For the most up to date events, check out our Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Newswire.
A fossil site open to the public can be elusive to find. You may be at the fossil site per all accounts, but should no fossils turn up, then your consolation is a nice day outdoors and getting some sun. My experience with a fossil site stems back to the ten years I lived in Texas. A site north of Galveston, on the Bolivar Peninsula was a crude, undeveloped, and open beach called McFaddin Beach. The coast had extended much further out into the Gulf of Mexico, and after a storm, or if you were lucky after a tide cycle, Pleistocene bones (bison, ancient horse, giant beaver, prehistoric fish) would wash up along with the rare Clovis Point. I had the pleasure of walking the beach 3 times, and every time swore I would go about it better the next time I went fossil hunting.
Now my personal interest in the underdeveloped beach of historic geologic and paleontological significance led me an interesting article about a fossil site called Blue Beach, and the efforts to preserve the fossil record in the Blue Beach Fossil Museum.
The fossil site at Blue Beach attracts many professional and amateur paleontologists to the sedimentary stones along the coast of Nova Scotia. The sedimentary stone has been studied and found to be of significant geological and paleontological significance with the preponderance of Carboniferous tetrapod fossils and footprints. Now the beauty of the fossil site at Blue Beach is the success of the local supporters residents to maintain a hone museum chronicling the fossil finds, assisting with fossil identification and exploration, and education for the school groups that visit the area. I know personally how rare and special this is. From my experience at the aforementioned Texas fossil site McFaddin Beach, where there was no facility, or local group to help identify and find the site’s fossils, many of that sites’ finds remain a mystery. Not so at Blue Beach Fossil Museum and their future expansion plans. With increased paleontological and geological interest in Blue Beach, and recent press about the fossil site, the museum naturally needs to expand into a larger facility with the proper curatorial, educational, and research resources. This is a rare chance for someone to contribute to a museum, fossil center, and world wonder in its early stages.
Blue Beach remains a working paleontology site, thanks to the waves and the tides along the Nova Scotia coast, and with a museum nearby, one can enjoy the beach, and/or enjoy the museum. Not every fossil enthusiast or amateur geologist likes the field work, and marching along the shores turning over flat slabs of shale and slate as much as I and others do, so the museum would offer the perfect option for those too young to go rockhounding and fossil hunting, or those who prefer the academics and history of the fossil site.
We plan on visiting Blue Beach Fossil Museum and fossil site in 2015.
Letters of Scholarly Support for Blue Beach Fossil Museum
Blue Beach Fossil Museum recognized by the Nova Scotia House of Assembly