Jennifer Clack is hoping to help solve a 360-million-year-old puzzle using fossils found at Blue Beach in Kings County.
The world-renowned University of Cambridge paleontologist visited the Blue Beach Fossil Museum near Hantsport on the long weekend to view the latest discoveries she hopes will help in her quest.
"I’m beginning a project to look at what happened at the end of the Devonian period, about 360 million years ago," Clack said in an interview at the museum on Good Friday.
"There was a mass extinction that wiped out quite a lot of the fish and amphibians and tetrapods that were living at that time. After that event, we have almost no fossil record for vertebrates, for another 25 million years, said Clack, a professor and curator of the University of Cambridge’s zoology museum.
"At the end of that 25 million years, we picked up fossils again. And the things that we find are representative of what we find today, distant ancestors. Life begins to look much like it is today, with animals running about and a definite terrestrial ecosystem.
"But we don’t know anything about how that became established. There’s a gap. And this material falls smack in the middle of that gap."
For a long time, Blue Beach was the only place in the world where fossils from that period in history were found. Recently, more have been turning up in Scotland.
"So what I want to do is to pull the whole thing together and find out what caused the extinction, what happened immediately afterwards, how the animals reverted from the extinction event, and how they established modern terrestrial ecosystems," Clack said.
At least four different kinds of tetrapods, the first creatures to move out of water on to land, have been found at Blue Beach, offering scientists a rich array of material to study.
"We have representatives of different fish groups here and we have invertebrates forming in soils and burrowing in mud that we haven’t had before," Clack said.
"And we can tie those together with other information from Scotland, where we have some of the actual animals that were doing that sort of thing."
She said she plans to make a travelling exhibit that will include fossils from Blue Beach, along with some of the Scottish material. The exhibit will travel the United Kingdom and some European locations.
"It’s a puzzle. Some of it’s quite hard to interpret, but there are certainly more tetrapod remains now than there were before, representing different sorts of animals of different sizes and different lifestyles.
Sonja Wood, the director of the Blue Beach Fossil Museum, said "we’re honoured to have her here looking at some of the newer bones."
"She’s looking at the new evidence that she hasn’t seen since her last visit in 2005."
Plans are in the works for a world-class fossil museum at Blue Beach. The museum society was recently awarded charitable status and fundraising is underway to build a $6-million museum and research institute at the site.
A business plan, architectural design and some site development planning have already been done. An economic impact study shows the museum would create $1.2 million annually in economic spinoffs.
Wood said the society is also working with the Kings Regional Development Authority to get about $200,000 in upgrades this year, including new boardwalks, observation decks, information panels and picnic areas.
Author: Gordon Delaney | Source: The Chronicle Herald/Nova Scotia [April 25, 2011]
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| These are the fossilized femur bones of 360-million-year-old tetrapods discovered recently at Blue Beach, near Hantsport [Credit: Gordon Delaney/Valley Bureau] |
"I’m beginning a project to look at what happened at the end of the Devonian period, about 360 million years ago," Clack said in an interview at the museum on Good Friday.
"There was a mass extinction that wiped out quite a lot of the fish and amphibians and tetrapods that were living at that time. After that event, we have almost no fossil record for vertebrates, for another 25 million years, said Clack, a professor and curator of the University of Cambridge’s zoology museum.
"At the end of that 25 million years, we picked up fossils again. And the things that we find are representative of what we find today, distant ancestors. Life begins to look much like it is today, with animals running about and a definite terrestrial ecosystem.
"But we don’t know anything about how that became established. There’s a gap. And this material falls smack in the middle of that gap."
For a long time, Blue Beach was the only place in the world where fossils from that period in history were found. Recently, more have been turning up in Scotland.
"So what I want to do is to pull the whole thing together and find out what caused the extinction, what happened immediately afterwards, how the animals reverted from the extinction event, and how they established modern terrestrial ecosystems," Clack said.
At least four different kinds of tetrapods, the first creatures to move out of water on to land, have been found at Blue Beach, offering scientists a rich array of material to study.
"We have representatives of different fish groups here and we have invertebrates forming in soils and burrowing in mud that we haven’t had before," Clack said.
"And we can tie those together with other information from Scotland, where we have some of the actual animals that were doing that sort of thing."
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| World-renowned paleontologist Jennifer Clack of the University of Cambridge in England [Credit: Gordon Delaney/Valley Bureau] |
"It’s a puzzle. Some of it’s quite hard to interpret, but there are certainly more tetrapod remains now than there were before, representing different sorts of animals of different sizes and different lifestyles.
Sonja Wood, the director of the Blue Beach Fossil Museum, said "we’re honoured to have her here looking at some of the newer bones."
"She’s looking at the new evidence that she hasn’t seen since her last visit in 2005."
Plans are in the works for a world-class fossil museum at Blue Beach. The museum society was recently awarded charitable status and fundraising is underway to build a $6-million museum and research institute at the site.
A business plan, architectural design and some site development planning have already been done. An economic impact study shows the museum would create $1.2 million annually in economic spinoffs.
Wood said the society is also working with the Kings Regional Development Authority to get about $200,000 in upgrades this year, including new boardwalks, observation decks, information panels and picnic areas.
Author: Gordon Delaney | Source: The Chronicle Herald/Nova Scotia [April 25, 2011]
