On the Platform
It is July, 2011, and we have found time to revisit the beloved main site east of Churchill. It is wonderful to again wander along that ancient boulder shoreline, examining the Ordovician corals that had been strewn there some 450 million years ago. On the hottest day of our northern stay, the bright sun and low tide expose the site to maximum advantage. There is so much to see, and the morning feels very full as we explain this fabulous place to those who have never been here before.
Later we walk westward heading for another favourite spot, a place we have always called “the platform.” There, we know that the smooth warm rock below a stark quartzite bluff will be perfect for a restful break.
Taking a break on the platform toward midday: Debbie Thompson (foreground) and (L-R) Matt Demski, Sean Robson, and Dave Rudkin.
But how did this place come to be, where the quartzite has been smoothed so wonderfully by the action of waves and shore ice? It is clearly a wave-cut platform in the modern world; the paleontologist also tends to wonder whether it took this shape back in the Ordovician Period, when this area formed a tropical marine shoreline. Just a short walk east, between here and the first of the boulder field sites, one can see places where the quartzite scarp is infilled with small patches of brown Ordovician carbonate, indicating that it was already exposed and deeply incised at that time.
The scarp looms behind the platform like a small-scale Ayers Rock.
The platform, however, yields no such clues. We have tramped across it and photographed every little indentation, but there is no Ordovician sediment to be seen. Just the enigmatic, staccato or sinuous quartz veins that transect so much of the Churchill quartzite. The platform was clearly formed along a straight joint, a plane of weakness along which the quartzite fractured cleanly.
Quartz veins snake across the platform.
But when did the fracturing occur? Was the platform much like this 450 million years ago, or is it a relatively fresh structure dating from the last few thousand years or so? Even if we sit here very quietly the rock will not tell us its secrets, over the shush of the waves and the plaintive calls of the gulls.
There are samples to be packed in preparation for shipping out tomorrow, so we must sling the guns and trundle up that slope. Keeping constant watch for bears, of course …
© Graham Young, 2012
Seasonal Stars
The star is a powerful form, in nature and in the human world. Best wishes of the season!
Top row (L-R): parquet floor, The Hermitage (Winter Palace), St. Petersburg, Russia; green sea urchin Strongylocentrotus from Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick; parquet floor, Catherine Palace, Pushkin (Tsarskoe Selo), Russia; crystal jellyfish Aequorea victoria, north Pacific Ocean
Middle row: starfish on beach, northeastern Prince Edward Island; windmill, Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan; crown-of-thorns starfish Acanthaster, Shedd Aquarium, Chicago; fossil starfish, Silurian Period, from near Churchill, Manitoba
Bottom row: fossil coral Palaeophyllum, Ordovician Period, from near Churchill, Manitoba; 17th Century Spanish tile; lion’s mane jellyfish Cyanea capillata on beach, northeastern Prince Edward Island; church window in Keila, Estonia
Modern Shore: Ice on the Headpond
This afternoon, I experienced one of those perfect combinations of light, place, and season. It was mid afternoon where the Mactaquac headpond meets the end of Keswick Ridge, and the dusting of snow had been winnowed across the new ice on the little bay. I only wish that I had taken the time to really explore the light conditions, rather than taking a few quick snaps and jumping back into the car.
Since this is a geological blog, I guess I should also mention that the rocks beneath the higher ground in the distance include Silurian sediments and metasediments, and Devonian granites associated with the Acadian Orogeny … Read more…
House of Bones and Leaves
In which Montreal’s venerable Redpath Museum is considered through a series of metaphors, similes, and random observations.
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The Redpath Museum is like a Ford Ranger truck.
If you look at it without any scale against which it can be measured, you might be hard-pressed to tell that it is any different from the full-sized model, as it is similar in almost every feature. The building looks tremendously tall and impressive, standing in neoclassical splendour as you approach across rising lawns. But after spending time in it, you begin to realize that it is smaller than it had seemed. There is definitely less mileage here than in a full-sized museum, and perhaps it lacks a bit in pulling power. Still, in most exhibit situations it has everything it needs to get the job done.
