MAMMOTHS LAST MEAL

One of the first scientific accounts of a well-preserved woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, frozen in Siberia described the meat as enticingly red and marbled but smelling so putrid that researchers could only tolerate a minute in its proximity.

Despite this initial review, numerous apocryphal tales exist of dinners made from centuries-old mammoths found frozen whole in clear blocks of ice. 

These accounts have not only enchanted the public but also heavily influenced early scientific thought on Quaternary extinctions and climate; many researchers resorting to catastrophism to explain the instantaneous freezing necessary to preserve palatable meat.

The possibility of cloning is now the major draw of frozen mammoths but the public remains curious about eating prehistoric meat, especially because some modern paleontologists have credibly described tasting mammoth and extinct bison found preserved in permafrost.

Although less publicized today, eating study specimens was once common practice for researchers. 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 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 labelled as a South American Giant Ground Sloth, Megatherium, not Mammoth.

Green Sea Turtle, Chelonia mydas

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 DNA 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

The image of the mammoth you see here is by the very talented Daniel Eskridge. To see more of his work, and indeed purchase it, head over to: https://daniel-eskridge.pixels.com/

SLOTHS & BLUE GREEN ALGAE

Ever wonder why the slow moving sloth has a slightly greenish hue? Ever consider the sloth at all? Well, perhaps not. Location, location, location, is the mantra for many of us in our macro world, but it is also true for the small world of algae.

Blue green algae is a term used to describe any of a large, heterogeneous group of prokaryotic, principally photosynthetic organisms.

These little oxygenic (oxygen-producing) fellows appeared about 2,000,000,000 to 3,000,000,000 years ago and are given credit for greatly increasing the oxygen content of the atmosphere, making possible the development of aerobic (oxygen-using) organisms and some very special relationships with some of the slowest moving mammals on the planet, the sloths or Folivora.

The tribes of South America who live close to these insect and leaf-eaters, call these arboreal browsers "Ritto, Rit or Ridette, which roughly translates to variations on sleep, sleepy, munching and filthy. Not all that far off when you consider ths sloth and their lifestyle.

The sloth's body and shaggy coat, or pelage, provides a comfy habitat to two types of wee blue-green algae along with various other invertebrates. The hairs that make up the sloth's coat have grooves that help foster algal growth.

And, while Kermit the Frog says, "it's not easy being green," it couldn't be further from the truth for this slow-moving tree dweller. The blue-green algae gives the sloth a natural greenish camouflage, an arrangement that is certainly win-win.

DINOSAURS OF THAILAND

This beautiful dinosaur track is from Kalasin Dinosaur Park in northeastern Thailand. 

Thailand boasts some of the finest Mesozoic trackways from five endemic dinosaur species.  

Since 1976, the Department of Mineral Resources with Thai-French Paleontological Project had continuously investigated the dinosaurs in the Phu Wiang mountains. The project found so many vertebrae, teeth, and footprints of the dinosaurs mainly from the sandstones of the Early Cretaceous Sao Khua Formation (about 130 million years old). These include sauropods and theropods ranging in size from adorable chickens to beasties up to 15 meters long. 

The Thai dinosaur record from the continental rocks of the Khorat Plateau is the best in Southeast Asia. The oldest footprints are those from small dinosaurs from the Middle to Late Jurassic Phra Wihan Formation. The most varied dinosaur assemblages come from the Late Jurassic Sao Khua Formation. Here we see the sauropods dominate the fossil beds interspersed with a variety of theropods. Large theropod footprints are known from the Early Cretaceous Phu Phan Formation. Theropods and the primitive ceratopsian Psittacosaurus occur in the Aptian-Albian Khok Kruat Formation. We find dinosaur material further north along the Mekong River region of Laos. Thai fossils show a close relationship to those found in China and Mongolia. 

If you'd like to go visit them, there is a rather nice display at the Phu Wiang Dinosaur Museum in the newly established Wiang Kao district about 80 kilometres to the west of the provincial capital of Khon Kaen. They have several species on display, including: Phuwiangosaurus sirindhornae, Siamosaurus suteethorni, Siamotyrannus isanensis, Kinnareemimus khonkaenensis, Compsognathus (awe, a wee vicious chicken...) and, of course, the Phu Wiang dinosaur footprints.

