Thursday, July 27, 2023

WEST COAST OYSTERS: T'LOXT'LOX

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.

Thursday, July 20, 2023

KU'MIS: WARRIOR CRABS

Look how epic this little guy is! 

He is a crab — and if you asked him, the fiercest warrior that ever lived. While that may not be strictly true, crabs do have the heart of a warrior and will raise their claws, sometimes only millimetres into the air, to assert dominance over their world. 

Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the Phylum Arthropoda. 

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw of the Pacific Northwest, this brave fellow is ḵ̓u'mis — both a tasty snack and familiar to the supernatural deity Tuxw'id, a female warrior spirit. Given their natural armour and clear bravery, it is a fitting role.

They inhabit all the world's oceans, sandy beaches, many of our freshwater lakes and streams. Some few prefer to live in forests.

Crabs build their shells from highly mineralized chitin — and chitin gets around. It is the main structural component of the exoskeletons of many of our crustacean and insect friends. Shrimp, crab, and lobster all use it to build their exoskeletons.

Chitin is a polysaccharide — a large molecule made of many smaller monosaccharides or simple sugars, like glucose. 

It is handy stuff, forming crystalline nanofibrils or whiskers. Chitin is actually the second most abundant polysaccharide after cellulose. It is interesting as we usually think of these molecules in the context of their sugary context but they build many other very useful things in nature — not the least of these are the hard shells or exoskeletons of our crustacean friends.

Crabs in the Fossil Record

The earliest unambiguous crab fossils date from the Early Jurassic, with the oldest being Eocarcinus from the early Pliensbachian of Britain, which likely represents a stem-group lineage, as it lacks several key morphological features that define modern crabs. 

Most Jurassic crabs are only known from dorsal — or top half of the body — carapaces, making it difficult to determine their relationships. Crabs radiated in the Late Jurassic, corresponding with an increase in reef habitats, though they would decline at the end of the Jurassic as the result of the decline of reef ecosystems. Crabs increased in diversity through the Cretaceous and represented the dominant group of decapods by the end.

We find wonderful fossil crab specimens on Vancouver Island. The first I ever collected was at Shelter Point, then again on Hornby Island, down on the Olympic Peninsula and along Vancouver Island's west coast near Nootka Sound. They are, of course, found globally and are one of the most pleasing fossils to find and aggravating to prep of all the specimens you will ever have in your collection. Bless them.


Tuesday, July 18, 2023

FOSSILS OF TURTLE ISLAND'S EASTERN SHORES

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/

Saturday, July 15, 2023

IDENTIFYING FOSSIL BONE


If you are wondering if you have Fossil Bone, you’ll want to look for the telltale texture on the surface. 

Fossil bone is also heavier than regular bone and will have some heft in your hand. This is because the bone has absorbed the yummy minerals from the material in which it was buried.  

If you plan to have someone help you with identifying your find, it is best to take the specimen outside & photograph it in natural light. Take many photos from every angle. If you have the urge to take a video, move the lens very slowly so that all the wee details can be seen. With fossil bone, you will be able to see the different canals and webbed structure of the bone, sure signs that the object was of biological origin. 

As my good friend Mike Boyd notes, without going into the distinction between dermal bone and endochondral bone — which relates to how they form or ossify — it is worth noting that bones such as the one illustrated here will usually have a layer of smooth (or periosteal) bone on the outer surface and spongy (or trabecular) bone inside.

Dinosaur Bone, Jurassic, Colorado, USA

The distinction can be well seen here in both photographs. The partial weathering away of the smooth external bone has resulted in the exposure of the spongy bone interiors. Geographic context is important, so knowing where it was found is very helpful for an ID. 

Knowing the geologic context of your find can help you to figure out if you've perhaps found a terrestrial or marine fossil. Did you find any other fossils nearby? 

Can you see pieces of fossil shells or remnants of fossil leaves? Things get tricky with erratics. That's when something has deposited a rock or fossil far from the place it originated. We see this with glaciers. The ice can act like a plough, lifting up and pushing a rock to a new location, then melting away to leave something out of context. If you do think you have found fossil bone, it is likely that your local government would like you to report it. You may have found something very significant. I very much hope you have. 

Friday, July 14, 2023

AINOCERAS: SWEET AS YOU PLEASE HETEROMORPH

A wee baby deep chocolate Ainoceras sp. heteromorph ammonite from Vancouver Island. This adorable corkscrew-shaped ammonite is an extinct marine mollusc related to squid and octopus.  

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. These little cuties were predators who hunted in Cretaceous seas.

