Keenan's Blogiddy Blog

CBC's The Nature of Things is airing its documentary 'First Animals', a look into early life Friday, October 25th, 2019 at 9 PM on CBC-TV. - First Animals episode description on CBC's website. Here are links to several of their blog posts: Meet the weird, wacky and wonderful creatures that lived in Cambrian seas over 500 million years ago - by Graham Duggan High in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, the animals of an ancient ecosystem can be seen battling for life. The fossils of the Burgess Shale offer a glimpse at the incredible diversity of early life on Earth, frozen in time and locked in stone — you just have to go digging to see it. ( Click here for more... ) The ROM quarry site high up in the Rocky Mountains. Paleontologist scales the Rocky Mountains to uncover Earth’s very first animals - by Jean-Bernard Caron, Richard M. Ivey Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum It’s 6:53 a.m. on Aug. 19, 2019. My body is primed to wake up — ...

One site I've been going to since I started rock hunting is Rockport, located between Dorchester and Sackville, New Brunswick. The more I go the more interesting things I find. Slacks Cove is full of places you can stumble upon cool rocks, fossils, or dead animals such as a half eaten seal.. burk! Reaching Dorchester the road splits between 106 (towards Sackville) and the 935 towards Dorchester Cape. I take the 935 south and drive a few minutes until the paved road turns into a dirt road. A few hundred meters from where the road changed I stop my car and park it on the side of the road where the old road cuts into a new one the government constructed last year. I've stopped a few times but didn't had the chance to check these red cliffs. I've spotted some fossil plants but very sparse. There's also a lot of big boulder-size conglomerate rocks all over the place, standing out amidst the red silt. What I had to cross to get to the beach. The tide a...

Preliminary sketch and general layout of my palaeontology themed tattoo. Limulid on the hand, and the rest is the main layout on my arm (sleeve). Stay tuned as the real thing is coming soon!

by Emily Chung Cambroraster was similar in some ways to lampreys, stingrays and horseshoe crabs. When paleontologists first spotted the large spaceship-like fossils in B.C.'s Kootenay National Park, "we really didn't know what to make of it," recalls Joseph Moysiuk, part of the excavation team. (Andrew Gregg/Red Trillium Films) A new fossil species named after an iconic starship is both unlike anything that exists today and uncannily similar to many modern animals, from stingrays to horseshoe crabs. When paleontologists first spotted the large, round shield-like fossils in B.C.'s Kootenay National Park, "we really didn't know what to make of it," recalls Joseph Moysiuk, part of the excavation team. "We nicknamed it 'The spaceship'... because we thought it looked a lot like the Millennium Falcon," he added, referring to Han Solo's iconic ship in the Star Wars series. It became more than a nickname — the creature's fo...

[Personal note: The UNESCO team has been on site these past few days and I'm sure they're amazed by what they've seen. You can visit the Cliffs of Fundy Aspiring Global Geopark facebook page -- https://www.facebook.com/fundygeopark/ -- to get updates. Let's hope that they'll join the Canadian Geopark family¹!] from The Chronicle Herald - published June 25th Evaluators from UNESCO will be in Cumberland and Colchester counties in late July to evaluate the proposed Cliffs of Fundy Aspiring Geopark as a potential UNESCO Global Geopark. - Tourism Nova Scotia Maybe we should turn left at Truro once in a while. Many, if not most, Haligonians escaping the city on a summer road trip just sail through the hub city on their way north to P.E.I., New Brunswick or central Canada, or east to answer Cape Breton’s siren call. There are highway signs, though, that tease the knowing traveller west, to places like the beguili...

by Chris O'Neill-Yates · CBC News · Posted: Jul 22, 2019 Fossils from Mistaken Point and Bonavista give researchers unparalleled look at origins of life. Jack Matthews, a research fellow at the University of Oxford's Museum of Natural History, stands next to a display showcasing fossils that document the story of the beginning of animal life on earth. (Chris O'Neill-Yates/CBC) Jack Matthews, a research fellow at the University of Oxford, strides across the lawn in front of the Museum of Natural History at Oxford University with a broad smile on his face. His excitement about fossils — which have become his life's work — is contagious. The Latin names of ancient life-forms preserved in rock drop effortlessly from his tongue as he climbs the stairs in the imposing three-storey neo-Gothic building to Animals First, an exhibition tracing the origins of animal life on earth. "It's like tracing your family tree back to your very earliest ancestors,...

by Hillary Maddin (Vertebrate Paleontologist, Assistant Professor, Carleton University) - July 16, 2019 Over 150 years ago, geologist Sir William Dawson made an astounding discovery in the Joggins Cliffs, along the shores of Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy. Within the lithified remains of a giant tree-like plant were the bones of a tiny, 310 million-year-old animal. This animal was unlike any other seen thus far. It was able to venture where no vertebrate (back-boned) animal had ventured before, deep into the lycopsid forests, away from the water’s edge. This was all thanks to an evolutionary innovation: the amniotic egg. Although animals had previously ventured onto land in the earlier Devonian Period, animals with an amniotic egg — such as modern reptiles, birds and yes, even mammals — do not need to return to the water to reproduce, as modern amphibians still do. The amniotic egg is a self-contained pond, where the embryo and all its food and waste are stored surrounded by a pr...

Hello and welcome back. I've been on hiatus for quite a bit. I've been active, but not as much as I would let myself be. Dealing with things, such as mental health can take a turn and put a stop on things, such as my passion for rocks. This past while it's been an uphill trek to get back, but I'm getting back to form. One way to deal and heal is to partake in what you're passionate about, and for me its of course rocks. I have been active for a bit, but didn't find the motivation and/or energy to get back online, but this is a form of therapy that is dearly needed. The next bit I'll be posting my past travels, field work, and new things such as paleo news. Why not stay current with old things right? I've recently made some new discoveries that I'll share in future posts. Here's a preview: Stay tuned! - Keenan