Islanders travel back in time at provincial museum foundation’s Fossil Day
Three hundred million years ago, P.E.I. looked a lot different than it does today. No grass, no birds, and no sandy shoreline. The Island sat almost exactly at the middle of the supercontinent Pangaea.
Those are a few of the facts that Laura MacNeil shared with people who showed up for Fossil Day at the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. She also sprinkles the information throughout the guided walks she hosts through her business, Prehistoric Island Tours.
“This time frame is about 60 million years, before the dinosaurs ever existed,” said MacNeil. “Back then, we were located at the equator, so the climate was much different.”
Known as the Permian period, it was a time at which P.E.I. was home to a lot of species, both plant and animal. And there’s been more and more proof of that emerging recently.
“We actually find fossils from plants that today we would find in tropical environments,” said MacNeil. “As well, we can find things like bones and footprints from early reptiles, early amphibians.”
When she says “we,” MacNeil really means “anyone.” Several Islanders have found fossils as “citizen archaeologists” while walking along Island beaches in the past decade or so, including Lisa Cormier in 2022 and Anne MacFadyen earlier this year.
Events like Fossil Day are aimed — at least in part — at creating more of them.
“I saw that the event was happening and the kids are super into dinosaurs, so we thought it would be a cool thing to come check out,” said Hannah Johnstone, who came with her children Rowan and Sophie.
Eight-year-old Emrys Lunt came to get some fossil-hunting tips, saying at the end of the event: “There’s a slight more chance of finding my favourite fossil, the fern…. I’d be happy!”
The age of the Dimetrodon
In addition to the reptiles and amphibians that once roamed the Island, a larger group of animals also existed long before the dinosaurs, known as synapsids. Included in this category is the most intriguing P.E.I. preservation ever found: a lizard-like species with large teeth and a sail on its back known as the Dimetrodon.
On Tuesday, Lesley Caseley was showing visitors what part of that creature looked like.
“It’s not actually a fossil. It’s a cast of the Dimetrodon jawbone, which was found when they were digging a well in 1845,” said Caseley, the registrar for the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation and its acting curator.
P.E.I. is one of only three places in the world where Permian period fossils are being uncovered, with the other two being New Mexico and Germany.
Some fossils have still yet to be identified, like one found in 2022 that Caseley said researchers are affectionately referring to as “Little Foot.”
“It’s an articulated pre-reptile amphibian-type foot, and it’s so small, and it’s amazing to see it next to some of the larger trackways which were made by creatures like Dimetrodon,” she said.
Most of the fossils that have surfaced on P.E.I. have been discovered along the shoreline as sandstone cliffs erode to reveal bones or impressions, a process Caseley said is being helped along by climate change.
“Erosion is allowing the fossils to come out and be exposed, and hopefully we’re finding them in time to save them,” she said.
Fossils and fossil replicas attracted an interested crowd this week at the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation’s headquarters in Charlottetown. It’s becoming more and more common to find fossils along the Island’s shorelines, and educators are hoping that people who know what to look for will flag intriguing examples.
The more you know
MacNeil, who has been doing her fossil tours for the past four years on P.E.I.’s South Shore near Vernon Bridge, said educational efforts like Fossil Day make it more likely that more fossils will be found.
“The more that we educate the public and the more that they realize there are important fossils out there and you could be contributing to citizen science by looking and finding one of these fossils, the more that our fossil record is expanding,” she said.
That’s important, because if fossils aren’t located in time, the tides could damage them or wash them away entirely.
“Because we have so much coastline exposed, chances are we’re not gonna ever get to all of these fossil sites every time something important does get exposed,” she said. “But the more people, the more of the general public that know that we have fossils and the more that are out there looking and just keeping an eye out, the more that will get discovered.”
It’s contributing to science, but MacNeil said fossil hunting can also give people a sense of their own place in the world.
“Every time you find a piece, you’re the first one to lay eyes on that life in 290,000,000 years, and there’s just something so thrilling about it,” she said.
“It helps you to really understand how old the Earth is.”
Improving fossil storage
The Aug. 20 fossil day at Beaconsfield Carriage House was a chance for Islanders to get a closer look at some well-preserved fossils and casts, which isn’t as easy as it is in some other provinces. Right now, there isn’t a permanent place the public can go to observe fossils on P.E.I.
“Most of the collection is quite new and so it still has to be classified and it has to be studied and interpreted and it will be available for researchers,” Caseley said.
The museum foundation, which is not-for-profit, is fundraising to buy better storage for the fossils in its collection, as well as for future fossils that might be found.
“We would like to get really nice cases so that you can pull them out and they have their own trays,” Caseley said. “It would just be easier and less handling. They’re safe and secure right now, but we would just like to have that perfect shelving that will optimize the storage for them.”
Before coming to work at the museum, Caseley said even she didn’t know just how many types of fossils were preserved on the Island. Now it’s her job to protect them all.
Walking along a beach on P.E.I.’s South Shore, Anne MacFayden saw a small rock she thought looked like a hand. Turns out the stone, only a bit bigger than a toonie, could be a reptilian fossil from about 290 million years ago. MacFadyen told her story to CBC’s Tony Davis.
That’s why she reminds everyone about the protocol that should kick in if you find a fossil, starting with a call to the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation and the provincial archaeologist.
“If you can drop a pin in your phone [map app] with the exact location and take pictures with something standard size like a coin, then we can get an idea of what it is,” she said.
Above all, she said people shouldn’t try to dig up larger fossils.
“It’s really important to leave it in context because that is where we get all the information about what layer of a rock it’s coming out of, and what part of the Island it would have been in.”
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