The Joggins Fossil Cliffs Earthcache EarthCache
The Joggins Fossil Cliffs Earthcache
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Find a fossil, pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck!
Your mission, is to find a fossil, take a picture of yourself with
it, and upload it. Sounds simple doesn't it
Well.. it is. I've even uploaded a sample image so you can get the
idea.
To log this cache, you MUST upload a picture of yourself
at the Joggins Fossil Cliffs with a fossil in hand. Any other logs
will be deleted for fairness
Addition: As an additional request please, identify (or try
to :) )the animal/plant life you have found.
NOTE: Just take a picture holding one, leave your fossil behind
for another cacher. The Nova Scotia government currently looking
into implementing permits for people who want to take their fossils
home. It is also not legal to dig them from the cliffs at all.
Basically, until this legal matter is sorted out, go there, have a
great time hunting and bring back only pictures of your
day.
This place is beautiful, but pay attention to the tide, it
can and will come in fast and will get very high.
The fossil cliffs of Joggins are a world-class
palaeontological site, and they have been designated a Special
Place under the Province of Nova Scotia's Special Places Protection
Act. Joggins is located near the head of the Bay of Fundy, in an
area where the tides are some of the world's highest (over 15
meters). This tidal action causes steady erosion of the 23 meter
high cliffs.
The cliffs have yielded fossils which give an unprecedented glimpse
into life during the Carboniferous Period, including: a rich
variety of flora; a diverse fauna of amphibians; some exciting
track ways of the Arthropleura; and, some of the world's first
reptiles.
The Carboniferous Period lasted from around 350 million years ago
mya) to about 280 mya.
The Joggins fossil cliffs became famous in 1851, when Charles
Lyell, author of The Principles of Geology, and Sir William Dawson,
author of Acadian Geology and Air Breathers of the Coal Period,
visited the site. Joggins was famous for fossilized tree trunks
found in their original positions. Some of these trees had been
hollowed out after they had fallen down and were subsequently
filled with sand. When Dawson and Lyell examined one of these
stumps, they noticed tiny bones. These apparently insignificant
bones turned out to be one of the most important fossil finds in
Nova Scotia. They were, in fact, the remains of one of the world's
first reptiles, and the first evidence that land animals had lived
during the "Coal Age".
The first reptiles on earth emerged 300 mya, and their remains have
been found at Joggins in the hollow trunks of Lycopod trees. Dawson
and Lyell discovered Hylonomous, a tiny reptile, or microsaur, as
Dawson dubbed them, about 30 centimeters long. These tiny reptiles
would in 100 million years evolve into the dinosaurs. One widely
held theory, first proposed by Dawson, was that animals such as
Hylonomous fell into hollow tree stumps which had been snapped off
and the exterior filled with sediment until they were up to ground
level. The unsuspecting animal would have then fallen into the
hollowed tree. Once trapped, Hylonomous and others either drowned
immediately, starved to death, or survived for a time scavenging on
previous victims, only to be eaten by the next.
Also found by Dawson and Lyell in the tree stumps were the remains
of a primitive amphibian, Dendrerpeton acadianum. This animal
reached lengths of 1 meter and probably looked a lot like a large
salamander.
The largest creature at Joggins was an arthropod (an invertebrate
with a hard jointed exoskeleton) called Arthropleura. At nearly 2
meters long, it looked very much like an extremely large sow bug.
Arthropleura may have had as many as 30 pairs of legs, and their
tracks, resembling Caterpillar tractor tracks, have also been found
at Joggins.
Other creatures have been found in the stumps, including the
world's oldest land snails (Pupa and Zonites, and a small,
articulated worm-like creature called a gally worm.
Read
more..
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