. Hear JP's multidisciplinary approach to questions arising between geological and biological systems as he turns his eye to our world 250 million years ago ​Sunday, May 22, 2022, 2PM PST — Russell Shapiro — Stromatolites, Methane Seeps & Metamorphosed Fossils on Mars. Learn about his work as a paleontologist exploring fossils from the present day to over three billion years ago in our deep seas & searching for fossils on Mars for NASA Sun, June 19, 2022, 2PM PST — Dan Bowen — Struck by Lightning: The Mary Anning Story. Learn about this history of Mary Anning from the Chair of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society

The Rocky Mountain Trench is one of the few geologic wonders we can see from space. It is known as the Valley of a Thousand Peaks or simply the Trench — a large valley on the western side of the northern part of North America's Rocky Mountains.

A mighty marine reptile was excavated on the Trent River near Courtenay on the east coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The excavation is the culmination of a three-year palaeontological puzzle. The fossil remains are those of an elasmosaur — a group of long-necked marine reptiles found in the Late Triassic to the Late Cretaceous some 215 to 80 million years ago. In the case of the Trent River, it is closer to 85 million years old. The marine reptile fossil was excavated 10-meters up high on the cliffs that line the river. It took a month of careful planning, building scaffolding, and amassing climbing gear to aid the team of dedicated souls in unearthing this juvenile elasmosaur.  Bits and pieces of him have been eroding out for years — providing clues to the past and a jigsaw puzzle that has finally had the last pieces put together. The first piece of this marine reptile puzzle was found three years ago. 

Nothing says Happy 2022 like free prizes. Thank you to each and every one of you who spent time with me in 2021. It is time to wrap up the year and welcome in 2022. I wish you health, happiness and many fossils.... perhaps as prizes. That's right. It is time to celebrate you! We're starting off 2022 with some great giveaways. Head on over to the ARCHEA YouTube Channel to learn how you could add a few nice fossils, some collecting gear and oodles of tasty fossil goodness to your collection in 2022. It is free to enter... and shameless bribery. I look forward to spending time with all of you in the New Year!  Head to www.fossilhuntress.com to find all the links you'll need to win.

Love the Wild: Moose. One of the most impressive mammals of the Pacific Northwest and the largest living member of the deer family are Moose. They are taller than everyone you know and weighs more than your car. You may encounter them lumbering solo along the edge of rivers and lakes, taking a refreshing swim or happily snacking on short grasses, water plants, woody shrubs and pinecones. You can often see them in Canada and some of the northern regions of the USA going about their business of eating and swimming. The males are called bulls and make quite a racket during mating season, also known as the Rut, using their bugle-like calls to attract a mate. Their impressive headgear can grow up to six feet and are used in displays of posturing, fighting or self-defence with other bulls — generally regarding a lady-moose or cow. Females do not have antlers but certainly, notice them. Once a mate is chosen, the new parents will produce one or two babies or calves. Fully grown, their new young will one day be able to run 55 km per hour and have excellent hearing and sense of smell. Their vision is not that good but their other senses make up for it. The scientific or binomial name for Moose is Alces alces (Linnaeus, 1758). The word moose is borrowed from Algonquian. In Narragansett, moose are called moos and in Eastern Abenaki, this large mammal is called mos. Both are likely derived from moosu, meaning he strips off. The Proto-Algonquian form was mo·swa. In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, moose are known as t̕ła̱wa̱l's — and their large crown of antler are known as wa̱t'łax̱. I had a close encounter on the Bowron Lake Circuit with a mamma moose, her new calf and a fully grown Grizzly chasing them. I can share that whatever the guidebooks say, a motivated mother and calf can outrun a bear. Maybe not always, but they certainly did that time. Moose are ungulates, mammals with hooves. The first ungulates appear in the fossil record about 50 million years ago. The lineage split, evolving into two groups: those with an even number of toes (Artiodactyls) and those with an uneven number of toes (Perissodactyls). We see the first proto-deer about 35 million years ago. These are the proto-deer like Syndyoceras who shared features with deer, horses, giraffes and antelopes. They had bony skull outgrowths similar to antlers and were found in North America during the Miocene, some 35 million years ago. Ten million years later, we see the first animals you and I would recognize as deer. Moose first appear in the fossil record during the Upper Pleistocene, a time of global glaciation.  Moose are gentle creatures if unprovoked. They sometimes ramble into town or buildings if they lose their way. We find them enjoying the water from garden sprinklers, randomly making their way into homes, barns and classrooms in Canada — and likely elsewhere. It is worth doing a Google search of their antics to see all that these massive mammals get up to. They are smart enough to know that living in the woods in hunting season can go poorly, so Moose will gather in downtown Banff and Lake Louise, hiding in plain sight to avoid becoming someone's dinner or trophy. Across Canada today, we live alongside 500,000 to 1,000,000 of their number. Another 200,000 or so live south of us in the northern United States. Across Europe and Asia are another million-plus of their relatives.