Joggins Fossil Cliffs

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Joggins Fossil Cliffs
UNESCO world heritage UNESCO World Heritage Emblem
Joggins mcr1.jpg
Panorama of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs, taken from the “Great Reef” in front of Coal Mine Point (right), with a view to the northeast into the Lower Cove (left).
National territory: CanadaCanada Canada
Type: Natural Monument
Criteria : VIII
Reference No .: 1285
UNESCO region : Europe and North America
History of enrollment
Enrollment: 2008  (session 32nd)

The Joggins Fossil Cliffs (roughly 'Joggins-Fossilkliff') are one of the most important sites for fossil plants and animals of the Upper Carboniferous terrestrial ecosystems . They form part of the cliff coast of the upper Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia ("Nova Scotia"), Canada . Since 2008, they are on the list of UNESCO - World Heritage Site .

The study of the rocks of this coastal strip influenced well-known scientists of the 19th century, u. a. the famous Charles Lyell , and their views on fundamental geological principles, particularly with regard to the hypotheses of the formation of coal deposits . Thus, the fossil cliff plays a similar role for early modern geology as the Galápagos Islands toured by Charles Darwin did for early modern biology and the development of the theory of evolution . This is why the Joggins Fossil Cliffs are also known as Coal Age Galápagos ("Galápagos Islands of the Coal Age").

Map: Canada
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Joggins Fossil Cliffs​
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geography

Position and extent

Physical map of western Cumberland County and adjacent areas in New Brunswick showing the location of Joggins Fossil Cliffs (purple line).
Joggins
Satellite image of the Joggins area
Satellite image of the upper part of Chignecto Bay with Shepody Bay (top left), the Maringouin Peninsula (top center) and the Cumberland Basin (top right). The location of Joggins is marked in red.

The Bay of Fundy on Canada's Atlantic coast separates the mainland in the west from the Nova Scotia peninsula ("Nova Scotia") in the east. At its landward (upper, northeastern) end, it forks into an eastern branch, the Minas Basin, and a northeastern branch, Chignecto Bay. The latter in turn divides at its landward end into a northern branch, Shepody Bay, and a northeastern branch, Cumberland Bay (also called Cumberland Basin or French Beaubassin). Between Shepody and Cumberland Bay is the Maringouin Peninsula. The 14.7 kilometer long and mostly about 30 meter high World Heritage Cliff extends on the southeast coast of Chignecto and Cumberland Bay, between the headlands Downing Head in the northeast ( 45 ° 45 ′ 07 ″ N, 64 ° 25 ′ 05 ″ W ) and Ragged Reef Point ( 45 ° 40 ′ 26 ″ N, 64 ° 29 ′ 22 ″ W ) to the southwest, on the territory of Cumberland County in northwest Nova Scotia. The geographic center of the area is officially 45 ° 42 '35 "N, 64 ° 26' 09" W indicated.

The width of the core zone of the area registered as a natural heritage is 500 m. This strip includes the tidal zone and the beach up to the upper edge of the cliff. The area of ​​this core zone amounts to a total of 689 ha. A 20 m wide strip joins inland as a buffer zone. A second, 30.5 m wide buffer zone extends inland from the middle high water mark, but not over the full 14.7 km, but only the scientifically more important, 8.5 km long middle section of the cliff. The buffer zones thus cover an additional area of ​​55.3 hectares. The height of the site extends from the mean low water mark to a maximum of 90 m (300 ft) above.

Ownership

Approximately 95% of the natural heritage site is owned by the Province of Nova Scotia. This corresponds to 100% of the core zone. The buffer zones, however, are mostly in private hands, with the exception of three large parcels, which also belong to the province, and a slightly larger parcel, which is owned by Cumberland County. The Fossil Center is also built on county ownership.

Cliff and tides

The Bay of Fundy has the highest tidal range in the world at almost 17 meters . The waves gnaw at the cliff as the tides change and ensure that new fossils gradually emerge. In places, the receding erosion reaches a rate of up to 25 cm / year. Charles Lyell described this process at the time with the words:

"The tides in the Bay of Fundy are so destructive that they continually undercut and wash away the entire front of the cliff, exposing a new load of fossils every three to four years."

- Charles Lyell : Travels in America, 1845, p. 187 (translated from English)

Since the rock strata in the cliff transversely to the coastline stress and are moreover relatively strongly tilted form where more erosion-resistant sand and limestones hard nut , barely wide Abrasionsplattformen from, but usually relatively small (depending on the thickness of the sand or limestone interval) Layer ribs referred to as "Reefs". Sections of the cliff in which the proportion of erosion-resistant rock is particularly high form protrusions (e.g. Boss Point, Coal Mine Point or Ragged Reef Point). There the reefs are particularly wide or occur in particularly close succession. Sections of the cliff in which the proportion of erosion-resistant rock is rather low form bays. There are few and narrow reefs there.

Origin of name

The name Joggins probably comes from the words choggin or chegoggin from the language of the Mikmaq Indians. Choggin is an expression that is used, among other things, for streams, chegoggin means something like ' fish weir ' or 'place to catch fish'.

