#FossilAdventCalendar Day 12
#MarineLifeMonday
#BritishColumbia's 
#BurgessShale is one of our planet's most important important (and beautiful) #fossil sites. Sitting high in #BC's #RockyMountains, it's a window into the early evolution of #animals. Among its weird wonders is Hallucigenia (seen here in fossil and sculpture form at the #RoyalOntarioMuseum), a distant relative of #arthropods so unlike anything alive today that for years it was reconstructed upside down and backwards.
#FossilAdventCalendar Day 11
The #badlands of eastern and central #Alberta are probably the best place in the world to find #hadrosaurs ("duck-billed" #dinosaurs like this #Hypacrosaurus in the #CanadianMuseumOfNature). While they're immediately recognizable by their broad mouths and (in many species) large crests, their #teeth also set them apart. Their large, grinding teeth allowed them to chew their food, a behavior that's the norm in us mammals but rare in other #animals.
#FossilAdventCalendar Day 10 (belated, thanks to a busy weekend)
It's no secret what #DinosaurProvincialPark, #Alberta is famous for, but it's the #plants from this #WorldHeritageSite that tell the clearest story about this #Cretaceous #ecosystem. #PetrifiedWood like this, along with other aspects of the park's #geology and #paleontology, paint a picture of a low-lying coastal #wetland, perhaps similar to the #bayous of the modern Gulf Coast.
#FossilAdventCalendar Day 4
The oddest and - at over 560 million years in age - oldest #fossil featured in this #AdventCalendar is Fractofusus misrai from #Newfoundland . This specimen in the #RoyalOntarioMuseum is from #MistakenPoint, one of the sites preserving the #Ediacaran #biota, the term for some of our planet's oldest #multicellular #fossils. Lots of questions remain about these ancient enigmas, among them, were #Ediacarans #animals or members of a different branch of the tree of life?
#FossilAdventCalendar Day 2
#FossilFriday
Heading north along #Ontario's #NiagaraEscarpment brings us to the #BrucePeninsula, where these #Silurian #scorpions were found. Displayed in and named by scientists at the #RoyalOntarioMuseum, Eramoscorpius brucensis lived in the #ocean, but its relatives were among the first #animals on land. Its sturdy legs and the locality at which these #fossils were found hint that this #marine #scorpion may have already been venturing onto #beaches to #molt.
