Toronto may not seem like the ideal place for fossil hunting. Fossil country is out west, where more than 100 species of dinosaurs have been found in Alberta alone.
But Toronto’s many creekbeds still turn up surprising finds for urban fossil hunters. Joe Moysiuk, a paleontologist completing his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, discovered his love of the past while picking through streams as a child. He would take his specimens to the Royal Ontario Museum’s fossil identification clinic where experts helped classify them. “They got me really excited about the things that I was finding,” he said. “And that snowballed into what’s become a career in the science of paleontology.”
One of Mr. Moysiuk’s more notable finds was a trilobite, an extinct class of arthropods. He estimates the foot-long specimen is 'about 445 million years old.'Joe Moysiuk
Fossils act like bookmarks in the history of the city. Toronto’s youngest fossils are less than 6,000 years old and are from animals that still live in Southern Ontario, like beavers, wolves or squirrels. There are also extinct animals that were fossilized between glacial melts, like mammoths. The ROM even contains the only-known specimen of a caribou-sized deer that died some 11,315 years ago, nicknamed the Toronto Subway Deer because it was found near Islington station.
The oldest fossils are much older, deposited between 350 and 450 million years ago, when Ontario was close to the equator and the land was covered by tropical seas. Corals, molluscs and crinoids – feathery cousins of sea stars – can all be found in the creeks branching off the Humber and Don River. The youngest of these specimens are 100 million years older than the oldest dinosaur.
“All the fossils of Ontario, and of Canada in general, really tell the whole story of the evolution of life of Earth,” Moysiuk says. “What’s really exciting is that there is the potential for new discoveries that change our understanding of that history. Those discoveries can happen right in your own backyard in Toronto.”
There are no dinosaurs, however. Paleontologists are reasonably confident that dinosaurs roamed Southern Ontario but in their time the land was too hard to produce fossils. Fossilization requires soft, sedimentary rock so minerals trapped in soil can gradually seep into organic matter and turn them into stone.
Lakes and shallow oceans are ideal for fossilization because animals can sink into the soft silt once they die. Many ancient marine animals had carapace and shells as well, which decompose more slowly than soft tissues and contain high levels of minerals like calcium carbonate already, speeding up the fossilization process.
The fossil cabinet of geologist Martin Sykes.Martin Sykes
One of Moysiuk’s more notable finds was a trilobite, an extinct class of arthropods that looked like modern horseshoe crabs, complete with a chitinous exoskeleton, which makes them ideal for fossilization. He estimates the foot-long specimen is “about 445 million years old.”
Fossil hunters also share their collections in online forums and on social media, such as on the Fossil Forum or the Central Canadian Federation of Mineralogical Societies. Martin Sykes is a member of this loose community of hobbyists. As a child in England, he would wander the countryside and wonder why hills were where they were, or why coastlines were so rugged. After moving to Canada to work as a geologist, he found fossil hunting to be a good introduction to the local geography.
“It makes you think about the vastness of time. What’s happened between 450 million years ago and right now?” he said.
Construction, for one. As Canada entered the Industrial Age, historic buildings were constructed from the same limestone and sandstone in which fossils form. As a result, there are buildings in many cities with fossils embedded in their exteriors, easily visible from outside. Even the ROM is partly built from limestone sprinkled with crinoids and bryozoans, small organisms which form structures in colonies like corals.
Meghomita Das, a Ph.D student in earth sciences at McGill, wrote a guide to the many fossils dotted around campus for the university’s Redpath Museum. In downtown Montreal, buildings constructed from stone quarried in various parts of Canada and the U.S. contain fossil specimens from different periods in the Earth’s history.
One of Das’s favourite spots is the lawn of the elite Mount Royal Club on Sherbrooke Street. A decorative stone in the lawn is filled with broken bits of shells that form a death assemblage: a sudden accumulation of organic matter from geologic activity like an underwater landslide.
Das advocates for a “look but don’t excavate” policy for fossils in historic buildings, but findings in public lands can be fair game for collectors. Provincial regulations vary – B.C., Saskatchewan and Manitoba all require various permits – but in Ontario anyone can collect common invertebrate fossils provided they are not from protected sites like national parks. There are also varying restrictions on transporting fossils out of the province or country, depending on the specimen.
“In Canada, there are very few professional paleontologists,” Moysiuk said. “We simply don’t have the resources to explore this vast country. So without amateurs and avocational collectors going on and finding this material, we would never see it all.”
Where to fossil hunt in Canada
Looking to start fossil hunting? Here are some popular sites around the country. Be sure to check with provincial authorities first as some provinces require permits to collect fossils.
Toronto’s Mimico Creek: In this offshoot of the Humber River, you can find molluscs, crinoids, bryozoans, corals and even trilobites by digging in the bends where sediment and loose gravel accumulate.
Georgian Bay, Ont.: This lake is dotted with numerous small towns popular in the cottage months. Marine fossils are plentiful in the area’s many beaches.
Provincial and national parks: Many park authorities allow visitors to look at fossils so long as they don’t excavate them. Others may allow at most one fossil to be collected per visitor. In Ontario, visit Craigleith Provincial Park and Rock Glen Conservation Area. Serious dino-heads in Alberta should visit Dinosaur Provincial Park, a two-hour drive from Calgary. More than 50 different species of dinosaur have been found in this park alone.
Vancouver Island’s riverbeds: The Courtenay Museum on the island offers guided fossil-finding tours in the summer months, from Tuesday to Saturday. Ask your guide about locations on the island where you can find other fossils. But be careful! Experts advise against taking home vertebrate fossils. Best to check with your tour guide.
Bay of Fundy: Maritimers have several prime locations for amateur excavation when the tide is out. From Saint John’s, N.B, hobbyists can drive northeast to Dennis and Waterside beaches where reptilian footprints can be seen. Joggins, N.S., is also home to the Joggins Fossil Cliffs UNESCO World Heritage Site, which visitors can explore with a guided tour from the Joggins Fossil Centre.
Kingston to Quebec City corridor: Hard core fossil finders can test themselves along this route, as many smaller creekbeds can turn up marine fossils. Some locations may be hard to find, but there’s a lot of local knowledge in fossil-hunting forums, so why not find a buddy online and hit the road?