In written mentions of the region at the upper Chignecto Bay in the first half of the 18th century, the name, in the spellings Gran'choggin , Grandnajagan , Grand Nyjagon , or Grand Jogin , still exclusively refers to the area around today's Downing Cove, approx. 7 km north-northeast of the present-day village of Joggins. In the second half of the 18th century, The Jogging was a general name for Upper Chignecto Bay. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, a distinction is made between the South Joggins , the southeast coast at the transition from Chignecto Bay to Cumberland Bay, from the North Joggins opposite , the coast of the Maringouin Peninsula. In the 20th century, this distinction is no longer made and the name Joggins only refers to the south-east coast.

Joggins is unlikely to derive from the protruding and receding cliffs in the form of headlands and bays, as the famous Scottish geologist Charles Lyell narrated after his first visit in 1842. A native of European descent had pointed to Lyell's question about the meaning of the name on the cliff and replied: "You see that they jog in and jog out."

geology

Layer surface of a sandstone of the Little River Formation with tongue ridges. The paleo flow ran roughly from right to left.
Outcrop of the Fundy seam (seam No. 29A according to Logan, 1845) in the cliff, approx. 900 m north of Coal Mine Point. The seam is the approximately 70 cm thick, black double bench, which can be seen particularly well in the right center of the picture. On the left of the picture you can see the pit timbers of an old coal mine.
Section of cliff immediately north of Coal Mine Point. A thick layer of Pleistocene boulder clay overlays the sandstones of the Joggins formation.

Adjusted carbon

General

The carbon at the northeast end of the Bay of Fundy was deposited in a fault- bounded sub-basin of the Martimes Basin, the so-called carbonic Cumberland Basin. The subsidence of the Carboniferous Cumberland Basin began in the Devonian and was probably initially controlled by fault tectonics. In the Upper Carboniferous, during the deposition time of the Cumberland Group (see below), the formation of the marginal depressions in the course of the rise of salt domes from sub-Carboniferous evaporite deposits also played a role in the creation of deposit areas.

Salt tectonics may also have played a decisive role in the formation of today's geological conditions: The Joggins cliff is located in the west of the Carboniferous Cumberland Basin and offers a practically uninterrupted section of the filling of this fossil sedimentary basin. This part of the carbonic Cumberland Basin is structurally divided into the Minudie-Antiklinorium in the north, which is probably arched by a salt structure, and the Athol-Synclinorium in the south, interpreted as a rim depression. The axes of both structures strike approximately east-west (that of the Athol synclinory turns further east to northeast). In the core of the Minudie anticlinory, rocks of the Middle Lower Carboniferous (Windsor Group, Viséum ) emerge, which are gradually followed by younger units to the south, including the series opened up at the Joggins Fossil Cliffs . Therefore , the layers of the cliff dip moderately (approx. 20 °) towards the south. The Athol Synclinory is bounded to the south by a fault against the pre-Carboniferous crystalline basement of the Cobequid Highlands.

The layers of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs represent about 15 million years of the earth's history, with a thickness of 4,442 m. It is the world's most powerful unlocked sequence of a carbonic coal basin. The sequence includes the Shepody and Claremont Formations of the Late Lower Carboniferous (Upper Viséum, Lower Namurium ) Mabou Group as well as the Boss Point, Little River, Joggins, Springhill Mines and Ragged Reef Formations of the Upper Carboniferous Cumberland Group. There is a layer gap between the Mabou and Cumberland groups that spans about 7 million years, the entire higher Namurian. Mabou and Cumberland groups consist almost entirely of continental sediments, i. that is, they were mostly deposited on the mainland. Coal measures are limited to the Joggins and Springhill Mines Formations, although the rare fossils for which the cliff ultimately became famous are known only from the Joggins Formation. Scientific interest has been concentrated on these latter layers since the first discoveries in 1852 (see research history ), which is why this part of the cliff is also known as the Classic Section ("classic outcrop" or "classic layer profile").

The Joggins formation

Definition and age
Exposure of the highest part of the Joggins Formation (left) and the basal layers of the concordant overlying Springhill Mines Formation (right), approx. 750 to 1000 m south of Coal Mine Point.

In the section between about 2 km northeast to 750 m south of the headland Coal Mine Point (Hardscrabble Point) is the type profile of the Joggins formation. The base of the 915 m thick formation there was redefined in 2005 on the basis of the stratigraphically deepest occurrence of a coal seam (seam no. 45 according to Logan, 1845) in the Cumberland Group. The Joggins Formation differs from the concordant overlying Springhill Mines Formation, which is also coal-bearing, due to the occurrence of brackish-marine, shell-containing black clay stones ( clam coal ) and marine, bituminous limestones. The top of the Joggins Formation is defined as Logan's Seam No. 1, overlaid by the last thicker limestone bank in the entire further sequence of the Cumberland Group.

The relative age of the Joggins Formation, based on palynostratigraphic investigations, is generally given as Langsettian ( Westfalium A , Bashkirian on the international geological time scale), which corresponds to an absolute age of about 315 million years.

