#but it's bandaged and slightly healed now so i'm fucking unstoppable

[gay-jesus-probably]

When you have a chance please infodump about fossils!! I would love to hear more about it- I’m Canadian and had no idea that four of the oldest were here that’s so cool!

OH SHIT HEY YES I CAN DO THAT NOW! Typing is much easier; my hand is still a bit fucked, but it hurts less, and also my sibling made an emergency delivery of bandaids so that I'm not just sitting here with a fucking kleenex taped my hand like before SO IT'S INFODUMP TIME!

Anyways Canada is actually really fucking baller for fossils, we've got a LOT of them, because Canada's got some really cool geology stuff going on! The oldest major fossil site in Canada (and second oldest on earth) is over by Lake Superior for a reason, and that reason is entirely the Canadian Shield! It's some of the oldest land on earth, and one of the only places where you find a lot of rock that was formed in the Archean eon.

What's the Archean eon? Great question! You asked about paleontology, but first we've gotta do a geology lecture, because we're talking fossils that are several billion years old - at this stage, paleontology IS geology, they're one and the same. So, the Earth's lifespan is split into four geological eons - Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic, and Phanerzoic.

The Hadean eon began with the formation of the earth, and the most notable event during it was baby Earth colliding with the deceased planet Theia - the broken chunks of mantle from both planets were launched into orbit, with the further away ones condensing to form the moon, while the rest of Theia is believed to have been sort of just absorbed into the Earth's core, which explains a lot about why the Earth's core is unusually large for a planet of its size, and the effects of its remains also explains some very specific seismic phenomenoms... it's a whole thing, very cool. The chunks of earth/theia mantle that didn't become the moon came back down eventually, in an event known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, which marks the start of the Archean eon. That's where the planet stabilized, the oceans formed, the very first (tiny) landmasses appeared, and the earth underwent abiogenesis, which is to say life being created! ...In the form of single cell lifeforms.

Abiogenesis is very interesting by itself, but I don't think I can adequately cover that, so let's not get too into it. The short version is that an electical spark (such as lightning) in just the right conditions can make a whole lot of exciting proteins that, if left to their own devices, may develop into microbial lifeforms. The protein creation has been replicated in lab conditions, but synthesizing new life from that isn't exactly do-able; those proteins are very appealing to basically everything, so if they come into existence, they're snapped up pretty quickly by whatever bacteria happens to exist in the general vicinity. Those proteins can only really develop into lifeforms when there's no lifeforms around to eat them in the first place. And ensuring conditions where bacteria can't be present also means conditions not being viable for life to form anyways... it's a fun paradox. Not the point.

Anyways, that's believed to have gone down very early in the Archean eon, and the microbes were just sort of vibing in the oceans for a couple billion years until one of them evolved in a certain way, got Ideas about the elemental composition of the atmosphere, and decided it'd be pretty cool if all that oxygen was in a more convenient form... Which brings us to the Great Oxidation Event, which rolls us into the Proterozoic eon, killed the majority of the Archean lifeforms, and ensured that us oxygen breathing bastards became the dominant form of life. Proterozoic era was where things got really exciting; some more land began surfacing, and more importantly the microbial life began evolving into plants! Which is extremely cool and exciting.

And THEN we entered the Phanerozoic eon, which is the one we're currently in. This began with the Paleozoic era, and THAT started with the Cambrian period, which is notable for being the point where life diversity really exploded; more complex organisms had been slowly evolving in the Proterozoic eon, but the Cambrian period is where shit took off, and the very first 'animal' life appeared, mainly in the form of itty bitty sea creatures, like molluscs and trilobites. This was all about 500 million years ago. For obvious reasons, the majority of fossils are from the Cambrian period or later; anything pre-cambrian is a Really Big Deal (for science nerds). Which is also why Australia and the Canadian Shield are such a big deal geologically speaking, because not only are they some of the only cases of pre-cambrian landmasses, they're also some of the only Archean landmasses on the surface! Fuck, western Australia's so old, we've found (tiny) rock samples from the Hadean eon there!! It's absolutely wild, I love it.

Anyways, sorry Australians, but let's focus on the Canadian fossils now, cause that's where I live so it's more exciting to me. So, Canada's oldest fossil deposit is my beloved Gunflint Chert! It's the only major hotspot for Archean fossils apart from the Apex Chert, but we know Gunflint is younger, because it's also got examples of veeeery early Proterozoic fossils, which is also quite cool! Our second oldest fossil deposit is the Mistaken Point Formation, up in (shockingly enough) the Mistaken Point region of Newfoundland & Labrador, and that's entirely late Proterozoic eon fossils, which is quite cool (it's also the 4th oldest; number 3 is also late proterozoic, and is in northern Australia). Number five is also Australia, and is our last example of proterozoic fossils; 6 is, once again, Aussie, and that's where we roll into early Cambrian fossils (number 7 is, again, a bunch of very interesting cambrian trilobites in Morocco).

Aand that brings us to the eight oldest fossil deposit on earth, which I HAVE personally been to several times, and found samples in! Burgess Shale formation my beloved!!! It's in the BC-Alberta Rockies, and there's some very nice hiking in the area - if you're ever in the Banff area, I 100% recommend the Stanley Glacier trail, because the top portion comes out into a wide rock field, which is a hotbed for fossils! ...Don't take any, it's very illegal and also bad for science. They've got a fossil deposit box chained to a boulder up there for paleontologists to put samples in for later collection, and from what I saw the standard practice is for hikers to leave fossils they find on top of the box for the paleontologists to collect (and for other hikers to see. I found a trilobite fossil up there, it was AWESOME. And left it on the box with the other fossils. Just... Burgess Shale man, oh my god, it's so cool!

Aaaand then number 9 is Krukowski Quarry down in Wisconsin; I haven't been, but it's pretty cool, I think that's where we found the oldest example of a jellyfish existing, which is awesome. Also don't know much about number 10; it's Manuel's River up near Conception Bay, so also Newfoundland & Labrador, where I've never been.

ANYWAYS detouring a bit, while old fossils are extremely cool, y'know what's even more cool? REALLY WELL PRESERVED FOSSILS and oh boy do I have news for you about where the holy grail of dinosaur fossils is. That's right, CANADA BABY. Arguably the best part about Alberta is that this godforsaken hellhole is at least a really good hotbed for fossils. We've got some of the Burgess Shale out west in the mountains, the oil sands up north have so many fossils that everyone just has paleontologists on call all the time, and down south is the Dinosaur Park formation of fossils, which is such a good hotspot that it's literally a UNESCO world heritage site.

BUT. The most important Canadian fossil of all... is my beloved Nodosaur, the Borealopelta. We dug that bad boy out of the oil sands up near Fort McMurray accidentally in 2011 (hell of a surprise for the guy running the excavator that day), and once it was safely extracted, it turned out that hot fucking damn, that thing didn't just look good, it was perfectly preserved. Like, it somehow wound up in the PERFECT circumstances to mummify it after death, and then that mummified body hit the right circumstances to be fossilized. Paleontologists were able to get pigment samples off of its scales. It still has organs. It's most well preserved fossil ever discovered. Ever. It's on display at the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, AB - I've been to see it in person, and it was AMAZING, I swear I spent like half an hour in that room, it's so cool. Cannot recommend visiting there strongly enough, it's awesome - Drumheller's on that Dinosaur Park fossil deposit, so the Royal Tyrell is just entirely a paleontology museum. And it absolutely slaps!