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. 

Not all ammonites have this whacky corkscrew design. Most are coiled and some are even shaped like massive paperclips. This one is so remarkable, so joyously perfect my internal thesaurus can’t keep up.

Thursday, July 13, 2023

ANCIENT OCTOPUS: KEUPPIA

A sweet as you please example of Keuppia levante (Fuchs, Bracchi & Weis, 2009), an extinct genus of octopus that swam our ancient seas back in the Cretaceous. 

The dark black and brown area you see here is his ink sac which has been preserved for a remarkable 95 million years.

This cutie is in the family Palaeoctopodidae, and one of the earliest representatives of the order Octopoda — and perhaps my favourite fossil. It was this perfect specimen that inspired the logo for the Fossil Huntress brand.  

These ancient marine beauties are in the class Cephalopoda making them relatives of our modern octopus, squid and cuttlefish.

There are two species of Keuppia, Keuppia hyperbolaris and Keuppia levante, both of which we find as fossils. We find their remains, along with those of the genus Styletoctopus, in Cretaceous-age Hâqel and Hjoula localities in Lebanon. 

For many years, Palaeoctopus newboldi (Woodward, 1896) from the Santonian limestones at Sâhel Aalma, Lebanon, was the only known pre‐Cenozoic coleoid cephalopod believed to have an unambiguous stem‐lineage representative of Octobrachia fioroni

With the unearthing of some extraordinary specimens with exquisite soft‐part preservation in the Lebanon limestones, our understanding of ancient octopus morphology has blossomed. The specimens are from the sub‐lithographical limestones of Hâqel and Hâdjoula, in northwestern Lebanon. These localities are about 15 km apart, 45 km away from Beirut and 15 km away from the coastal city of Jbail. Fuchs et al. put a nice little map in their 2009 paper that I've included and referenced here.

Palaeoctopus newboldi had a spherical mantle sac, a head‐mantle fusion, eight equal arms armed with suckers, an ink sac, a medially isolated shell vestige, and a pair of (sub‐) terminal fins. The bipartite shell vestige suggests that Palaeoctopus belongs to the octopod stem‐lineage, as the sister taxon of the Octopoda, the Cirroctopoda, is characterized by an unpaired clasp‐like shell vestige (Engeser 1988; Haas 2002; Bizikov 2004).

It is from the comparisons of Canadian fauna combined with those from Lebanon and Japan that things really started to get interesting with Octobrachia. Working with fossil specimens from the Campanian of Canada, Fuchs et al. (2007a ) published on the first record of an unpaired, saddle‐shaped shell vestige that might have belonged to a cirroctopod. 

Again from the Santonian–Campanian of Canada and Japan, Tanabe et al. (2008) reported on at least four different jaw morphotypes. Two of them — Paleocirroteuthis haggarti (Tanabe et al., 2008) and Paleocirroteuthis Pacifica  (Tanabe et al ., 2008) — have been interpreted as being of cirroctopod type, one of octopod type, and one of uncertain octobrachiate type. 

Interestingly Fuchs et al. have gone on to describe the second species of Palaeoctopus, the Turonian Palaeoctopus pelagicus from limestones at Vallecillo, Mexico. While more of this fauna will likely be recovered in time, their work is based solely on a medially isolated shell vestige.

Five new specimens have been found in the well-known Upper Cenomanian limestones at Hâqel and Hâdjoula in Lebanon that can be reliably placed within the Octopoda. Fuchs et al. described these exceptionally well‐preserved specimens and discuss their morphology in the context of phylogeny and evolution in their 2008 paper (2009 publishing) in the Palaeontology Association Journal, Volume 51, Issue 1.

The presence of a gladius vestige in this genus shows a transition from squid to octopus in which the inner shell has divided into two parts in early forms to eventually be reduced to lateralized stylets, as can be seen in Styletoctopus.

The adorable fellow you see here with his remarkable soft-bodied preservation and inks sack and beak clearly visible is Keuppia levante. He hails from Late Cretaceous (Upper Cenomanian) limestone deposits near Hâdjoula, northwestern Lebanon. The vampyropod coleoid, Glyphiteuthis abisaadiorum n. sp. is also found at this locality. This specimen is about 5 cm long.

Fuchs, D.; Bracchi, G.; Weis, R. (2009). "New octopods (Cephalopoda: Coleoidea) from the Late Cretaceous (Upper Cenomanian) of Hâkel and Hâdjoula, Lebanon". Palaeontology. 52: 65–81. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00828.x.