Facies and cycles

In addition to limestones, “shell coal” and coal, the Joggins Formation mainly contains sandstones and relatively low-carbon clay stones. These sediments appear in the sequence in various special forms and in varying proportions. Based on the special features ( facies ) of individual layers, statements can be made as to whether two layers lying one on top of the other were deposited under more similar or more different environmental conditions. Facies that represent similar environmental conditions form what is known as a facies association. In this way, shift packages can be combined within the sequence based on their facies association and differentiated from other shift packages. In the Joggins Formation, roughly three such facies associations are separated out, representing three neighboring deposit environments : open lagoon ( open water facies , 9% share in the sequence), marshy alluvial plain ( poorly drained floodplain facies , 56%) and dry Alluvial plain ( well drained floodplain facies , 31%). According to the Walther'schen Faziesregel the three Faziesvergesellschaftungen or depositional environment above the other in the sequence of layers and form so-called "top-flat" find - free cycles (engl. Shallowing upward cycles ), d. In other words, they document a cyclical change in flooding and backfilling of the storage area, or a cyclical advance and retreat of the coastline. An idealized small cycle begins with a marine limestone bank or a thin coal seam and leads via an alternating layer of limestone, shell coal, sandstone and claystone (open lagoon), followed by an alternating layer of sandstone, claystone and relatively mighty coal seams (marshy alluvial plain) to sandstone and clay stones without coal seams (dry alluvial plain). The total of 14 “top-flat” small cycles are interpreted as parasequences in the sense of sequence stratigraphy .

coal

The coal seams of the Joggins Formation are rather thin, but in some cases they reach more than 2 m including sandy-clayey inclusions. One of these thicker seams is the Joggins seam (coal No. 7 according to Logan, 1845) in the highest part of the formation, which digs out in the cliff about 500 m south of Coal Mine Point. It was the economically most important seam in the former Joggins coal field. The charcoal in the Joggins formation is typically light and clarit rich. An internal stratification always occurs in the form of Fusit on -Horizonten. At the micro level, vitrinites , associated with liptinites , dominate, with the latter sometimes also dominating. The degree of coalification R 0 (Vitirinitreflection) is around 0.7%. Their high sulfur content (at least 5%), which is mainly based on a high content of pyrite , and the high proportion of mineral substance ("ash", approx. 30%) make Joggins charcoal of poor quality.

quaternary

After the last glacial period of the Pleistocene subsided , the Laurentid Ice Sheet , which until then covered large parts of northern North America, increasingly lost its substance. The continental crust , which had sunk under the weight of the ice, rose again (so-called postglacial uplift ), which led to a relatively rapid uplift in geological terms, areas that were previously at sea level and thus to a retreat of the coastlines. This improvement is also documented on the cliffs of Joggins: The top of the sandstone cliff represents an old wave-cut platform that was raised above the sea level of red today boulder clay is covered by the glaciers of the last ice age there left and their washed by rain clay particles the cliff wall Color below it brick-red (although some of the carbonic sedimentary rocks are primarily reddish).

Living world

Skull reconstruction of Hylonomus lyelli , the geologically oldest reptile and therefore probably the most famous constituent of the Joggins fauna.
Plant hackles with identifiable remains of cycads (? Alethopteris ) and horsetail.
Sandstone filling of the stump of a Sigillaria tree, including roots ( Stigmaria ). In the area of ​​the roots, two thin layers of coal spread out. Joggins formation near Coal Mine Point.
Stigmaria , root strand of a bear moss tree, joggins formation.
Three crossed horseshoe crab tracks Kouphichnium . Fills on the underside of a layer of sandstone from the Joggins formation.
Diplichnites , the track of a large arthropod, more closely related to today's millipedes, on top of a layer. Joggins formation.

Exceptional character of the location

After more than 150 years of paleontological research, 195 nominal species (including trace and plant shape taxa ) are differentiated in the fossil living world of the Joggins Formation . This is one of the most extensive samples among the fossil sites of the Upper Carboniferous, which is only surpassed by those at Mazon Creek in Illinois. All members of the food webs that existed at the time are roughly represented, from the primary producers, the plants, through detritus eaters and "lower" hunters, represented by arthropods, to the upper positions in the food pyramid, occupied by fish and tetrapods.

Fossils occur autochthonously in all three facies societies or deposit areas , often also in situ . The sandstone fillings of tree stumps, including the roots, are still upright today where the trees once grew, although the substrate from back then is now “sloping”. The fillings also include the roots and reach down in claystone layers below coal seams, so-called underclays - they therefore belong to the marshland facies. The Classic Section has a total of 68 horizons with such standing tree stump fossils. Around 100 of these grayish sandstone cylinders, which reach a diameter of up to 45 cm and a height of up to 7.60 m, are always visible in the cliff face. In many of the stumps, remains of land snails and tetrapods have been handed down - a form of conservation that is only known from a single other fossil locale (Florence in the Upper Carboniferous on Cape Breton Island , also in Nova Scotia). Since the first discovery in 1852, a large number of tetrapod bones have been discovered, which could be identified as the remains of a total of almost 210 individual individuals. In addition, numerous footsteps and tracks from arthropods and vertebrates have been handed down "frozen" in the sediment.