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The Redpath Museum is a Wrangel Island mammoth.
I don’t mean that it has a trunk and tusks, or that it is anything like extinct. But it evolved in what was then a remote “island” environment, far removed from the main herd of grand European-style natural history museums. Sure, Montreal had already existed for hundreds of years by 1882, but it was still a small city near the edge of a great empire. In this colonized place, with limited resources, the Redpath had to be smaller and more efficient to exist and survive.
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A view of the main gallery from above
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The Redpath Museum is a chocolate box.
Like any good chocolate box, there are more layers of good stuff down inside, and some of the best treats are mysteriously packed in special wrapping, or hidden away in the corners. I was tempted to say that the Redpath is like a Russian matryoshka doll, but in a matryoshka each femuncula is opened to reveal a smaller but similar one inside. The Redpath is not like that. Heck, it even has red ribbons on the outside, so it is definitely a chocolate box.
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Special wrapping: Upstairs, you find fascinating exhibits of Egyptian mummies.
Skeletons are affixed to the walls of the main floor corridor.
African creatures decorate the staircase.
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The Redpath Museum is a house built of bones and leaves. And sugar.
Sir John William Dawson, the principal of McGill University for almost 40 years, was one of Canada’s greatest 19th century scientists. Dawson collected and described tremendous numbers of fossils, many of them fossil plants from the Carboniferous rocks of Nova Scotia. It was from Carboniferous rocks at Joggins that he also collected very significant early reptiles and amphibians. Dawson possessed a unique combination of scientific acumen, collections acquisition, and prominence in the community. These qualities attracted the financial support of the sugar mogul Peter Redpath, for whom this house is named.
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The tyrannosaurid is beautiful in this neoclassical setting. Perhaps all dinosaur halls should look like this?
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The Redpath Museum is an elder.
In comparison with most other Canadian natural history museums, it is decades older, generations older. The Redpath’s building predates by about 30 years our two other senior institutions, the Canadian Museum of Nature and the Royal Ontario Museum. When it was opened, Canada was only 15 years old, and the now-great cities of the west were mud-roaded gaggles of shacks out on the bald prairie. Certainly there are other natural history museums in Canada that have very old collections, but the Redpath is unique in its conjunction of collections and construction.
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Beautiful specimens arranged in cases: molluscs
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The Redpath Museum is a true temple of learning.
Look at all those beautiful glass cases exhibiting row after row of taxonomically-arranged specimens and artifacts. The museum is a monument to reason, its systematic exhibits a set of holy relics reflecting the order that science was making of a chaotic natural world, its sacred texts the facts that are supported by observation and data. With those goals in mind, of course the architecture must evoke a classical temple!
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Minerals from the famous locality of Mont St.-Hilaire, Québec
The Redpath Museum in c. 1893 (photo: McCord Museum)
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The Redpath Museum is an artifact.
I wish I could visit the Redpath of 100 years ago, to wander among cases of plants from the Carboniferous coal measures, elephant skulls, and Professor Ward’s superb Megatherium replica. Can’t you imagine an afternoon engrossed in examining pieces gathered from far corners of the world, appreciating whatever catches your eye, adding to your store of wonderfully esoteric and useless knowledge? Even at this remove I can smell the wax of the wooden floors and see floating dust specks illuminated in the light from those windows.
But wait … visiting it today is not really all that different. Some of those specimens are still there, and some of the newer pieces are completely in keeping. In a traditional natural history museum, the exhibits that work best, the most exciting ones, are the ones that embrace their setting.
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This dinosaur mini-diorama is charming, but far from the modern understanding of these creatures.
These biodiversity exhibits are located in and around beautiful casework at the end of the gallery, though the sunlight is hard on the mounts.
I compiled most of this piece during a long wait in Montreal Airport, watching the sleet gust out of the low cloud onto the runway outside. It seemed inspiring, somehow, even though my visit to the Redpath had taken place on one of the hottest days of the summer (why do I always visit these old museums when they are at their least pleasant?).