If you'd like to visit Kalasin Dinosaur Park, follow route 227 towards Lam Pao Dam and Dok Ket Beach. Instead of turning left towards the dam, continue up towards Sirindhorn Dinosaur Museum. You'll see it on your left about 5km before the museum. For some GPS help, pop this into Google Maps: Dinosaur Park, Ni Khom, Sahatsakhan District, Kalasin 46140, Thailand.

References: 

• Ingavat, R., Janvier, R., and Taquet, P. (1978) Decouverte en Thailande d'une portion de femur de dinosaure sauropode (Saurischia, Reptilia). C.R. Soc.Geol.France 3: 140-141
• Wickanet Songtham and Benja Sektheera (2006) Phuwiangosaurus sirindhornae Bangkok: Department of Mineral Resources: 100 pages
• Buffetaut, E., Suteethorn, V., and Tong, H. (2009) An earliest 'ostrich dinosaur' (Theropoda: Ornithomosauria) from the Early Cretaceous Sao Khua Formation of NE Thailand, pp. 229-243, in E. Buffetaut, G. Cuny, J. Le Loeuff, and V. Suteethorn (eds.), Late Palaeozoic and Mesozoic Ecosystem in SE Asia. Geological Society, London, Special Publication 315.

TEMPERATURE, SAND AND SEX: GREEN SEA TURTLES

What do temperature, sand and sex have in common?

Well, for the Green Sea Turtle—everything. When these cuties are still in their shells incubating, the temperature of the sand surrounding them determines their sex. 

Boy or girl? 

Warm sand produces females and cooler sand hatches out male Green Sea Turtles.

The Green Sea Turtle, Chelonia mydas, also known as the Green Turtle, Black Sea Turtle or Pacific Green Turtle is a species in the family Cheloniidae.

It is the only species in the genus Chelonia. Its range extends throughout tropical and subtropical seas around the world, with two distinct populations in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, but it is also found in the Indian Ocean. 

The common name refers to the usually green fat found beneath its carapace, not to the colour of its carapace, which is olive to black.

This sea turtle's dorsoventrally flattened body is covered by a large, teardrop-shaped carapace; it has a pair of large, paddle-like flippers. It is usually lightly coloured, although in the eastern Pacific populations' parts of the carapace can be almost black. Unlike other members of its family, such as the hawksbill sea turtle, C. mydas is mostly herbivorous. The adults usually inhabit shallow lagoons, feeding mostly on various species of seagrasses. The turtles bite off the tips of the blades of seagrass, which keeps the grass healthy and these aquatic vegans in top shape..

Like other sea turtles, green sea turtles migrate long distances between feeding grounds and hatching beaches. Many islands worldwide are known as Turtle Island due to green sea turtles nesting on their beaches. Females crawl out on beaches, dig nests and lay eggs during the night. Later, hatchlings emerge and scramble into the water. Those that reach maturity may live to 80 years in the wild.

Researchers at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany discovered the remains of the oldest fossilized sea turtle known to date. Remains from a new species, Desmatochelys padillai sp, including fossilized shell and bones have been found at two outcrops near Villa de Leyva, Colombia. 

The find was published in the journal PaleoBios, dates the reptile at 120 million years old – 25 million years older than any previously known specimen of this beautiful and long-lived turtle.

FRACTAL BUILDING: AMMONITES

Argonauticeras besairei, Collection of José Juárez Ruiz.

An exceptional example of fractal building of an ammonite septum, in this clytoceratid Argonauticeras besairei from the awesome José Juárez Ruiz.

Ammonites were predatory, squid-like creatures that lived inside coil-shaped shells.

Like other cephalopods, ammonites had sharp, beak-like jaws inside a ring of squid-like tentacles that extended from their shells. They used these tentacles to snare prey, — plankton, vegetation, fish and crustaceans — similar to the way a squid or octopus hunt today.

Catching a fish with your hands is no easy feat, as I'm sure you know. But the Ammonites were skilled and successful hunters. They caught their prey while swimming and floating in the water column. Within their shells, they had a number of chambers, called septa, filled with gas or fluid that were interconnected by a wee air tube. By pushing air in or out, they were able to control their buoyancy in the water column.

They lived in the last chamber of their shells, continuously building new shell material as they grew. As each new chamber was added, the squid-like body of the ammonite would move down to occupy the final outside chamber.

They were a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids — octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish) than they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species.

