PHYLLOCERAS VELLEDAE OF MADAGASCAR

This specimen of Phylloceras velledae (Michelin) has a shell with a small umbilicus, arched, acute venter, and at some growth stage, falcoid ribs that spring in pairs from umbilical tubercles, disappearing on the outer whorls.

This specimen has been polished to show the sutures to great effect. These ammonites are common in rock shops and plentiful on the internet.

These ammonites make a lovely addition to any teaching collection as they provide a lot of detail and can be handled quite well by small, less gentle hands. 

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.

LOVE THE WILD: DECAPODA / KU'MIS

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.

TRACKING THEROPODS HIGH IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES

Left, right, one, two... Theropod Tracks

Left, right, one, two... the wonderfully preserved theropod trackway you see here was found by eagle-eyed construction workers blasting out a tunnel for a road near Yanashallash in the Chavin de Huantar region of Peru. 

You would be surprised how many fossils have been found this way!

The footprints are trace fossils from a big fellow who marched through here back in the Cretaceous. The inflated rust coloured prints were found alongside the fossil crocodile, pterosaurs, primitive tortoise and fish.

Antamina Mining and the Asociacion Ancash have provided funding to turn this remarkable find into an educational exhibit with a research team led by palaeontologist Carlos Vildoso. 

Vildoso along with palaeontologist Patricia Sciammaro (the two are married) founded the Instituto Peruano de Estudios en Paleovertebrados (IPEP) is a non-profit, non-government institution. Their centre focuses on vertebrate palaeontology. Over the years they have built an enviable database of significant Peruvian fossil sites and publish Contribuciones Paleontológicas, a quarterly journal devoted to vertebrate palaeontology. Chévere!

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION

Indian Residential Schools (Click to Enlarge)

More than 150,000 First Nation, Inuit and Metis children were forced to attend Indian Residential Schools. 

This was not to give them an education but to strip them of their culture. It was not lost as a by-product of attending — it was the sole reason for their attending.

Impossible you say. Well, it happened. And we are reaping the fall out to this day.

The legal term Indian is both political & racist. Canada's Indigenous population are First Nation, Métis & Inuit. 

Today, all Canadians share in a historic time of healing, thoughtful dialogue, and helping to bring forth the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.