Photo one: Fossil Huntress. Figure Two: Topographic map of north‐western Lebanon with the outcrop area in the upper right-hand corner. Fuchs et al, 2009.  

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

AINOCERAS: VANCOUVER ISLAND HETEROMORPH

A wee baby deep chocolate Ainoceras sp. heteromorph ammonite from Vancouver Island. This adorable corkscrew-shaped ammonite is an extinct marine mollusc related to squid and octopus.  

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. These little cuties were predators who hunted in Cretaceous seas.

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. 

Not all ammonites have this whacky corkscrew design. Most are coiled and some are even shaped like massive paperclips. This one is so remarkable, so joyously perfect my internal thesaurus can’t keep up.

Monday, July 10, 2023

FOSSIL SEA LILLIES: CRINOIDS

Uintacrinus socialis from Utah, USA
Crinoids are one of my favourite echinoderms. It is magical when all the elements come together to preserve a particularly lovely specimen in such glorious detail. 

If you look closely at the detail here you can see a stunning example of Upper Cretaceous, Santonian age, Uintacrinus socialis — named by O.C. Marsh for the Uinta Mountains of Utah nearly 150 years ago.  

These lovelies are best known from the Smoky Hills Niobrara Formation of central Kansas.

Crinoids are unusually beautiful and graceful members of the phylum Echinodermata. They resemble an underwater flower swaying in an ocean current. 

But make no mistake they are marine animals. Picture a flower with a mouth on the top surface that is surrounded by feeding arms. Awkwardly, add an anus right beside that mouth. 

Crinoids with root-like anchors are called sea lilies. They have graceful stalks that grip the ocean floor. Those in deeper water have longish stalks up to 3.3 ft or a meter in length. Then there are other varieties that are free-swimming with only vestigial stalks. They make up the majority of this group and are commonly known as feather stars or comatulids. 

Unlike the sea lilies, the feather stars can move about on tiny hook-like structures called cirri. It is these same cirri that allow crinoids to latch to surfaces on the seafloor. Like other echinoderms, crinoids have pentaradial symmetry. The aboral surface of the body is studded with plates of calcium carbonate, forming an endoskeleton similar to that in starfish and sea urchins.

These make the calyx somewhat cup-shaped, and there are few, if any, ossicles in the oral (upper) surface, an area we call the tegmen. It is divided into five ambulacral areas, including a deep groove from which the tube feet project, and five interambulacral areas between them. 

Crinoids are alive and well today. They are also some of the oldest fossils on the planet. We have lovely fossil specimens dating back to the Ordovician — if one ignores the enigmatic Echmatocrinus of the Burgess Shale. And they can be quite plentiful. Crinoid fossils, and in particular disarticulated crinoid columnals, can be so abundant that they at times serve as the primary supporting clasts in sedimentary rocks.

Friday, July 7, 2023

CANADA'S GREAT BEARS

Look at how this protective mamma bear holds her cub in her arms to give him a bit of a wash. 

Her gentle maternal care is truly touching. This mamma has spent late Autumn to Spring in a cave, having birthed them while still hibernation and staying in the den to feed them on her milk.

Black bear cubs stay with their mamma for the first one to three years of their lives while she protects them and teaches them how to thrive in the wild using their keen sense of smell, hearing, vision and strength. Once they are old enough, they will head off into the forest to live solo until they are ready to mate and start a family of their own. 

Mating is a summer affair with bears socializing shoulder to shoulder with potential mates. Once they have mated, black bears head off on their own again to forage and put on weight for their winter hibernation. If the black bear lives in the northern extent of their range, hibernation lasts longer — they will stay in their dens for seven to eight months longer than their southern counterparts. For those that enjoy the warmer climes in the south, hibernation is shorter. If food is available year-round, the bears do not hibernate at all.

The American black bear, Ursus americanus, is native to North America and found in Canada and the United States. 

They are the most common and widely distributed of the three bear species found in Canada. 

There are roughly 650,000 roaming our forests, swamps and streams — meaning there is a good chance of running into them if you spend any amount of time in the wild. 

Full-grown, these fuzzy monkeys will be able to run 48 kilometres (30 miles)  an hour and smell food up to 32 kilometres (20 miles) away.

With their excellent hearing, black bears usually know you are near well before you realize the same and generally take care to avoid you. Those that come in contact with humans often tend to want to check our garbage and hiking supplies for tasty snacks — hey, a free meal is a free meal.    