Joggins is either the only occurrence or at least the type locality for more than half of the 63 species of terrestrial animals and tracks found in the cliff . In the case of the tetrapods, 16 species, this rate is even 100%. Two of these species, Hylonomus lyelli and Protoclepsydrops haplous , are considered to be the oldest representatives of the amniotes , the group of tetrapods that have dominated the terrestrial vertebrate fauna since the Permian. All in all, the Classic Section by Joggins is an extremely extensive, in this form worldwide unique complex geo-archive of a deposit and habitat of the Upper Carboniferous.

Finds from joggins are stored in the collections of the most renowned natural history museums in the world, that includes

flora

The fossil record of plants in the Joggins cliff includes around 95 macrofossil species (including Formtaxa) and 187 palynospecies (pollen and spores). The tree-like club moss plants of the genera Lepidodendron and Sigillaria were the main biomass producers in the coal swamp of Joggins and contributed the largest share to the accumulation of peat and thus ultimately to the formation of the coal seams. In dry locations, however, Cordaites dominate , which belong to the seed plants and were better able to cope with a lack of water. Remnants of Cordaites also predominantly occur in rock sequences that are interpreted as deposits of the intertidal zone ( Watt i. W. S.). These representatives were possibly a kind of ecological counterpart of today's mangroves . The undergrowth of the swamp forests was formed from relatively delicately built and sometimes liana-like fern plants as well as horsetail (e.g. Annularia ) and cycads (the latter also seed plants).

fauna

Numerous terrestrial invertebrates lived in the swamp forest, such as the early land snail Dendropupa vetusta , but above all arthropods (Arthropoda), represented by spiders , scorpions , flying insects and millipedes . Many arthropod remains are contained in tetrapod coproliths , i. This means that the conservation form also provides information about predator-prey relationships in the swamp forest.

The corresponding terrestrial robber guild consisted of both "real" early amniotes, such as hylonomus and protoclepsydrops , as well as forms that were not closely related to the amniotes and convergent strongly adapted to rural life, such as the microsaurs Archerpeton , Hylerpeton or Leiocephalikon , or the Temnospondyle dendrerpeton . There are three hypotheses as to how the vertebrate remains got into the tree stumps. One says that the animals were only washed into the hollow stumps that had been buried by sand on the outside after they had died. The second assumes that the animals accidentally fell in while they were alive and never came out. The third thesis, favored by today's Joggins researchers, regards this form of fossil tradition as the earliest evidence of terrestrial vertebrates that use hollow, dead trees as permanent shelter ( hollow tree guild ), as many of today's forest dwellers do.

The Invertebratenvergesellschaftung the swamp forest waters and the open lagoon consisted of mussels (z. B. the more than 20 cm long Unionoiden Archanodon ), the serpulids Spirorbis (z. T. also attached to shell casings) Eurypteriden and horseshoe crabs . In the waters at the top of the food pyramid stood on the one hand fish, in particular the " freshwater sharks " Xenacanthus and Ctenacanthus , but on the other hand also tetrapods that are strongly adapted to aquatic life, such as the "anthracosaur" Baphetes with an elongated, eel-like body .

Ichnofauna (trace fossils)

In principle, two groups of trace fossils can be distinguished: burial and feeding tunnels ( Domichnia and Fodinichnia ) and grazing tracks ( Pascichnia ) of aquatic invertebrates (e.g. insect larvae ) that were created or created in the sediment at the bottom of the water, and footsteps and tracks ( Repichnia or Cursichnia) of terrestrial arthropods and vertebrates that have been pressed into the surface of a moist sediment in the air ( subaeric ). In the Lagunenfazies the subaqueous (semi-) infaunal dominate invertebrates tracks as Arenicolites , Cochlichnus , Treptichnus or Taenidium , whereas in the Sumpfwaldfazies and the dry level, the subaerial footprints and tracks, as Diplichnites , Matthewichnus or Limnopus , far outweigh. The subaeric horseshoe crab track Kouphichnium is a constituent of the lagoon facies. A total of about 20 different tracking Ichno species occur in the Joggins formation.

Most of the step seals come from a site in the higher Joggins Formation about 100 m north of Coal Mine Point. The smallest known fossil vertebrate tread seals , a specimen of Batrachichnus salamandroides (traces of very small or young temnospondyles or microsaurs), have also been found there. The entire track is only 5 cm long. The footsteps of the front extremities are only 1.6 mm long, those of the rear extremities 2.4 mm.

history

Charles Lyell (1797-1875)
William Edmond Logan (1798-1875)
John William Dawson (1820-1899)

research

Beginnings until 1842

In 1829 and 1836, the first brief descriptions of the cliff of the Classic Section and the coal and fossil tree trunks it contained appeared in scientific journals. These piqued the interest of one of the most famous geologists of the 19th century, the Scottish Sir Charles Lyell . At that time, Lyell was working on models for the formation of coal deposits, the main issue being whether the original biomass accumulated allochthonously (after transport in the sea) or autochthonously (directly in the coal forest). Lyell's first visit to the cliff, during which he was accompanied by Abraham Gesner , who was the chief geologist of the province of New Brunswick ("New Brunswick") at the time, took place in July 1842 as part of his first trip to North America. During this trip, during which he also visited other coal deposits, Lyell et al. a. in view of the tree stumps in the cliff of Joggins, which are directly associated with the coal layers, to the realization that the biomass of the coal deposits must once have been autochthonously accumulated. In addition, Lyell demonstrated numerous geological parallels between the Joggins locality and the coal deposits in Europe, especially England - a fact that could only be explained without difficulty a century later, after the theory of plate tectonics had been established.