The Ammonoidea can be divided into six orders:

• Agoniatitida, Lower Devonian - Middle Devonian
• Clymeniida, Upper Devonian
• Goniatitida, Middle Devonian - Upper Permian
• Prolecanitida, Upper Devonian - Upper Triassic
• Ceratitida, Upper Permian - Upper Triassic
• Ammonitida, Lower Jurassic - Upper Cretaceous

Ammonites have intricate and complex patterns on their shells called sutures. The suture patterns differ across species and tell us what time period the ammonite is from. If they are geometric with numerous undivided lobes and saddles and eight lobes around the conch, we refer to their pattern as goniatitic, a characteristic of Paleozoic ammonites.

If they are ceratitic with lobes that have subdivided tips; giving them a saw-toothed appearance and rounded undivided saddles, they are likely Triassic. For some lovely Triassic ammonites, take a look at the specimens that come out of Hallstatt, Austria and from the outcrops in the Humboldt Mountains of Nevada.

Hoplites bennettiana (Sowby, 1826).

If they have lobes and saddles that are fluted, with rounded subdivisions instead of saw-toothed, they are likely Jurassic or Cretaceous. If you'd like to see a particularly beautiful Lower Jurassic ammonite, take a peek at Apodoceras. Wonderful ridging in that species.

One of my favourite Cretaceous ammonites is the ammonite, Hoplites bennettiana (Sowby, 1826). This beauty is from Albian deposits near Carrière de Courcelles, Villemoyenne, near la région de Troyes (Aube) Champagne in northeastern France.

At the time that this fellow was swimming in our oceans, ankylosaurs were strolling about Mongolia and stomping through the foliage in Utah, Kansas and Texas. Bony fish were swimming over what would become the strata making up Canada, the Czech Republic and Australia. Cartilaginous fish were prowling the western interior seaway of North America and a strange extinct herbivorous mammal, Eobaatar, was snuffling through Mongolia, Spain and England.

In some classifications, these are left as suborders, included in only three orders: Goniatitida, Ceratitida, and Ammonitida. Once you get to know them, ammonites in their various shapes and suturing patterns make it much easier to date an ammonite and the rock formation where is was found at a glance.

Ammonites first appeared about 240 million years ago, though they descended from straight-shelled cephalopods called bacrites that date back to the Devonian, about 415 million years ago, and the last species vanished in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

They were prolific breeders that evolved rapidly. If you could cast a fishing line into our ancient seas, it is likely that you would hook an ammonite, not a fish. They were prolific back in the day, living (and sometimes dying) in schools in oceans around the globe. We find ammonite fossils (and plenty of them) in sedimentary rock from all over the world.

In some cases, we find rock beds where we can see evidence of a new species that evolved, lived and died out in such a short time span that we can walk through time, following the course of evolution using ammonites as a window into the past.

For this reason, they make excellent index fossils. An index fossil is a species that allows us to link a particular rock formation, layered in time with a particular species or genus found there. Generally, deeper is older, so we use the sedimentary layers rock to match up to specific geologic time periods, rather the way we use tree-rings to date trees. A handy way to compare fossils and date strata across the globe.

References: Inoue, S., Kondo, S. Suture pattern formation in ammonites and the unknown rear mantle structure. Sci Rep 6, 33689 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep33689
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep33689?fbclid=IwAR1BhBrDqhv8LDjqF60EXdfLR7wPE4zDivwGORTUEgCd2GghD5W7KOfg6Co#citeas

Photo: Hoplites Bennettiana from near Troyes, France. Collection de Christophe Marot

DRIFTWOOD CANYON FOSSIL BEDS / KUNGAX

Puffbird similar to Fossil Birds found at Driftwood Canyon 

Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park 

Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park covers 23 hectares of the Bulkley River Valley, on the east side of Driftwood Creek, a tributary of the Bulkley River, 10 km northeast of the town of Smithers in northern British Columbia. 

Wet'suwet'en First Nation

The parklands are part of the asserted traditional territory of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation which includes lands around the Bulkley River, Burns Lake, Broman Lake, and François Lake in the northwestern Central Interior of British Columbia. 

The Wetʼsuwetʼen are part of the Dakelh or Carrier First Nation, and in combination with the Babine First Nation are referred to as the Western Carrier. They speak Witsuwitʼen, a dialect of the Babine-Witsuwitʼen language which, like its sister language Carrier, is a member of the Athabaskan family.