In British Columbia, we share our province with nearly half of all black bears and grizzly bears that reside in Canada. The 120,000 - 150,000 black bears who live in the province keep our Conservation Officers busy. They account for 14,000 - 25,000 of the calls the service receives each year. Most of those calls centre around their curiosity for the tasty smells emanating from our garbage. They are omnivores with vegetation making up 80-85% of their diet, but they are flexible around that — berries and seeds, salmon or Doritos — bears eat it all. 

And, as with all wild animals, diet is regional. In Labrador, the local black bear population lives mostly on caribou, rodents and voles. In the Pacific Northwest, salmon and other fish form a large part of the protein in their diet versus the bees, yellow jackets and honey others prefer. The braver of their number have been known to hunt elk, deer and moose calves — and a few showy bears have taken on adults of these large mammals. 

Bears hold a special place within our culture and in First Nation mythology in particular — celebrated in art, dance and song. In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakiutl First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, the word for black bear is t̕ła'yimother is a̱bas and łaxwa̱lap̓a means to love each other

Kermode or Spirit Bear, Ursus americanus kermodei
From the photos here you can see that black bears are not always black —  ranging in colour from cinnamon to brown, tan, blonde, red — and even white. 

The Kermode or Spirit Bear, Ursus americanus kermodei, a subspecies of black bear found only in British Columbia — and our official provincial mammal — is a distinctive creamy white. 

They are not albinos, their colouring stems from a recessive mutant gene — meaning that if they receive two copies it triggers a single, nonsynonymous nucleotide substitution that halts all melanin production. Well, not all. They have pigmented eyes and skin but no colour in their fur. The white colour is an advantage when you are hunting salmon by day. Salmon will shy away from their black cousins knowing their intention is to enjoy them as a tasty snack. 

Spirit Bears live in the Great Bear Rainforest on British Columbia's north and central coast alongside the Kitasoo/Xai’xais First Nation who call the Kermode moskgm’ol or white bear.

The Kitasoo/Xai’xais have a legend that tells of Goo-wee, Raven making one in every ten black bears white to remind us of the time glaciers blanketed the land then slowly retreated — their thaw giving rise to the bounty we harvest today.  

Black bears of any colour are a wee bit smaller than their brown bear or grizzly bear cousins, with males weighing in at 45 to 400 kilograms (100 to 900 pounds) and females ranging from 38 to 225 kilograms (85 to 500 pounds). 

Small by relative standards but still very large animals. And they are long-lived or at least can be. Bears in captivity can live up to 30 years but those who dwell in our forests tend to live half as long or less from a mixture of local hazards and humans. 

Reference: Wild Safe BC: https://wildsafebc.com/species/black-bear/


Tuesday, July 4, 2023

FOSSILS AND FIRST NATIONS HISTORY IN EASTERN CANADA

Elpistostege watsoni

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. 

Hypotheses of tetrapod origins rely heavily on the anatomy of but a few tetrapod-like fish fossils from the Middle and Late Devonian, 393–359 million years ago. These taxa — known as elpistostegalians — include Panderichthys, Elpistostege and Tiktaalik — none of which had yet to reveal the complete skeletal anatomy of the pectoral fin. 

Elpistostege watsoni
None until 2010 that is, when a complete 1.57-metre-long articulated specimen was found and described by Richard Cloutier et al. in 2020. 

The specimen helped us to understand the origin of the vertebrate hand. Stripped from its encasing stone, it revealed a set of paired fins of Elpistostege containing bones homologous to the phalanges (finger bones) of modern tetrapods and is the most basal tetrapodomorph known to possess them. 

Once the phalanges were uncovered, prep work began on the fins. The fins were covered in wee scales and lepidotrichia (fin rays). The work was tiresome, taking more than 2,700 hours of preparation but the results were thrilling. 

Origin of the Vertebrate Hand
We could now clearly see that the skeleton of the pectoral fin has four proximodistal rows of radials — two of which include branched carpals — as well as two distal rows organized as digits and putative digits. 

Despite this skeletal pattern — which represents the most tetrapod-like arrangement of bones found in a pectoral fin to date blurring the line between fish and land vertebrates — the fin retained lepidotrichia (those wee fin rays) distal to the radials. 

This arrangement confirmed an age-old question — showing us for the first time that the origin of phalanges preceded the loss of fin rays, not the other way around.

E. watsoni is very closely related to Tiktaalik roseae found in 2004 in the Canadian Arctic — a tetrapodomorpha species also known as a Choanata. These were advanced forms transitional between fish and the early labyrinthodonts playfully referred to as fishapods — half-fish, half-tetrapod in appearance and limb morphology. 

