Fossil hunting daytrips around Vancouver

September 26, 2006 8:46 PM

Where can I go for successful fossil hunting for a day-trip around the Vancouver (BC, Canada) area?

And...are there relatively cheap fossil-hunting day-tours (with some instruction) in this area? In both cases, I want to keep what I find.

(If there is a fossil-hunting MeFite in the area that would like to participate, that would be most awesome as well)

posted by Kickstart70 to sports, hobbies, & recreation (2 comments total)

Well, this isn't very responsive since it is more than a day trip from Vancouver and you can't keep the fossils, but so far nobody else has provided anything better.

In the Yoho National Park near Field, B.C. just west of Banff is the Burgess Shale formation. Stephen Jay Gould, who has written about it extensively, calls the Burgess Shale the world's most important animal fossils. It represents the Middle Cambrian and the explosion of the first complex animal species. Lots of trilobites, etc. Gould wrote his award winning book "Wonderful Life" about the fossils found there and his controversial ideas about evolution are still debated today.

It is a preserve so you can only go there with a guide and you can only take pictures. The season is from July to September. You should make your reservation as soon as they open the season's bookings on February 15 as the schedule fills quickly.
posted by JackFlash at 12:55 AM on September 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

Not sure, but FYI: if you do find a place, you should check with park rangers, etc. to see if it's actually allowed to remove fossils. They're part of the fossil record, and archeologists record the exact location and details of a fossil before they remove it; if you were to just traipse off with one, that possibility would be lost.
posted by DenOfSizer at 7:19 AM on September 27, 2006