Their oral history or kungax recounts a time when their ancestral village, Dizkle or Dzilke, once stood upstream from the Bulkley Canyon. This cluster of cedar houses on both sides of the river was said to be abandoned because of an omen of impending disaster. The exact location of the village has been lost but their stories live on. 

The neighbouring Gitxsan, collectively the People of Smooth Waters—the Gilseyhu Big Frog Clan, the Laksilyu Small Frog Clan, the Tsayu Beaver Clan, the Gitdumden Wolf and Bear Clan and the Laksamshu Fireweed and Owl Clan—each phratry or kinship group calling the Lax Yip home—33,000 km2 of land and water in northwestern ​British Columbia along the waters of the Skeena River and its tributaries—have a similar tale—though the village in their versions is referred to as Dimlahamid or Temlahan depending on which house group or wilp is sharing the tale—as well as where they are located as dialects differ. 

Gitksan speak Sim'algax—the real or true language. Within the Gitxsan communities there are two slightly different dialects. The Gyeets (Downriver) dialect spoken in Gijigyukwhla (Gitsegukla), Gitwangax, and Gitanyow—and the Gigeenix (Upriver) dialect is spoken in Ansbayaxw (Kispiox), Sik-E-Dakh and Gitanmaax.

Driftwood Canyon Fossil Beds

Driftwood Canyon's Fossil Beds record life in the earlier portion of the Eocene when British Columbia — and indeed our world — was much warmer than it is today. This site was discovered in the beginning of the 20th century and is now recognized as containing significant fossil material. 

The fossils found here—and their superb preservation—provide a fascinating opportunity to understand the area’s evolutionary processes of both geology and biology over the past fifty million years or so. The fossils themselves are 51.7 million years old and look remarkably like many of the species we recognize today. 

The park that contains these beautiful fossils is fifty-seven years old. It was created in 1967 by the generosity of the late Gordon Harvey (1913–1976). He donated the land to protect fossil resources that he truly loved and wanted to see preserved. The fossil beds are on the east side of Driftwood Creek. 

Metasequoia, the Dawn Redwood

Exploring the region today, we see a landscape dominated by conifers blanketing the area. 

Forests teem with the aromatic Western Red Cedar, Pacific Silver Fir with its many medicinal properties, the tall and lanky Subalpine Fir with its soft, brittle and quickly decaying wood, the slender scaly Lodgepole Pine, the graceful and slightly forlorn looking Western Hemlock. Across the landscape you see several species of Spruce, including the impressive Sitka. 

Some of the tallest on view would have been mere seedlings, colonizing the glacial moraines centuries ago when the glaciers retreated. Collectively, these conifers tell the tale of the region's cool climate today. 

The Gitsan territory boasts seven of the 14 biogeoclimatic zones of the province—the Alpine Tundra, Spruce-Willow-Birch, Boreal White and Black Spruce, Sub-Boreal Pine-Spruce, Sub-Boreal Spruce, Engelmann Spruce-Subalpine Fir and Interior Cedar-Hemlock. 

The fossil material we find here speaks to a warmer climate in this region's past. We find fossil plants, fish—including specimens of salmon, suckerfish and bowfin, a type of air breathing fish—and insect fossil here—wasps and water striders—fossil plants including Metasequoia, the Dawn Redwood, alder—and interesting vertebrate material. Bird feathers are infrequently collected from the shales; however, two bird body fossils have been found here.

In 1968, a bird body fossil was collected in the Eocene shales of the Ootsa Lake Group in Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park by Pat Petley of Kamloops. 

Pat donated the specimen in 2000 to the Thompson Rivers University (TRU) palaeontology collections. This fossil bird specimen is tentatively identified as the puffbird, Piciformes bucconidae, of the genus Primobucco.

Primobucco is an extinct genus of bird placed in its own family, Primobucconidae. The type species, Primobucco mcgrewi, lived during the Lower Eocene of North America. It was initially described by American paleo-ornithologist Pierce Brodkorb in 1970, from a fossil right-wing, and thought to be an early puffbird. However, the discovery of a further 12 fossils in 2010 indicate that it is instead an early type of roller.