First profile recording by Logan (1843)

In 1843, Sir William Logan , a native of Canada, first recorded the stratum profile of the succession of the Joggins Cliffs, not just the Classic Section , but the entire section now designated as World Heritage, including its basal strata up to Minudie - a total of approx 4500 m profile. He only needed five days for this performance, but this had a negative impact on accuracy.

Logan divided the profile into 8 “divisions” according to petrographic criteria and called the part that today essentially corresponds to the Joggins formation as “Division 4”. In this Division 4 he counted 45 coal seams, counting from the hanging wall to the lying wall (from "above" to "below" or from young to old), not, as is common today in stratigraphy, from lying to hanging wall.

To Logan's annoyance, no geological journal had any interest in publishing this profile, so he ended up having to add it to an annual report from the Province of Canada .

Dawson and Lyell (1852)

Historical reconstruction (Dawson, 1863) of the living world of the coal swamps of the early Westphalian (lower Upper Carboniferous) North America, largely based on the finds by Joggins.

In 1852, as part of his third trip to North America, Lyell came to the "South Joggins" for the second time, as the southeast coast of Chignecto Bay was called at the time. This time he was accompanied by the then highest education officer of Canada, John William Dawson , a Scottish-born Canadian who Lyell had known since his first trip to North America and had become friends with him. During this visit, the two made the discovery that would make the Joggins Cliff famous. For unspecified reason, Lyell and Dawson hypothesized that the sandstone, of which the stump fossils are essentially made, might itself contain the remains of living things. They now wanted to check this assumption and, if it turned out to be correct, clarify to what extent the fossils in the tree stumps differed from those outside the stumps. For example, the two had several stumps that were scented out of the cliff near Coal Mine Point, "excavated" by a coal miner hired to help them open and examine them. Initially, they only found the remains of various plants in the carbonate cemented sandstone of the stumps. In one of the stumps, however, they eventually came across bones that they believed came from terrestrial vertebrates (" air breathers "). Since neither Lyell nor Dawson had any special osteological knowledge at the time, they brought the material to Jeffries Wyman at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This confirmed to them that it was tetrapod bones. While Wyman was breaking and splitting the rock to examine the bones, he found the shell of a land snail in it. In view of all these discoveries, which were sensational for the time, Lyell and Dawson took a detailed profile of the sequence at Coal Mine Point (they were probably not aware of Logan's profile due to its publication in an administrative report) and described the finds and the layers in which they were made carefully. The description of the tetrapod remains ( first description of Dendrerpeton acadianum ) was carried out by Wyman and the famous Sir Richard Owen .

The discovery of land animals in the stump fossils finally convinced another friend of Lyell's, the father of the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin , that the biomass from which coal deposits are formed cannot be accumulated in the sea. The level stratification of the coal led Darwin to believe that this biomass could only have accumulated on the continental shelf and that the fossil tree stumps in the coal-bearing strata were the trunks of large underwater plants. He later called this a "silly notion" himself . The Joggins Cliff and its fossils played no special role in Darwin's theory of evolution. In his Origin of Species they are mentioned only incidentally in a single sentence.

"Dawson Era" (1852–1899)

Drawing of the shell of the Upper Carboniferous land snail Dendropupa vetusta (described at the time under the name Pupa vetusta ) from Dawson's "Acadian Geology".
Dawson sketch map of Coal Mine Point and the offshore "reefs".

After Lyell's second visit, until his death in 1899, Dawson practically carried out further scientific research on the Classic Section , on which he wrote a total of 19 major treatises between 1853 and 1896. Dawson had the Joggins formation in his own profile or initially recorded together with Lyell in 27 "sections", which he designated with Roman numerals (in contrast to Logan, however, he counted, stratigraphically correct, from the lying to the hanging). In the meantime he had also obtained a copy of Logan's profile and combined its stratigraphic nomenclature with his own, which resulted in the typical stratigraphic position information found in Dawson's writings and long afterwards in paleontological literature. The stratigraphic interval at Coal Mine Point, the interval that produced most of the tetrapod fossils, is referred to as "Division 4, Section XV, coal-group 15" according to this nomenclature.

Since Dawson became director of McGill University in 1855 and had little time left for field research, he worked closely with the Joggins coal mine operators, who informed him immediately if significant fossils were discovered during the mining operation. He sent numerous of these specimens to England for scientific processing, some of which are still in the archives of the Museum of the London Geological Society . In the summer of 1859, for example, numerous land vertebrate remains were found in one of the fossil tree stumps, which Dawson used to describe the species Hylonomus lyelli , among other things .