Up to that point, the relationship of limbed vertebrates (tetrapods) to lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygians) was well known, but the origin of major tetrapod features remained obscure for lack of fossils that document the sequence of evolutionary changes — until Tiktaalik. While Tiktaalik is technically a fish, this fellow is as far from fish-like you can be and still be a card-carrying member of the group. 

Tiktaalik roseae
Complete with scales and gills, this proto-fish lacked the conical head we see in modern fish but had a rather flattened triangular head more like that of a crocodile. 

Tiktaalik had scales on its back and fins with fin webbing but like early land-living animals, it had a distinctive flat head and neck. He was a brawny brute. The shape of his skull and shoulder look part fish and part amphibian.

The watershed moment came as Tiktaalik was prepped. Inside Tiktaalik's fins, we find bones that correspond to the upper arm, forearm and even parts of the wrist — all inside a fin with webbing — remarkable! 

Its fins have thin ray bones for paddling like most fish, but with brawny interior bones that gave Tiktaalik the ability to prop itself up, using his limbs for support. I picture him propped up on one paddle saying, "how you doing?" 

Six years after Tiktaalik was discovered by Neil Shubin and team in the ice-covered tundra of the Canadian Arctic on southern Ellesmere Island, a team working the outcrops at Miguasha on the Gaspé Peninsula discovered the only fully specimen of E. watsoni found to date — greatly increasing our knowledge of this finned tantalizingly transitional tetrapodomorph. 

E. watsoni fossils are rare — this was the fourth specimen collected in over 130 years of hunting. Charmingly, the specimen was right on our doorstop — extracted but a few feet away from the main stairs descending onto the beach of Miguasha National Park. 

L'nu Mi’gmaq First Nations of the Gespe’gewa’gi Region

Miguasha is nestled in the Gaspésie or Gespe’gewa’gi region of Canada — home to the Mi’gmaq First Nations who self-refer as L’nu or Lnu. The word Mi’gmaq or Mi’kmaq means the family or my allies/friends in Mi'kmaw, their native tongue (and soon to be Nova Scotia's provincial first language). They are the people of the sea and the original inhabitants of Atlantic Canada having lived here for more than 10,000 years. 

The L'nu were the first First Nation people to establish contact and trade with European explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries — and perhaps the Norse as early as the turn of the Millenium. Sailing vessels filled with French, British, Scottish, Irish and others arrived one by one to lay claim to the region — settling and fighting over the land. As each group rolled out their machinations of discovery, tensions turned to an all-out war with the British and French going head to head. I'll spare you the sordid details but for everyone caught in the crossfire, it went poorly.

North America Map 1775 (Click to Enlarge)
Cut to 1760, the British tipped the balance with their win at the Battle of the Restigouche, the last naval battle between France and England for possession of the North American continent — Turtle Island. 

The bittersweet British victory sparked the American War of Independence. 

For the next twenty years, the L'nu would witness and become embroiled in yet another war for these lands, their lands — first as bystanders, then as American allies, then intimidated into submission by the British Royal Navy with a show of force by way of a thirty-four gun man-of-war, encouraging L'nu compliance — finally culminating in an end to the hostilities with the 1783 Treaty of Paris. 

The peace accord held no provisions for the L'nu, Métis and First Nations impacted. None of these newcomers was Mi'kmaq — neither friends nor allies.

It was to this area some sixty years later that the newly formed Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) began exploring and mapping the newly formed United Province of Canada. Geologists in the New Brunswick Geology Branch traipsed through the rugged countryside that would become a Canadian province in 1867. 

It was on one of these expeditions that the Miguasha fossil outcrops were discovered. They, too, would transform in time to become Miguasha National Park or Parc de Miguasha, but at first, they were simply the promising sedimentary exposures on the hillside across the water —  a treasure trove of  Late Devonian fauna waiting to be discovered.

In the summer of 1842, Abraham Gesner, New Brunswick’s first Provincial Geologist, crossed the northern part of the region exploring for coal. Well, mostly looking for coal. Gesner also had a keen eye for fossils and his trip to the Gaspé Peninsula came fast on the heels of a jaunt along the rocky beaches of Chignecto Bay at the head of the Bay of Fundy and home to the standing fossil trees of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. 

Passionate about geology and chemistry, he is perhaps most famous for his invention of the process to distil the combustible hydrocarbon kerosene from coal oil — a subject on which his long walks exploring a budding Canada gave him a great deal of time to consider. We have Gesner to thank for the modern petroleum industry. He filed many patents for clever ways to distil the soft tar-like coal or bitumen still in use today.

