The Parrsboro Fossil Site
The Parrsboro Fossil Site, located on Wasson's Bluff, on
the shores of the Bay of Fundy, 6 kilometers from Parrsboro, was designated a Special
Place under the terms of the Special Places Protection Act on March 1, 1990. The
designation was based on the 200 million year-old fossil assemblages discovered in 1984 by
a team of American scientists led by Dr. Paul Olsen of Columbia University and Neil Shubin of Harvard University. The team returned
to the site in 1985, when they collected three tons of bone-bearing matrix which contained
100,000 pieces of bone from a series of assemblages. The 200 million-year-old
assemblages of well-preserved reptiles apparently just post-date a mass extinction event
at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. They comprise the largest discovery ever made in North
America of vertebrate fossils from that period, and are the strongest evidence so far
supporting a mass extinction prior to the emegence of dinosaurs and mammals.Though not yet
proven, it is speculated that the impact of a large meteorite threw enough debris into the
atmosphere to block out the sun, killing off plants and seriously disrupting the entire
food chain. Approximately 43% of all life is thought to have died out about this time.
The
bones that are found in the rocks are those of the creatures that survived the extinction.
Most are small creatures that lived in and among the boulders of a talus slope, though
larger bones have ben found. The assemblages include early crocodillian
species, freshwater sharks, and small dinosaurs. One of the most significant finds was the
small jawbone of Trithelodont, a very rare, mammal-like reptile. It is at this time
in the earth's history that mammals first made their appearance, so these fossil remains
provide a wonderful opportunity to gain insight into this important part of our past.
A Final Note
The Fundy Geological Museum in Parrsboro has
some great information on the Parrsboro Fossil Site. You can link to them here. The Parrsboro
fossil site is a popular and important tourist spot. The site also contains extremely
important and fragile palaeontological deposits. Please remember that it is a protected Special Place. It is illegal to dig fossils from the
cliff without a Heritage Research Permit. The Nova
Scotia Museum is currenty revamping its permit system to account for collecting loose
fossils on the beach. They may be collected in the interim, though the fossils remain the
property of the Province of Nova Scotia.
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