What was possibly BC’s first fossil road show was
held at the Tumbler Ridge Public Library July 23. Arranged
by the Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation, it enabled rock
and fossil hounds to show their prize specimens to experts
and an enthusiastic audience of 130, and get scientifically
accurate (and sometimes surprising) answers.
The panel comprised palaeontologists Rich McCrea and
Lisa Buckley, and geologists Doug Foerster and Kevin
Sharman.
One farmer from Rolla discovered that the weird rock
he had found in his field was an igneous glacial erratic,
that had come all the way from the NWT. Two teenagers
almost stumped the panel with unusually patterned rocks
from the Murray River that turned out to be fossilized
worm burrows. One lady brought a whole box of rocks from
near Smithers that included a fossilized mosquito. A
senior displayed rocks he had found in Alberta decades
ago, which were dinosaur bones! And there were clams
and more clams from the local canyons, a surprising number
of trilobites from the local mountains, and much more.
The excellent weather allowed the library staff to host
the event outdoors on the Roman walkway, with refreshments
available inside. In the audience were reporters from
the Globe and Mail who had just finished researching
a story on the Tumbler Ridge dinosaurs – they were
warmly applauded when they were presented with a theropod
footprint cast from the Museum Foundation.
For as long as the dinosaur excavation project continues,
the Fossil Road Show will be an annual summer feature
in Tumbler Ridge.
July 23, 2003