He was skilled in a broad range of scientific disciplines — being a geologist, palaeontologist, physician, chemist, anatomist and naturalist — a brass tacks geek to his core. Gesner explored the coal exposures and fossil outcrops across the famed area that witnessed the region become part of England and not France — and no longer L'nu.

Following the Restigouche River in New Brunswick through the Dalhousie region, Gesner navigated through the estuary to reach the southern coast of the Gaspé Peninsula into what would become the southeastern coast of Quebec to get a better look at the cliffs across the water. He was the first geologist to lay eyes on the Escuminac Formation and its fossils.

In his 1843 report to the Geologic Survey, he wrote, “...I found the shore lined with a coarse conglomerate. Farther eastward the rocks are light blue sandstones and shales, containing the remains of vegetables. (...) In these sandstone and shales, I found the remains of fish and a small species of tortoise with fossil foot-marks.”

We now know that this little tortoise was the famous Bothriolepis, an antiarch placoderm fish. It was also the first formal mention of the Miguasha fauna in our scientific literature. Despite the circulation of his report, Gesner’s discovery was all but ignored — the cliffs and their fossil bounty abandoned for decades to come. Geologists like Ells, Foord and Weston, and the research of Whiteaves and Dawson, would eventually follow in Gesner's footsteps.

North America Map 1866 (Click to Enlarge)
Over the past 180 years, this Devonian site has yielded a wonderfully diverse aquatic assemblage from the Age of Fishes — five of the six fossil fish groups associated with the Devonian including exceptionally well-preserved fossil specimens of the lobe-finned fishes. 

This is exciting as it is the lobe-finned fishes — the sarcopterygians — that gave rise to the first four-legged, air-breathing terrestrial vertebrates – the tetrapods. 

Fossil specimens from Miguasha include twenty species of lower vertebrates — anaspids, osteostra-cans, placoderms, acanthodians, actinopterygians and sarcopterygians — plus a limited invertebrate assemblage, along with terrestrial plants, scorpions and millipedes.

Originally interpreted as a freshwater lacustrine environment, recent paleontological, taphonomic, sedimentological and geochemical evidence corroborates a brackish estuarine setting — and definitely not the deep waters of the sea. This is important because the species that gave rise to our land-living animals began life in shallow streams and lakes. It tells us a bit about how our dear Elpistostege watsoni liked to live — preferring to lollygag in cool river waters where seawater mixed with fresh. Not fully freshwater, but a wee bit of salinity to add flavour.  

  • Photos: Elpistostege watsoni (Westoll, 1938 ), Upper Devonian (Frasnian), Escuminac formation, Parc de Miguasha, Baie des Chaleurs, Gaspé, Québec, Canada. John Fam, VanPS
  • Origin of the Vertebrate Hand Illustration, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2100-8
  • Tiktaalik Illustration: By Obsidian Soul - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47401797

References & further reading:

  • From Water to Land: https://www.miguasha.ca/mig-en/the_first_discoveries.php
  • UNESCO Miguasha National Park: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/686/
  • Office of L'nu Affairs: https://novascotia.ca/abor/aboriginal-people/
  • Cloutier, R., Clement, A.M., Lee, M.S.Y. et al. Elpistostege and the origin of the vertebrate hand. Nature 579, 549–554 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2100-8
  • Daeschler, E. B., Shubin, N. H. & Jenkins, F. A. Jr. A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan. Nature 440, 757–763 (2006).
  • Shubin, Neil. Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion History of the Human Body.
  • Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03972-8

Sunday, July 2, 2023

TETRAPODS AND THE VERTEBRATE HAND

The irresistable tetrapod Tiktaalik
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. Westroll was an interesting fellow whose 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. 

Elpistostege watsoni
As a specialist in early fish, Westoll was the perfect person to ask 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. 

Hypotheses of tetrapod origins rely heavily on the anatomy of but a few tetrapod-like fish fossils from the Middle and Late Devonian, 393–359 million years ago. 

These taxa — known as elpistostegalians — include Panderichthys, Elpistostege and Tiktaalik — none of which had yet to reveal the complete skeletal anatomy of the pectoral fin. 

Elpistostege watsoni
None until 2010 that is, when a complete 1.57-metre-long articulated specimen was found and described by Richard Cloutier et al. in 2020. 

The specimen helped us to understand the origin of the vertebrate hand. Stripped from its encasing stone, it revealed a set of paired fins of Elpistostege containing bones homologous to the phalanges (finger bones) of modern tetrapods and is the most basal tetrapodomorph known to possess them. 