Further tetrapod finds followed, which increasingly illustrated the scientific potential of the Joggins Cliff. Thereupon Dawson was endowed in 1877 by the Royal Society in London with research grants of 50 pounds sterling , a considerable sum at the time. With the help of this money and the support of the local coal mine operators, he carried out a large-scale excavation at Coal Mine Point. From a layer rib , the " Lesser Reef " ( "Lesser Reef" ), which extends from Coal Mine Point in the Chignecto Bay, were u. a. by blowing up, a method that is highly unorthodox by today's standards, 25 fossil tree stumps were broken out, 15 of which contained the remains of more than 100 terrestrial vertebrates . Due to the natural erosion, the “reef” can no longer be seen from this brutal treatment.

Marshs " Eosaurus acadianus "

In 1862 Othniel C. Marsh , who later became known as a dinosaur hunter and bitter rival of Edward Drinker Cope , described two fossil eddies that he allegedly found in Joggins in 1855 under the name Eosaurus acadianus. In his "Acadian Geology", Dawson found a striking similarity between these eddies and those of the Mesozoic ichthyosaurs , that is to say with living beings that only appeared in fossil records around 70 million years after the end of the carbon dioxide. Several prominent vertebrate paleontologists of the 20th century, including Alfred Romer , Robert Carroll and Donald Baird , later came to the conclusion that it was indeed ichthyosaur vertebrae , which also came from Lyme Regis in the English county of Dorset . Marsh had probably acquired them from a seaman who apparently could make him believe that they came from the "South Joggins".

20th century

After Dawson's death, scientific field research on the cliff initially came to a virtual standstill. Fossils were still discovered, but essentially only in the course of the mining operation. Almost without exception, paleontologists dealt with these pieces in the museum collections. a. the Canadian geologist and paleontologist George Frederic Matthew , who at the beginning of the first decade studied and described the trace fauna, especially the tetrapod traces, in detail from Joggins. Numerous discoveries made under Dawson have also been re-examined.

The only one who did long-term scientific field work in Joggins in the first half of the 20th century was Walter Andrew Bell , a Canadian paleontologist and geologist. Shortly after starting his research in 1911, he was considered an expert on the Classic Section . In an essay that appeared in 1914, he coined the name "Joggins Formation". The main focus of his work was the study of the paleoflora and the creation of a plant-based biostratigraphic scheme for the terrestrial Upper Carboniferous of the Atlantic provinces of Canada . In the context of this work he confirmed the similarity observed by Lyell between the "coal measures" Nova Scotia and Europe. In a comprehensive monograph on the Upper Carboniferous flora of Nova Scotia from 1943, he was the first to expand and update the relevant knowledge of the "Dawson era" and who also dated the Joggins formation relatively precisely by using them classified in the deeper west of the carbon stratigraphy of Europe. In 1934 Margaret C. Steen had published a much-acclaimed revision of the tetrapod fauna.

Probably the most important tetrapod collections in the second half of the 20th century took place under the direction of the famous Alfred Sherwood Romer , at the time director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. However, these campaigns were not without controversy. Some accused him of irresponsibly plundering the cliff. This led the provincial government of Nova Scotia to enact laws in 1970 that more strictly regulated the collection of fossils on the cliff.

Romer and other important North American paleontologists (Llewellyn Ivor Price, Joseph Tracy Gregory or Frank Elmer Peabody) had numerous relatively well-preserved remains of early amniotes and other terrestrial vertebrates in upper Carboniferous and sub-Permian localities and the like in the 1920s to 1950s . a. excavated and described in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Kansas and Texas, or older material sighted and rewritten. In the light of this work, Robert Lynn Carroll , a student of Romer, revised the tetrapod material from joggins in the early 1960s and confirmed the assumption that Romer himself had previously expressed that Hylonomus lyelli was the oldest known reptile. At the latest through this realization, the Joggins cliff rose to the ranks of the most important vertebrate fossil locals in the world. In the course of this revision, Carroll described two new "reptile species": Archerpeton anthracos and Protoclepsydrops haplous . While protoclepsydrops is still considered to be the earliest possible synapsid amniot, Archerpeton has meanwhile been identified as a microsaur and thus as a non-amniotic tetrapod.

Recent developments

The current and now by far the most productive phase of scientific fieldwork began around the mid-1980s. She is dedicated to special, but also interdisciplinary research, which seeks the Joggins- Geoarchiv with all its facets to understand. This includes studying the less popular and less spectacular fossil groups such as B. that of the invertebrate traces or microfossils . In the 1990s, the number of scientific publications on joggins exceeded the number of the 1860s for the first time. In the first decade of the 21st century it was twice as high as in the 1860s. The content of this Wikipedia article is essentially based on many of these recent works (see list of references ).

