Keenan's Blogiddy Blog

[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...

Field work is going on right now at the site where Canada's oldest dinosaurs were found, near Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. For a period of about 10 days, Dr. Tim Fedak and his team of students and volunteers are hoping to make some discoveries to add to the region's rich fossil history. One of the target areas where the team is concentrating  their effort to find an elusive dinosaur bone bed Dr. Fedak is among a number of people that had made important discoveries and unearth information on what went on during its ancient past in the Parrsboro area. Wasson's bluff has seen some of Canada's oldest dinosaur skeletons come out of these sandstones, tracing back all the way to the 1970s and beyond. Two Islands, viewed from across the dig site Prosauropods, early plant eating dinosaurs from the Triassic Period, fish, giant crocodiles, and some of the earliest mammal-like reptile remains have been found in the past, and the search continues to try to unveil more so to fill i...

Here's another of my belated posts on one of my trips last year. Me and my buddy Craig went for one of many trips to the beautiful town of Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. From town, we headed East towards the small village of Five Islands, which has a Provincial park of the same name: Five Islands Provincial Park. Islands from right to left: Moose i., Diamond i.,  Long i., Pinnacle i., Egg i., Pinnacle rock Five Islands Provincial Park is a location that has witnessed several events, including a major extinction. Most of the rocks South of the park, towards Red Head and continuing on to Lower Economy, are of a red sandstone from the Triassic Period. These red sandstones from around Red Head are indicative of an arid, desertic climate. On top of the Triassic rock is a layer that corresponds to the Triassic-Jurassic boundary, sandwiched between Triassic sandstone and Jurassic basalts right on top of it. This Triassic-Jurassic layer is identified by its white sandstone and mudstone. ...

I've been catching up on a lot of past trips I made in the Maritimes that I didn't have time to post on my blog. One such trip was a rockhunting trek in Nova Scotia in the Advocate Harbour area, West of Parrsboro. Site (circled in red), Isle Haute (bottom left) The topography of the southern Chignecto region is very faulted, showcasing the collision of this part of the continent with North Africa some 400 million years ago, forming the ancient Supercontinent Pangaea. The Carboniferous strata of this regions has been folded and faulted in spectacular fashion, neighboring Jurassic (Early) age basalts from North Mountain, which you can see at Cape d'Or and other locations along the Minas Basin, and rhyolites in the West (ie. Spicer's Cove). Cape d'Or is especially known for its natural copper deposits, once mined in the early 1900s. 1- Actual Location (C-H Carboniferous, Early - Horton Group) CC - Carboniferous, Late - Cumberland Group (ie. Joggins) 2- Cape d...