Once the phalanges were uncovered, prep work began on the fins. The fins were covered in wee scales and lepidotrichia (fin rays). The work was tiresome, taking more than 2,700 hours of preparation but the results were thrilling. 

Origin of the Vertebrate Hand
We could now clearly see that the skeleton of the pectoral fin has four proximodistal rows of radials — two of which include branched carpals — as well as two distal rows organized as digits and putative digits. 

Despite this skeletal pattern — which represents the most tetrapod-like arrangement of bones found in a pectoral fin to date blurring the line between fish and land vertebrates — the fin retained lepidotrichia (those wee fin rays) distal to the radials. 

This arrangement confirmed an age-old question — showing us for the first time that the origin of phalanges preceded the loss of fin rays, not the other way around.

E. watsoni is very closely related to Tiktaalik roseae found in 2004 in the Canadian Arctic — a tetrapodomorpha species also known as a Choanata. These were advanced forms transitional between fish and the early labyrinthodonts playfully referred to as fishapods — half-fish, half-tetrapod in appearance and limb morphology. 

Up to that point, the relationship of limbed vertebrates (tetrapods) to lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygians) was well known, but the origin of major tetrapod features remained obscure for lack of fossils that document the sequence of evolutionary changes — until Tiktaalik. While Tiktaalik is technically a fish, this fellow is as far from fish-like you can be and still be a card-carrying member of the group. 

Tiktaalik roseae
Complete with scales and gills, this proto-fish lacked the conical head we see in modern fish but had a rather flattened triangular head more like that of a crocodile. 

Tiktaalik had scales on its back and fins with fin webbing but like early land-living animals, it had a distinctive flat head and neck. He was a brawny brute. The shape of his skull and shoulder look part fish and part amphibian.

The watershed moment came as Tiktaalik was prepped. Inside Tiktaalik's fins, we find bones that correspond to the upper arm, forearm and even parts of the wrist — all inside a fin with webbing — remarkable! 

Its fins have thin ray bones for paddling like most fish, but with brawny interior bones that gave Tiktaalik the ability to prop itself up, using his limbs for support. I picture him propped up on one paddle saying, "how you doing?" 

Six years after Tiktaalik was discovered by Neil Shubin and team in the ice-covered tundra of the Canadian Arctic on southern Ellesmere Island, a team working the outcrops at Miguasha on the Gaspé Peninsula discovered the only fully specimen of E. watsoni found to date — greatly increasing our knowledge of this finned tantalizingly transitional tetrapodomorph. 

E. watsoni fossils are rare — this was the fourth specimen collected in over 130 years of hunting. Charmingly, the specimen was right on our doorstop — extracted but a few feet away from the main stairs descending onto the beach of Miguasha National Park. 

L'nu Mi’gmaq First Nations of the Gespe’gewa’gi Region

Miguasha is nestled in the Gaspésie or Gespe’gewa’gi region of Canada — home to the Mi’gmaq First Nations who self-refer as L’nu or Lnu. The word Mi’gmaq or Mi’kmaq means the family or my allies/friends in Mi'kmaw, their native tongue (and soon to be Nova Scotia's provincial first language). They are the people of the sea and the original inhabitants of Atlantic Canada having lived here for more than 10,000 years. 

The L'nu were the first First Nation people to establish contact and trade with European explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries — and perhaps the Norse as early as the turn of the Millenium. Sailing vessels filled with French, British, Scottish, Irish and others arrived one by one to lay claim to the region — settling and fighting over the land. As each group rolled out their machinations of discovery, tensions turned to an all-out war with the British and French going head to head. I'll spare you the sordid details but for everyone caught in the crossfire, it went poorly.

North America Map 1775 (Click to Enlarge)
Cut to 1760, the British tipped the balance with their win at the Battle of the Restigouche, the last naval battle between France and England for possession of the North American continent — Turtle Island. 

The bittersweet British victory sparked the American War of Independence. 

For the next twenty years, the L'nu would witness and become embroiled in yet another war for these lands, their lands — first as bystanders, then as American allies, then intimidated into submission by the British Royal Navy with a show of force by way of a thirty-four gun man-of-war, encouraging L'nu compliance — finally culminating in an end to the hostilities with the 1783 Treaty of Paris. 

The peace accord held no provisions for the L'nu, Métis and First Nations impacted. None of these newcomers was Mi'kmaq — neither friends nor allies.

It was to this area some sixty years later that the newly formed Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) began exploring and mapping the newly formed United Province of Canada. Geologists in the New Brunswick Geology Branch traipsed through the rugged countryside that would become a Canadian province in 1867. 