© Graham Young, 2011
Nothing But Blue
Eastern Saskatchewan
Cruising down the Pembina Highway in the middle of the day, I had one of those moments of perfect stillness and perfect clarity, the sort of moment that only happens when you are alone and speeding. The sky was bluer than prairie blue, the sun was bright, and I was in the middle lane with no traffic for two blocks in front of me or two blocks behind. The road was absolutely straight and clear, and the traffic light ahead was green. What could possibly go wrong?
Glancing at the speedometer I realized that, with that sense of serenity and no nearby reference point, I was moving far faster than I had thought. Easing my foot from the gas, I wondered if that feeling of stillness at speed might be analogous to the situation for many species, during the long intervals in evolution when environmental conditions are relatively stable and they are under little selective pressure.
La Pocatière, Québec
Do they, metaphorically, coast along with not a care in the world, with no idea of how fast they are going or when they are going to hit a sudden curve or a hidden red light? The trilobites, driving Model T Fords (obviously), chugged along every highway in the early days, but their wheels fell off and one by one they all went into the weeds. The dinosaurs, in their Detroit steel Camaros and Boss Mustangs, drove fast but eventually hit the sort of multi-car pileup that fills a commuter’s darkest dreams.
Meanwhile, the horseshoe crabs and lingulid brachiopods must be the little old ladies of the evolutionary highway. They have driven longer and farther than anyone else, their Plymouth Valiants meandering a slow and steady way well below the speed limit in evolution’s right-hand lane. They probably drive the species behind them crazy!
This Dodge Diplomat reminds me of the horseshoe crabs and lingulids: slow-moving, rather the worse for wear, but it still keeps moving along, and the load of lumber on the roof provides plenty of contingency!
And what of the fabulously clever Homo sapiens? We have our gleaming new Lamborghini, fresh out of the showroom. We gun the motor and make obscene gestures at the other species, using our massive acceleration to transform them into specks receding in the rearview mirror. But we never bother to check the speedo or the gas gauge, and there is a big patch of black ice just around the next bend, hidden in the blinding glare out of that clear blue sky …
Times Square (photo by Vicki Young)
© Graham Young, 2011
Look Where You Lunch
This is a follow-up to my post of a few weeks back. Please forgive me if I repeat myself sometimes …
Debbie Thompson and Dave Rudkin, at lunchtime during Churchill fieldwork in summer 2011. Debbie is not using the binoculars to look for fossils: she is watching polar bears a kilometre away on the tidal flat.
I have heard several paleontologists state the maxim that you should always look for fossils in the exact spot you have chosen to have lunch. And there is some truth in this: I recall many years ago relaxing after lunch on top of a Silurian reef on the coast of the Gaspé Peninsula, pulling trilobite after trilobite from the gravel I was resting on. Similarly, last summer I found one of the most complete Ordovician eurypterid specimens at Airport Cove just below my seat on the slope, without having to move at all from where I had consumed my sandwich.
Part of an articulated eurypterid, found at Airport Cove last summer (photo © David Rudkin, Royal Ontario Museum)
Why should this be? Are we supernaturally drawn to eat at those places that hold the secrets we seek? This seems very unlikely. Rather, it is probably related to the fact that we look with “different eyes” when we are relaxed, yet those eyes still hold the image of what we seek. I was thinking of this as I walked to the bus this afternoon; it was the same old neighbourhood, but add a layer of snow and take a slightly different route, and you will see many things that you have not observed before.
Looking with different eyes: no, this is not some strange sun-worshipping ritual. Rather, Debbie Thompson had told me that, if you blocked the sun at the right angle, you could see that the air was actually full of floating seeds. And she was right, though Sean Robson was clearly not convinced! (photo © David Rudkin, Royal Ontario Museum)
The other critical factor with lunchtime discoveries is that lunch provides an opportunity to look intensely at everything that can be seen in one tiny area. The entire fossil-collecting site may not be all that large, but we are still unlikely to see all the details if we are considering the site as a whole.