Related fossils from the European Messel deposits have been assigned to the two species P. perneri and P. frugilegus. Two specimens of P. frugilegus have been found with seeds in the area of their digestive tract, which suggests that these birds were more omnivorous than the exclusively predaceous modern rollers. The Driftwood specimen has never been thoroughly studied. If there is a grad student out there looking for a worthy thesis, head on down to the Thompson Rivers University where you'll find the specimen on display.

Another fossil bird, complete with feathers, was collected at Driftwood Canyon in 1970, This one was found by Margret and Albrecht Klöckner who were travelling from Germany. Theirs is a well-travelled specimen, having visited many sites in BC as they toured around, then to Germany and finally back to British Columbia when it was repatriated and donated to the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria. 

I am not sure if it is still on display or back in collections, but it was lovingly displayed back in 2008. There is a new grad student, Alexis, looking at Eocene bird feathers down at the RBCM, so perhaps it is once again doing the rounds. 

This second bird fossil is of a long-legged water bird and has been tentatively identified by Dr. Gareth Dyke of the University of Southampton as possibly from the order Charadriiformes, a diverse order of small to medium-ish water birds that include 350 species of gulls, plovers, sandpipers, terns, snipes, and waders. Hopefully, we'll hear more on this find in the future.

A Tapir showing off his prehensile nose trunk

Tapirs and Tiny Hedgehogs

The outcrops at Driftwood Canyon are also special because they record a record of some of the first fossil mammals ever to be found in British Columbia at this pivotal point in time. 

Wee proto-hedgehogs smaller than your thumb lived in the undergrowth of that fossil flora. They shared the forest floor with an extinct tapir-like herbivore in the genus Heptodon that looked remarkably similar to his modern, extant cousins (there is a rather cheeky fellow shown here so you get the idea) but lacked their pronounced snout (proboscis). I am guessing that omission made him the more fetching of his lineage.

In both cases, it was a fossilized jaw bone that was recovered from the mud, silt and volcanic ash outcrops in this ancient lakebed site. And these two cuties are significant— they are the very first fossil mammals we've ever found from the early Eocene south of the Arctic.

How can we be sure of the timing? The fossil outcrops here are found within an ancient lakebed. Volcanic eruptions 51 million years ago put loads of fine dust into the air that settled then sank to the bottom of the lake, preserving the specimens that found their way here — leaves, insects, birds, mammals.

 As well as turning the lake into a fossil making machine—water, ash, loads of steady sediment to cover specimens and stave off predation—the volcanic ash contains the very chemically inert—resistant to mechanical weathering—mineral zircon which we can date with uranium/lead (U/Pb). 

The U/Pb isotopic dating technique is wonderfully accurate and mighty helpful in dating geologic events from volcanic eruptions, continental movements to mass extinctions. This means we know exactly when these lovelies were fossilized and, in turn, their significance.

Know Before You Go

If you fancy a visit to Driftwood Canyon Park, the park is accessible from Driftwood Road from Provincial Highway 16. You are welcome to view and photograph the fossils found here but collecting is strictly forbidden. 

Driftwood Canyon is recognized as one of the world’s most significant fossil beds. It provides park users with a fascinating opportunity to understand the area’s evolutionary processes of both geology and biology. The day-use area is open from May 15 to September 2. There is a short, wheelchair-accessible interpretative trail that leads from the parking are to the fossil beds. Pets are welcome on leash. Signs along the trail provide information on fossils and local history. 

Below a cliff face at the end of the trail is a viewing area that has interpretive information and viewing area overlooking Driftwood Creek.

This park proudly operated by Mark and Anais Drydyk

Email: kermodeparks@gmail.com / Tel: 1 250 877-1482 or 1 250 877-1782

Palaeo Coordinates: Latitude: 50° 51' 59" N / Longitude: 116° 27' 37" W

Lat/Long (dec): 50.86665,-116.46042 / GUID: d3a6bd3e-68d6-42cf-9b2c-d20a30576988

Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park Brochure: 

https://bcparks.ca/explore/parkpgs/driftwood_cyn/driftwood-canyon-brochure.pdf?v=1638723136455

OPHTHALMOPLAX BRASILIANA

Ophthalmoplax brasiliana  / Photo: José F. Ventura‎

Ventral view of the carnivorous portunoid crab Ophthalmoplax brasiliana (Maury, 1930) from the latest Maastrichtian (~66.2 Ma.) deposits near Coahuila, northern Mexico.

This marine species was originally thought to have been found only in the upper Member (Owl Creek Formation) Late/Upper Maastrichtian deposits of Tippah County in Mississippi, USA. 

