Blue Beach Fossil Museum

Blue Beach Fossil Museum is something all geology fanatics can appreciate, particularly those with a love of palaeontology. A homegrown, grassroots endeavour, this museum is home to an impressive, and growing, fossil collection documenting Lower Carboniferous tetrapods in Romer’s Gap.

Romer’s Gap is a 15 million year period at the beginning of the Carboniferous in which there are strikingly few relevant transition fossils showing the evolution from the prominent fish diversity of the late Devonian to modern aquatic and terrestrial creatures. Blue Beach and a site in Scotland, were for many years the only two sites yielding Tournasian-age tetrapod fossils. Sir William Logan found footprints of a tetrapod at Blue Beach in 1841.

The Blue Beach Fossil Museum is a labour of love for curators Chris Mansky and Sonja Wood. It currently exists in a crowded quonset style garage at their home. They have grand visions for a new, modern visitor facility to house the fossils and enrich the visitor experience not unlike that at Joggins Cliffs on the other side of Fundy. That dream, with your help, may still yet come to fruition.

In the meantime, you’ll have to make due with the current quarters which is no less worthy of a visit. Guests are welcome to peruse the thousands of fossils collected from the beach. Guided tours of the beach are the primary offering, coming in three versions. And if your entire crew isn’t fully vested in fossils, Grand-Pré National Historic Site is just down the road.