Official Club Website Facebook Page Instagram Page The Brantford Lapidary and Mineral Society has been home to geology and jewelry enthusiasts in south-central Ontario since 1964. An active volunteer driven club, they profess four feature pillars: Lapidary, Mineral, Field Trips, and Social. Meetings are held September through June at their rural clubhouse east of Paris, … Read more
The University of Waterloo is globally renowned for its computer science, engineering, and mathematics programs and deservedly so. But there’s far more to this Southern Ontario university as evidenced by the University of Waterloo Earth Sciences Museum. As my alma mater, I fondly remember hanging out with friends between classes at the Peter Russell Rock … Read more
I’m honestly not sure how famous the Fernie ammonite fossil is outside my own little bubble, but at least in southern Alberta and southern BC it is quite well known. One of the largest known ammonite fossils in the world, this beauty is found in the mountains east of Fernie, British Columbia. Online resources show … Read more
Yoho National Park has long claimed all the Burgess Shale fame. That changed in 2012, when new fossil beds were discovered in Kootenay National Park near Marble Canyon. You cannot access this latest find, yet, but nearby Stanley Glacier offers a worthy consolation in the meantime. Unlike the Walcott Quarry and Mount Stephen Trilobite Beds … Read more
The Burgess Shale is known the world over for the amazing middle Cambrian lifeforms preserved within its beds. What’s less well known is that there is more to the Burgess Shale than Walcott Quarry. In fact, Walcott Quarry wasn’t even the first fossil discovery site. That was the Mount Stephen Trilobite Beds. Now part of … Read more
The Burgess Shale is easily the most famous geological formation in Canada, perhaps the world. It’s a name even the least geologically inclined person has heard. The fossils found within this Lagerstätte (specifically in the Stephen Formation) are renowned for the soft-bodied preservation of middle Cambrian lifeforms. They were first recovered from Walcott Quarry. The … Read more
Warner is a small, prairie town located approximately 70 km southeast of Lethbridge in southern Alberta. About 20 km west of this unassuming town something remarkable was found. The first dinosaur nesting site ever found in Canada. The Devil’s Coulee Dinosaur Museum allows visitors to explore this amazing palaeontological discovery. The initial discovery was made … Read more
Courtenay, British Columbia, in the heart of the Comox Valley, has a museum. As most small cities and towns do. In 1988, the local history nature of this museum changed forever with the discovery of an Elasmosaur along the Puntledge River west of the city. With it, the modern day Courtenay and District Museum and … Read more
Grand, government supported museums are wonderful, but there’s something special about passion projects. Canadian Rockies Earth Science Resource Centre (CRESRC) is one such project. Located in downtown Canmore in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, CRESRC is the brainchild of Rick Green, a semi-retired geophysicist in the Canadian oil patch. Long active with the Canmore Museum, Mr. Green … Read more
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 … Read more