Miguasha National Park
Encyclopedia
Carleton-sur-Mer, Quebec
Carleton-sur-Mer is the fifth largest town of the Gaspésie's south shore, in southeastern Quebec, located on route 132, along Baie des Chaleurs.- Culture :* attracts over 20,000 spectators to see local and international artists...
on the Gaspé Peninsula
Gaspé Peninsula
The Gaspésie , or Gaspé Peninsula or the Gaspé, is a peninsula along the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada, extending into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence...
of Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Created in 1985 by the Government of Quebec, Miguasha was designated a World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site
A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...
in 1999 in recognition of its wealth of fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
s, which display a crucial time during the evolution of life
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
on Earth. Other names for this site are the Miguasha Fossil Site, the Bay of Escuminac Fossil Site, the Upper Devonian Escuminac Formation, and the Hugh-Miller Cliffs. It is also sometimes referred to on fossil specimens as 'Scaumenac Bay' or 'Scaumenac Bay P.Q.'
Miguasha Natural History Museum
The park's museum features exhibits about the fossils and paleontology of the park. The museum's collection includes over 9000 specimens of fossil fish and plants.Physical description
The coastal cliffs are Upper Devonian strata of grey sedimentary rockSedimentary rock
Sedimentary rock are types of rock that are formed by the deposition of material at the Earth's surface and within bodies of water. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause mineral and/or organic particles to settle and accumulate or minerals to precipitate from a solution....
. They are composed of alternating layers 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,...
and 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...
, which are 350–375 million years old. The area today supports mainly birch
Birch
Birch is a tree or shrub of the genus Betula , in the family Betulaceae, closely related to the beech/oak family, Fagaceae. The Betula genus contains 30–60 known taxa...
, aspen
Aspen
Populus section Populus, of the Populus genus, includes the aspen trees and the white poplar Populus alba. The five typical aspens are all native to cold regions with cool summers, in the north of the Northern Hemisphere, extending south at high altitudes in the mountains. The White Poplar, by...
, and fir
Fir
Firs are a genus of 48–55 species of evergreen conifers in the family Pinaceae. They are found through much of North and Central America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa, occurring in mountains over most of the range...
forests.
Palaeontological significance
Some of the fish, fauna, and spore fossils found at Miguasha are rare and ancient species. For example, Spermasposita is thought to be one of the oldest flowering plantFlowering plant
The flowering plants , also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies...
genera
Genera
Genera is a commercial operating system and development environment for Lisp machines developed by Symbolics. It is essentially a fork of an earlier operating system originating on the MIT AI Lab's Lisp machines which Symbolics had used in common with LMI and Texas Instruments...
on Earth.
Miguasha National Park is considered to be the world's greatest palaeontological record of fossils from the Devonian
Devonian
The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...
Period, known as the 'Age of Fishes'. Five of the six main fossil fish groups from this period (dating from 370 million years ago) can be found here. A great quantity of some of the best-preserved fossil specimens of lobe-finned fish, ancestors to the tetrapod
Tetrapod
Tetrapods are vertebrate animals having four limbs. Amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are all tetrapods; even snakes and other limbless reptiles and amphibians are tetrapods by descent. The earliest tetrapods evolved from the lobe-finned fishes in the Devonian...
s (believed to be the first four-legged air-breathing terrestrial vertebrates), were found here.
History
The fossilFossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
site was first discovered in 1842, by Abraham Gesner (1797–1864), a geologist
Geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...
and medical doctor, and a pioneer in the petroleum industry
Petroleum industry
The petroleum industry includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transporting , and marketing petroleum products. The largest volume products of the industry are fuel oil and gasoline...
. Gesner found a vast array of important fossils, which were handed over to the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
and the Royal Scottish Museum; these discoveries caused great excitement throughout the world. There was a rumour in the 1970s that some Americans were seeking to purchase the land containing the fossil deposits. In 1985 the Québec government blocked this possible privatization by purchasing a large tract of the land and declaring it a provincial (called "national" in Québec) park. The peripheral area is owned by ~100 people who limit development, protecting this important site. To date, over 5000 fossils from this one site have been identified and categorized. It was declared a World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site
A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...
in 1999.