Fortune Head is a headland

Headlands and bays

Headlands and bays are two related features of the coastal environment.- Geology and geography :Headlands and bays are often found on the same coastline. A bay is surrounded by land on three sides, whereas a headland is surrounded by water on three sides. Headlands are characterized by high,...

 located about 1.6 km from the town of Fortune on the Burin Peninsula

Burin Peninsula

The Burin Peninsula is a Canadian peninsula located on the south coast of the island of Newfoundland in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador....

, southeastern Newfoundland.

A 410 m thick section of rock along its cliffs is designated the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point

Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point

A Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point, abbreviated GSSP, is an internationally agreed upon stratigraphic section which serves as the reference section for a particular boundary on the geologic time scale. The effort to define GSSPs is conducted by the International Commission on...

 (or GSSP) representing the boundary between the Precambrian

Precambrian

The Precambrian is the name which describes the large span of time in Earth's history before the current Phanerozoic Eon, and is a Supereon divided into several eons of the geologic time scale...

 era and the Cambrian

Cambrian

The Cambrian is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, lasting from Mya ; it is succeeded by the Ordovician. Its subdivisions, and indeed its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latin name for Wales, where Britain's...

 period, 542 million years ago. Because of its accessibility and abundance of fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

s, Fortune Head was selected in 1992 over similar rock sections in Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, and Meischucum, China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

.

Fortune Head Ecological Reserve

Fortune Head was established as a provisional reserve in 1990, and then given full ecological reserve status in 1992 following Fortune Head’s selection as the global stratotype. The reserve is 2.21 km² in size. The Fortune Head lighthouse

Lighthouse

A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire, and used as an aid to navigation for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways....

, which is operated by the Canadian Coast Guard

Canadian Coast Guard

The Canadian Coast Guard is the coast guard of Canada. It is a federal agency responsible for providing maritime search and rescue , aids to navigation, marine pollution response, marine radio, and icebreaking...

, is also on the reserve and functions as a visitor center.

Geology

The Burin Peninsula is part of the Avalon Zone of the Appalachian Orogen, the geology of which chronicles the late Precambrian Alleghenian Orogeny

Alleghenian orogeny

The Alleghenian orogeny or Appalachian orogeny is one of the geological mountain-forming events that formed the Appalachian Mountains and Allegheny Mountains. The term and spelling Alleghany orogeny was originally proposed by H.P. Woodward in 1957....

. The stratigraphy

Stratigraphy

Stratigraphy, a branch of geology, studies rock layers and layering . It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks....

 is not uniform throughout the region, however. The southern end of the peninsula includes a series of mafic

Mafic

Mafic is an adjective describing a silicate mineral or rock that is rich in magnesium and iron; the term is a portmanteau of the words "magnesium" and "ferric". Most mafic minerals are dark in color and the relative density is greater than 3. Common rock-forming mafic minerals include olivine,...

 pillow lava

Pillow lava

Pillow lavas are lavas that contain characteristic pillow-shaped structures that are attributed to the extrusion of the lava under water, or subaqueous extrusion. Pillow lavas in volcanic rock are characterized by thick sequences of discontinuous pillow-shaped masses, commonly up to one metre in...

s, volcanigenic

Volcano

2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...

 sediment

Sediment

Sediment is naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of fluids such as wind, water, or ice, and/or by the force of gravity acting on the particle itself....

s, shale

Shale

Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. The ratio of clay to other minerals is variable. Shale is characterized by breaks along thin laminae or parallel layering...

s and limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

s, collectively known as the "Burin Group", as well as a 1500 m thick sill

Sill (geology)

In geology, a sill is a tabular sheet intrusion that has intruded between older layers of sedimentary rock, beds of volcanic lava or tuff, or even along the direction of foliation in metamorphic rock. The term sill is synonymous with concordant intrusive sheet...

 of gabbro

Gabbro

Gabbro refers to a large group of dark, coarse-grained, intrusive mafic igneous rocks chemically equivalent to basalt. The rocks are plutonic, formed when molten magma is trapped beneath the Earth's surface and cools into a crystalline mass....

 about 760 million years old. The northern end of the peninsula is defined by the "Marystown Group", primarily carbon

Carbon

Carbon is the chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds...

-lacking Silica-based sediments which span the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary. The sediments were probably deposited in shoreline environments along the former Iapetus Ocean

Iapetus Ocean

The Iapetus Ocean was an ocean that existed in the Neoproterozoic and Paleozoic eras of the geologic timescale . The Iapetus Ocean was situated in the southern hemisphere, between the paleocontinents of Laurentia, Baltica and Avalonia...

.

The global stratotype at Fortune Head is composed of the uppermost part of member 1 and all of member 2 of the Chapel Island Formation of the Marystown Group. The Chapel Island Formation consists primarily of sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

s, siltstone

Siltstone

Siltstone is a sedimentary rock which has a grain size in the silt range, finer than sandstone and coarser than claystones.- Description :As its name implies, it is primarily composed of silt sized particles, defined as grains 1/16 - 1/256 mm or 4 to 8 on the Krumbein phi scale...

s, and limestones. Some of these rocks exhibit mud cracks and stromatolite

Stromatolite

Stromatolites or stromatoliths are layered accretionary structures formed in shallow water by the trapping, binding and cementation of sedimentary grains by biofilms of microorganisms, especially cyanobacteria ....

s, suggesting that deposition occurred in tidal or, at deepest, continental shelf

Continental shelf

The continental shelf is the extended perimeter of each continent and associated coastal plain. Much of the shelf was exposed during glacial periods, but is now submerged under relatively shallow seas and gulfs, and was similarly submerged during other interglacial periods. The continental margin,...

 environments.

Fossils

The boundary between the Precambrian and Cambrian is demarcated by the presence of trace fossils of Treptichnus pedum

Treptichnus pedum

Treptichnus pedum is regarded as the earliest widespread complex trace fossil...

, one of the earliest animals. Without any hard anatomical features, Treptichnus is known only by its distinctive burrow pattern, which can be seen at Fortune Head.

Fortune Head records the beginning of a period of increasing biological diversity known as the "Cambrian explosion

Cambrian explosion

The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the relatively rapid appearance, around , of most major phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record, accompanied by major diversification of other organisms, including animals, phytoplankton, and calcimicrobes...

", and it exhibits a number of other Cambrian and Precambrian fossils, including early shell fossils, vendotaenid algae, soft-bodied megafossils, and microfossils. Below Treptichnus, the stratotype at Fortune Head includes traces of the arthropod

Arthropod

An arthropod is an invertebrate animal having an exoskeleton , a segmented body, and jointed appendages. Arthropods are members of the phylum Arthropoda , and include the insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and others...

 Monomorphichnus

Monomorphichnus

Monomorphichnus is an arthropod trace fossil known from the base of the Cambrian period onwards, before the first trilobite fossils....

, vertical dwelling burrows from Skolithes and Arenicolites, cnidarian resting burrows from Conichnus and Bergauria, and more intricate feeding burrows from Gyrolithes. More complex fossils appear later.