It was on one of these expeditions that the Miguasha fossil outcrops were discovered. They, too, would transform in time to become Miguasha National Park or Parc de Miguasha, but at first, they were simply the promising sedimentary exposures on the hillside across the water —  a treasure trove of  Late Devonian fauna waiting to be discovered.

In the summer of 1842, Abraham Gesner, New Brunswick’s first Provincial Geologist, crossed the northern part of the region exploring for coal. Well, mostly looking for coal. Gesner also had a keen eye for fossils and his trip to the Gaspé Peninsula came fast on the heels of a jaunt along the rocky beaches of Chignecto Bay at the head of the Bay of Fundy and home to the standing fossil trees of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. 

Passionate about geology and chemistry, he is perhaps most famous for his invention of the process to distil the combustible hydrocarbon kerosene from coal oil — a subject on which his long walks exploring a budding Canada gave him a great deal of time to consider. We have Gesner to thank for the modern petroleum industry. He filed many patents for clever ways to distil the soft tar-like coal or bitumen still in use today.

He was skilled in a broad range of scientific disciplines — being a geologist, palaeontologist, physician, chemist, anatomist and naturalist — a brass tacks geek to his core. Gesner explored the coal exposures and fossil outcrops across the famed area that witnessed the region become part of England and not France — and no longer L'nu.

Following the Restigouche River in New Brunswick through the Dalhousie region, Gesner navigated through the estuary to reach the southern coast of the Gaspé Peninsula into what would become the southeastern coast of Quebec to get a better look at the cliffs across the water. He was the first geologist to lay eyes on the Escuminac Formation and its fossils.

In his 1843 report to the Geologic Survey, he wrote, “...I found the shore lined with a coarse conglomerate. Farther eastward the rocks are light blue sandstones and shales, containing the remains of vegetables. (...) In these sandstone and shales, I found the remains of fish and a small species of tortoise with fossil foot-marks.”

We now know that this little tortoise was the famous Bothriolepis, an antiarch placoderm fish. It was also the first formal mention of the Miguasha fauna in our scientific literature. Despite the circulation of his report, Gesner’s discovery was all but ignored — the cliffs and their fossil bounty abandoned for decades to come. Geologists like Ells, Foord and Weston, and the research of Whiteaves and Dawson, would eventually follow in Gesner's footsteps.

North America Map 1866 (Click to Enlarge)
Over the past 180 years, this Devonian site has yielded a wonderfully diverse aquatic assemblage from the Age of Fishes — five of the six fossil fish groups associated with the Devonian including exceptionally well-preserved fossil specimens of the lobe-finned fishes. 

This is exciting as it is the lobe-finned fishes — the sarcopterygians — that gave rise to the first four-legged, air-breathing terrestrial vertebrates – the tetrapods. 

Fossil specimens from Miguasha include twenty species of lower vertebrates — anaspids, osteostra-cans, placoderms, acanthodians, actinopterygians and sarcopterygians — plus a limited invertebrate assemblage, along with terrestrial plants, scorpions and millipedes.

Originally interpreted as a freshwater lacustrine environment, recent paleontological, taphonomic, sedimentological and geochemical evidence corroborates a brackish estuarine setting — and definitely not the deep waters of the sea. This is important because the species that gave rise to our land-living animals began life in shallow streams and lakes. It tells us a bit about how our dear Elpistostege watsoni liked to live — preferring to lollygag in cool river waters where seawater mixed with fresh. Not fully freshwater, but a wee bit of salinity to add flavour.  

  • Photos: Elpistostege watsoni (Westoll, 1938 ), Upper Devonian (Frasnian), Escuminac formation, Parc de Miguasha, Baie des Chaleurs, Gaspé, Québec, Canada. John Fam, VanPS
  • Origin of the Vertebrate Hand Illustration, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2100-8
  • Tiktaalik Illustration: By Obsidian Soul - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47401797

References & further reading:

  • From Water to Land: https://www.miguasha.ca/mig-en/the_first_discoveries.php
  • UNESCO Miguasha National Park: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/686/
  • Office of L'nu Affairs: https://novascotia.ca/abor/aboriginal-people/
  • Cloutier, R., Clement, A.M., Lee, M.S.Y. et al. Elpistostege and the origin of the vertebrate hand. Nature 579, 549–554 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2100-8
  • Daeschler, E. B., Shubin, N. H. & Jenkins, F. A. Jr. A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan. Nature 440, 757–763 (2006).
  • Shubin, Neil. Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion History of the Human Body.
  • Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03972-8