Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario may be better known for it’s business school but it also has a quality geology program. Fitting, then, that the campus is home to an earth science museum, the Miller Museum of Geology. Geology museums on university campuses are far more common than I realized. Several schools host quality museums … Read more
Coal and Cape Breton go together like lobster and butter. The Carboniferous period left tremendous coal deposits on Nova Scotia’s northeastern island resulting in a close, historical bond between the black rock and the people. But coal was not the only treasure left behind hundreds of millions of years ago. Fossils, evidence of the ancient … Read more
Few things encapsulate the idiom “good things come in small packages” better than small town museums. The Princeton and District Museum in southern British Columbia is no exception. As fun as small town museums can be, it’s rare for them to house a quality earth science exhibit of any kind. This is where Princeton differs, … Read more
It’s only fitting that a place lovingly referred to as The Rock should have a geology-focused science centre. Memorial University’s Johnson Geo Centre is exactly that. Located on famed Signal Hill, the centre is part of Memorial University’s new Signal Hill Campus. That’s roughly 4 km due east of the main campus in St. John’s. … Read more
The Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg is home to the Ed Leith Cretaceous Menagerie. This modest museum is home to four “dinosaur” skeletons, though only one is a genuine dinosaur. The other three are a mosasaur, a bony fish, and a giant sea turtle. Alongside these magnificent … 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