In 2003, for the first time since Logan, Lyell and Dawson, and on the basis of modern sediment petrographic standards, a very detailed new recording of a considerable part of the layer sequence was carried out, which subsequently provided a new reference profile for the field work. How diverse and highly specialized research is now is shown by the publications of the past decade, which include sedimentology , sequence stratigraphy , salt tectonics , biostratigraphy , lithostratigraphy (with a redefinition of the Joggins formation and neighboring formations), paleo soils , vegetation-sediment interactions, global environmental changes ("Global Change"), forest fires, terrestrial and aquatic communities as well as tetrapod trace fossils.

Protected area and path to natural heritage status

  • 1970: The Province of Nova Scotia Legislature passes the Historical Objects Protection Act .
  • 1972: 7 hectares of what will later become the World Heritage site become the first protected area established in Nova Scotia under the Historical Objects Protection Act .
  • 1980: The Historical Objects Protection Act is replaced by the stricter Special Places Protection Act of Nova Scotia . The protected part of the cliff is given the status of a special place . An official permit is now required to be able to carry out excavation work there.
  • 1989: Part of the beach is protected under the Beaches Act and Regulations (1989) . This applies to the 8.5 km long, scientifically most significant part of the beach and the tidal flats from the mean low water mark to the mean high water mark, including a 30.48 m (100 ft) inland buffer zone. Within this protection zone, an official permit is required in order to collect loose fossils.
  • 1996: The CREDA (Cumberland Regional Economic Development Association) is founded. Its members (residents, scientists and representatives from all three administrative levels) set themselves the goal of declaring the cliff a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Joggins Fossil Institute is later founded as part of CREDA. Part of the application is the construction of an information and research center according to modern ecological standards on an area of ​​around 1200 m² (13,000 sqft).
  • 2006: The Mineral Resources Act of 1990 now also applies to the reserve . H. henceforth it may no longer be explored for natural resources.
  • 2006: In accordance with the Secondary Municipal Planning Strategy and Land Use Bylaw for the Joggins Planning Area of ​​Cumberland County , the protected area receives a 20 m buffer zone on land .
  • 2007: The reserve of 1972 according to the Special Places Protection Act is expanded: from now on a 500 m wide, 14.7 km long coastal strip, delimited by the top of the cliff or the back of the beach, is under protection.
  • 2007: The application is presented to UNESCO in January. For this purpose, comprehensive documents are submitted to the IUCN (World Conservation Union) and its independent experts, who examine the application on behalf of UNESCO. The application is later hailed as "the most complete application ever received by the World Heritage Committee" and is intended to serve as an example for all future applications.
  • 2007: In October, the Joggins Fossil Institute welcomes the IUCN representative team on site.
  • 2008: On July 7th, 2008 the inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List is announced. The committee's decision was unanimous.

Extraction of raw materials

Coal mining

17th and 18th centuries

The Joggins Fossil Cliff was one of the first places in North America where coal was mined. The earliest indirect written evidence of minor coal mining in the Joggins Formation by colonists of French origin ( Acadians ) has come down to us from 1686. Presumably the coal deposits were already known to the first French settlers at the beginning of the 17th century and were exploited by them to fire their furnaces and forges. Coal was probably mined right on the cliff throughout the 17th century.

In 1713 the Acadian Peninsula, and with it the "Sea Coal Cliffs", officially fell to Great Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht and was henceforth called New Scotland (Nova Scotia). The British initially had little direct control over the region and the Acadians lived largely self-determined. It is believed that Joggins coal was occasionally being shipped (illegally, as it was not approved by the British Crown) to burgeoning, fuel-scarce Boston , New England . However, Beaubassin on the isthmus of Chignecto , the isthmus that connects Nova Scotia with the mainland, was primarily supplied with it.

After mining the coal directly on the cliff became increasingly difficult, the Acadians began from around 1730 to trace the seams up to 30 km into the hinterland and to dig there, in the truest sense of the word, “coal pits”. The Forty Brine and Fundy Seams were probably mined with preference because they are the most thick.

The first large-scale commercial mining project, the mine of Major of the British Army Henry Cope, started in April 1731 and aimed at permanent supplies to Boston, but lasted only a year and a half until November 1732. Apparently, Cope had turned many Acadian settlers against him, by asking for lease for private digging for coal on his land. The settlers then instigated Indians to raid, destroy and plunder Cope's mines, warehouses and houses. When Cope was finally unable to pay wages to his Acadian workforce, the company collapsed with a loss of around £ 3,000 (equivalent to around £ 4 million by today's standards). Attempts to restart mining operations by Cope in 1733 failed.

In 1750, the British first made serious attempts to gain full control of Nova Scotia. As a result, the Acadians burned their settlements in the area, Beaubassin, Rivère des Hébert, Minoudy and Les Planches, and retreated in purpose-built forts northwest of the Missaguash River line in what is now New Brunswick ("Grand Dérangement"). This meant that coal production in the Joggins formation came to a complete standstill for the time being.