Sohl and Koch published on the Mississippian finds in the USGS in 1983. Fedorov and Nyborg published on this same species again in 2017. Paleocoordinates: (34.8° N, 88.9° W: 38.3° N, 66.2° W)

EURYPTERIDS: ANCIENT MARINE ARTHROPODS

More commonly known as sea scorpions, the now-extinct eurypterids were arthropods that lived during the Paleozoic. 

We saw the first of their brethren during the Ordovician and the last of them during the End-Permian Mass Extinction Event. 

In between, they thrived and irradiated out to every niche within our ancient seas and many later forms survived and thrived in both brackish and freshwater. 

The group Arthropoda includes invertebrate animals with exoskeletons, segmented bodies, and paired joint appendages. Eurypterids had six sets of appendages. You can clearly see the segmented body on this cutie, which is one of the defining characteristics of arthropods. The first set was modified into pinchers which are used for feeding. The largest appendage visible in this fossil is a broad paddle that E. tetragonophthalmus used to swim.

This first eurypterid, Eurypterus remipes, was discovered in New York in 1818. It is an iconic fossil for this region and was chosen as the state's official fossil in 1984. An excellent choice as most of the productive eurypterid-bearing outcrops are within the state's boundaries. Most of the fossils we find from them, whether body fossils or trace fossils are from fossil sites in North America and Europe This is because the group lived primarily in the waters around and within the ancient supercontinent of Euramerica. 

Only a handful of eurypterid groups spread beyond the confines of Euramerica and a few genera, such as Adelophthalmus — the longest-lived of all known eurypterid genera — and the giant predatory Pterygotus, achieved a cosmopolitan distribution so we find their fossil remains worldwide today. 

Interestingly, the type species, Pterygotus anglicus, was first through to be the remains of a massive fish by Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz who described it in 1839 — hence the poorly chosen name Pterygotus, which translates to winged fish. He did catch that embarrassing error five years later, but the name remains for all time.

SPINY HETEROMORPH AMMONITE: INDEX FOSSILS

Ammonites, like this gorgeous spiny heteromorph, were prolific breeders that evolved rapidly. If you could cast a fishing line into our ancient seas, it is likely that you would hook an ammonite, not a fish.

We find ammonite fossils, and plenty of them, in sedimentary rock from all over the world. In some cases, we find rock beds where we can see evidence of a new species that evolved, lived and died out in such a short time span that we can walk through time, following the course of evolution using ammonites as a window into the past. For this reason, they make excellent index fossils. 

An index fossil is a species that allows us to link a particular rock formation, layered in time with a particular species or genus found there. Generally, deeper is older, so we use the sedimentary layers of rock to match up to specific geologic time periods, rather like the way we use tree rings to date trees.

TEMNODONTOSAURUS CRASSIMANUS

Temnodontosaurus crassimanus

This big beastie is the ichthyosaur, Temnodontosaurus crassimanus, who graced our ancient oceans 180 million years ago. The species was originally named by Richard Owen, the first superintendent of the Natural History Museum. Owen lived at the height of the gentleman scientist and it was Owen who first coined the name dinosaur. Dean Lomax did some work with this specimen as part of his research leading up to his PhD.

The fellow you see here is the Type Specimen for the species and he lives on display in the Yorkshire Museum. As the reference specimen for the species, all hopeful specimens that may belong to this species are checked against the Type Specimen to see if they share diagnostic features.

The Yorkshire Museum was given this important ichthyosaur fossil back in 1857, albeit in bits and pieces. The first bits of fossil bones were found near Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast by workmen quarrying alum. They recognized the bones as belonging to a fossilized reptile and alerted local authorities who in turn alerted the good Master Owen.

It was quite an undertaking to recover as it was found in more than fifty pieces in massive shale blocks and the alum quarry was active at the time. Alum quarrying helped share the Yorkshire Coast as an important staple of the textile industry going back to the 16th-century. By the 1860s, alum quarrying was slowing down. The ability to manufacture synthetic alum by 1855 had shifted the industry and it died out entirely by 1871. Lucky for us, the last years of alum production gifted us this well-preserved eight-metre specimen, one of the largest ichthyosaurs ever discovered in the UK.

Paleo-coordinates: 54.5° N, 0.6° W: paleocoordinates 42.4° N, 9.3° E