The aliens are among us, and they see things that we cannot. Debbie, protecting herself from the sun and the voracious flies, is hunkered down examine her little patch of rock. (photo © David Rudkin, Royal Ontario Museum)
It is far too easy for a place to become so familiar that we walk over it daily without ever seeing what is under our feet. I still find it shocking that the Airport Cove soft-tissue biota lurked for years right beside where we parked the truck, as we went to collect fossils such as trilobites and corals farther down the shore. Considering mineral exploration across the huge expanse of northern Ontario, it is also surprising that the immensely rich Hemlo gold deposit was not found in some unknown place far from human activity. Rather, it was in easy sight of where the Trans Canada Highway had been pushed through many years before.
It is for these sorts of reasons that I don’t find it the least bit restrictive to do research at a provincial museum. I might sometimes envy university colleagues as they fly off for fieldwork in India or Australia, but I also think that we are more likely to find unusual things here, because we have the opportunity to contemplate a limited area. Soft-tissue fossils in Konservat-Lagerstätten may be little known and rarely found, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are rare. It may just be that we aren’t all that good at finding them!
By focusing on smaller areas, we may be more likely to locate the really unusual and significant things. I would not be the least bit surprised if we find one or two more unusual fossil sites in the coming years; we just have to make the time to eat lunch on enough outcrops.
Ed Dobrzanski surveys the expanse of Airport Cove near low tide: it is a challenge to find unusual things in an immense area!
© Graham Young, 2011
Trimetallic Trilobites*
Looking on the shelf the other day, I realized that trilobites must be popular subjects for moulding and casting, as there seem to be various examples lying around in metals, plastic, and ceramic. They are, of course, attractive fossils, and have a form that makes them pleasing tactile objects. Perhaps cast trilobites have become amulets, modern equivalent of the scarabs treasured by ancient Egyptians?
I was most taken with three of the modern arthropodan amulets. Each is in a different metal, and each a somewhat different take on a medium-sized trilobite, in the range of 5-12 centimetres long (roughly 2-5 inches).
The first is an Isotelus in aluminum. This one, which resides on my office filing cabinet, is the result of a miscommunication.
The accidental aluminum arthropod. This is a replica of a specimen of Isotelus sp. from the Upper Ordovician Red River Formation, Cat Head Member, central Manitoba. (original specimen is in the collection of The Manitoba Museum)
Our artists, Betsy and Debbie, had made moulds of a couple of trilobites, to be used to produce stainless steel “touchables” for the Earth History Gallery. For some reason, the people at the metal casting place thought that aluminum was wanted, rather than steel. This resulted in this imperfect cast: too soft for the robust day-to-day handling that would happen in the gallery, and with an oddly flecked and roughened surface. So a re-cast was done, producing the excellent replicas that sit in our gallery, in front of the giant trilobite Isotelus rex.
This exhibit at The Manitoba Museum describes the discovery and significance of the world's largest articulated trilobite, Isotelus rex. The stainless steel replica Isotelus is arrowed. (© The Manitoba Museum)
The second metal trilobite, in brass, is another Isotelus. I’m not sure why Isotelus is such a popular trilobite for this sort of thing; maybe there is just a lot of it around!
Isotelus belt buckle, Ohio Geological Survey
I bought this belt buckle years ago, back when the Ohio Geological Survey used to carry Isotelus-themed gift items in addition to their wonderful selection of popular publications (Isotelus is Ohio’s state fossil). The buckle is apparently a direct replica of a specimen of Isotelus from the Cincinnati area. I am guessing that it is I. maximus, but it seems a bit ambiguous in features; perhaps someone from the Dry Dredgers can either confirm or refute this identification?
There is no such classification issue with the last and best metalbite: this silver one is more the spirit of the trilobite than a depiction of a fossil.
"Trilobuckle" by Carolyn Young (I have had this for a long time and am responsible for the scratches!)
