This lovely little biscuit is a Holectypus sea urchin from 120 million-year-old deposits from the Lagniro Formation of Madagascar.The specimen you see here is in the collections of my beautiful friend Ileana. She and I were blessed to meet in China many years ago and formed an unbreakable bond that happens so few times in one's life.  Holectypus are a genus of extinct echinoids related to ..read more

A trip along Chuckanut Drive, in northwestern Washington is a chance to view incredible diversity from sea to sky. An amazing array of plants and animals call this coastline home. For the fossil enthusiast, it is a chance to slip back in time and have a bird’s eye view of a tropical paradise preserved in the Eocene strata of various fossil sites. Snug up against the Pacific Ocean, this ..read more

This lovely slate grey and beige ammonite with the fine ribbing is Brewericeras hulenense (Anderson 1938) — a fast-moving, nektonic (no idle floating here!) carnivorous ammonite from the Lower Cretaceous (Albian) of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, Canada.This specimen is just over 12cm in length, a little under the average of 13.4cm. There are several localities in the islands of Haida Gwaii where ..read more

Horseshoe crabs are marine and brackish water arthropods of the order Xiphosura — a slowly evolving, conservative taxa.Much like (slow) Water Striders (Aquarius remigis), (relatively sluggish) Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) and (the current winner on really slow evolution) Elephant Sharks (Callorhinchus milii), these fellows have a long history in the fossil record with very few anatomical ..read more

This inky beauty is Prolyelliceras ulrichi (Knechtel, 1947) a fast-moving nektonic carnivorous ammonite from Cretaceous lithified, black, carbonaceous limestone outcrops in the Pongo de Manseriche gorge in northwest Peru. If you look closely, you can see that this specimen shows a pathology, a slight deviation to the side of the siphonal of the ammonite. We see Prolyelliceras from the Albian ..read more

Misty shores, moss covered forests, a rich cultural history, dappled light, fossils and the smell of salt air—these are my memories of Haida Gwaii.The archipelago of Haida Gwaii lays at the western edge of the continental shelf due west of the central coast of British Columbia. They form part of Wrangellia, an exotic tectonostratigraphic terrane that includes Vancouver Island, parts western ..read more

Deep inside the largest and deepest gold mine in North America scientists are looking for dark matter particles and neutrinos instead of precious metals. It may not seem exciting on the surface — but it was far below! The Homestake Gold Mine in Lawrence County, South Dakota was a going concern from about 1876 to 2001. The mine produced more than forty million troy ounces of gold in its one ..read more

The chunky ammonite Proeuhoplites subtuberculatus, bed II (iv), Folkstone Gault Clay, county of Kent, southeast England. This matrix you see here is the Gault Clay, known locally as the Blue Slipper. This fine muddy clay was deposited 105-110 million years ago during the Lower Cretaceous (Upper and Middle Albian) in a calm, fairly deep-water continental shelf that covered what is now southern ..read more

This lovely oil in water coloured ammonite is the beauty Beudanticeras sp. from the Lower Cretaceous (Upper Aptian), Krasnodar region, Northern Caucasus, southern Russia. This area of the world has beautiful fossil specimens with their distinct colouring. The geology and paleontological history of the region are fascinating as is its more recent history. The territory of present ..read more

Turtle shells are different from the body armour or armoured shells we see adorning dinosaurs like the ankylosaurs. Ankylosaurs were blessed with huge plates of bone embedded into their skin that acted as a natural shield against predators. Crocodilians have these same bony plates, or osteoderms, embedded in their skin to give them extra protection. We find similar body armour on ..read more