Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
cut deep into the countryside by the region's many rivers and creeks. The
names of these watercourses reflect a heritage of native Canadians and log-
ging moguls: Tsable, Bloedel, Trent, Puntledge, Btowns, Nanaimo, Qualicum,
Little Qualicum, Haslam, Cowichan, Chemainus; each is a river where the
dark shale and their enclosed ammonites lie exposed. All have rocks older
than either Sucia or Hornby, and the ammonites are different, too. The two
most common are uncoiled species—one a giant snail shape, the other an
open spiral; both are exquisite to find and behold, real heart thumpers. Else-
where in the dark strata are many types of clams and snails, but in forms
associated with deep-water environments.
I came with a crowd in 1994 to see these creeks and theit fossil fauna:
friends from the local Seattle museum, my son, and a Seattle reporter
named Roger Downey. All had come for a week of fossil collecting. We
camped along the rivers and excavated in the dark shale, moving north-
ward up the east coast of Vancouver Island and its Nanaimo Group de-
posits. It was a perfect lazy summer trip; no pressing agenda, beautiful fos-
sils, a good group. One of our last stops was the town of Courtney, sprawled
along the banks of the Puntledge River. Courtney sported something none
of the other small logging towns had: a museum. And in this museum re-
posed the most extraordinary fossil ever collected in British Columbia: a
50-foot-long elasmosaur.
Although the Age of Dinosaurs is renowned for its sautian behemoths
on land, the seas supported large and exotic reptilian wildlife as well. Great
sea lizards and long-necked reptiles occupied roughly the niche of today's
toothed whales. Yet prior to the late 1980s, not a single bone of any of these
creatures had ever been found in the Vancouver Island region, and it was
thought that perhaps these great sea serpents had not lived in this region of
the world, 80 to 70 million years ago. That perception was radically changed
by an amateur fossil hunter prowling the banks of the Puntledge River.
The skeleton was extraordinary, as was the story of its recovery. A local
resident, Mike Trask, was wandering the edge of the Puntledge, looking for
ammonites, when he spotted a most unusual fossil just sticking out of the
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