This is also a belt buckle, which I was lucky enough to receive as a gift from its maker, my sister Carolyn. She was not aware of the Isotelus belt buckle at the time, but had thought that a trilobite was a worthy subject for such a piece. This lost-wax one-off was loosely based on at least a couple of the Cambrian trilobites that I described (with Rolf Ludvigsen) a very long time ago, blended with a large dollop of creative licence.
Sketches of components of two mid-Cambrian trilobites from western Newfoundland (Young and Ludvigsen, 1989)
© Graham Young, 2011
Reference:
Young, Graham A. and Rolf Ludvigsen. 1989. Mid-Cambrian trilobites from the lowest part of the Cow Head Group, western Newfoundland. Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 392, 49 p.
* Yes, I know that “trimetallic,” strictly speaking, might only be considered to refer to sheet metal composed of three different metals bonded together. But it is hard to find alliterative titles, and the trilobites ARE composed of three different metals, when considered together!
Looking at Windows
Exchange District, Winnipeg (photo by Juliana Young)
The past couple of weekends we have been installing the storm windows on our tall old house. As I pull them from the rack in the garage, I find that every few windows there is one that needs a bit of repair: some putty to replace, a hook that needs tightening, or a strengthening plate to be added. This is work that gives me time to think about anything and nothing. Usually it is the latter, I admit, but when I do think, one of the things I find myself contemplating most is the windows themselves.
These windows are presumably almost 90 years old, the same age as the house. Their materials are simple: frames of clear hard fir, a bit of steel hardware, glass, paint, and mastic putty. This traditional sash window/storm window system is based on a combination of renewable resources and plentiful, nearly infinite Earth resources (silica sand, iron) that could be sourced locally in many parts of the world.
Rain through Fredericton windows
If we had a “100-mile diet” for construction materials, then the traditional sash window could feasibly have the majority of its components sourced within that radius. Somewhere like Winnipeg, wood of suitable quality might be a scarce commodity if we were to depend on local trees, but nonetheless most of the window (other than the steel hardware) could come from resources near at hand. Since windows have always been among the more complex parts of a house, what holds for the windows probably holds for much of the rest of the house, too.
(We Don’t) Expect the Unexpected
“Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find it, for it is hard to discover and hard to attain.” - Heraclitus (writing some time around 500 BC)
A standard field posture: splitting rock at the William Lake site. (photo © Dave Rudkin, Royal Ontario Museum)
At the Geological Society of America meeting a couple of weeks back, I attended many presentations that shared new scientific results (yes, including that now-famous talk about Mesozoic kraken). Some of these lectures I found quite exciting, and a couple were genuinely eye-opening. The eye-opening ones were about scientific work that is closely related to mine, but with results that were either quite different, or that said things that I really had not thought about.
In other words, they were unexpected.
As a paleontologist who works in an area that depends partly on the discovery of previously unknown fossils, you might think that I would not be surprised by new discoveries. After all, my job is partly to go out and find things that people have never found before. But how do I do this? I do it by studying where and how people have found other strange things, and by developing hunches based on where we have found unusual fossils. In other words, I am influenced by experience, and depend on my expectations.
Forest Fire Revisited
Each day, driving between William Lake and Grand Rapids, we pass the site of the 2008 forest fire. One evening near sunset the light is perfect, and Dave and I stop to take photos.
The ground is green, but above where there should be canopy is only superstructure. The trees slowly disintegrate, branchlet to branch to trunk to stump. As extremities crumble, so the bark unfurls to reveal white skeletons beneath. These bones are desiccated, hardened to freeze-dried iron toughness, but as summers pass they too will fall to time and decay.
No birds sing, and the wind soughs gently between the trunks; I wonder if it wonders why it makes so empty a sound. Under the cold setting sun it is an eerie place.
We contemplate for a minute or two and snap a few more shots. It is definitely time to see what is on the menu in Grand Rapids. Somewhere warm, where there are people.
© Graham Young, 2011