After the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1754, the British needed fuel for their three regiments in the Bay of Fundy. The then governor of Nova Scotia, Charles Lawrence, who had earned his merits as Lieutenant Colonel of the British Army in the deportation of the Acadians , asked the British government in 1756 for permission to be allowed to put the coal mines in the Joggins formation back into operation . In 1757 miners landed on the "South Joggins" together with a protective contingent and began mining coal. According to contemporary maps, the Queen or Joggins seams were mined, about half a kilometer south of the outcrop of the Fundy and Forty-Brine seams mined by the Acadians, which shows that the Acadians apparently already had these seams to a greater depth had cleared up.

After the end of the Seven Years' War, coal mining largely came to a standstill again. On the one hand, there were trade regulations to protect English coal producers, which forbade the sale of North American coal to New England, and on the other hand, in 1764 the land in which the Joggins coal was rested fell to the landowner Joseph De Barre, who showed little interest in coal mining. At most, academics who have returned to their old homeland could have dug for coal there from time to time.

During the American War of Independence (1775–1783) and the British-American War (1812) the occupation of Fort Cumberland, the former Fort Beauséjour, which was captured by the British in 1755, produced "considerable amounts of coal" there. Because the British, like in the Seven Years' War, preferred to mine the Joggins seam, this was given the name “King's Vein” (“Königsader”).

19th and 20th centuries
Outcrop of the Fundy seam (seam No. 29A according to Logan, 1845) in the cliff, approx. 900 m north of Coal Mine Point with remains of a tunnel and its pit timber (left in the picture). According to a dating of the pit timbers, the tunnel dates from the second half of the 19th century. It cannot be ruled out whether underground mining was already carried out in the Joggins Formation, but it has not yet been proven.
This photo of the gallery of the "Syndicate Mine" in Springhill, Nova Scotia, which was closed in 1958, should give a very good impression of the mines in the Cumberland district. Springhill is about 30 km east of Joggins and coal was not mined there in the Joggins Formation, but in the somewhat younger Springhill Mines Formation, which also belongs to the Cumberland Group and is exposed in the World Heritage Fossil Cliff.

In 1819 the second attempt to operate commercially coal mining in the Joggins formation was made. A certain Samuel McCully intended to sell the coal to St. John in New Brunswick , but stopped the operation, which never made a profit due to the strong English competition, but stopped again in 1821.

In 1827 the General Mining Association of Britain (GMA) leased all mines and mineral deposits in Nova Scotia. However, they initially concentrated on the coal fields of Sydney and Pictou and suppressed mining activities in Joggins. Nevertheless, in 1836 the geologist Abraham Gesner reported on miners originally from Cornwall who illegally extracted coal there. When the GMA finally opened its first but still comparatively small colliery in the Joggins seam in 1847, this was the beginning of the permanent commercial coal mining in Joggins. From this point on, the mining activity has been handed down in detail: At the beginning of the work, a tunnel was excavated from the outcrop of the "King's Vein" in the cliff face, but soon afterwards the extraction took place via an approximately 30 m deep shaft that is round 80 m from the coastline at that time. The coal was brought to light by a horse-powered winch, then transported over a sloping narrow-gauge track to a landing stage and loaded onto ships there. Annual production increased from 2400 t in 1851 to 8500 t in 1866.

In 1865, after the GMA had lost most of its mining rights in Nova Scotia under pressure from the provincial government, but was allowed to keep its concession in Joggins, a second mine, the so-called "New Mine", was created in the Fundy and Dirty seams. Initially, tunnels were dug into the cliff from above the high water mark, from which inclined shafts were driven to the outcrops on top of the cliff.

In 1871 the GMA gave up the "New Mine" and sold this part of the deposit to the Joggins Coal Mining Company (JCMC), which, after a brief interruption in 1872, began mining in the Fundy and Dirty seams via a newly constructed inclined shaft in the "Cumberland Colliery ”(“ Cumberland Colliery ”) continued. The entrance of this shaft was about half a kilometer inland from the cliff and reached a depth of about 82 m (270 ft). The winches used to pull out the coal were steam driven.

In the 1870s, the coal of the Fundy seam was considered particularly suitable for domestic use and was mainly burned in the stoves of St. John. After the great city fire in St. John in 1877, however, demand collapsed suddenly and the JCMC colliery had to close again. Coal mining in the Fundy and Dirty seams was suspended until 1903.

Dendrochronological examinations of the pit timbers , which today can be seen from the cliff face in some places, have shown that the corresponding pit structures date from the period of activity of the first mines of the GMA and the JCMC mine. It is unknown whether there was extensive underground mining in Joggins before that, but it cannot be ruled out.

In the late 19th and 20th centuries, in addition to those mentioned above, a number of other mining companies were active in the Joggins district and above all on the Hebert River, approx. 5 km further east. At the same time, routes in the Forty Brine, Queen, Kimberley and other seams were excavated. A special feature is the "Joggins # 7" colliery, whose entrance was where the Joggins Fossil Center is today. Between 1907 and 1927 inclined shafts and tunnels were driven from there to the west, below Chignecto Bay. It was one of the first, if not the first, of coal mining below the sea floor.

Many of the 83 underground mines of this era were only in operation for a few years, some were reopened after closure and then closed again shortly afterwards. In almost all seams, mining ceased in the 1950s and 60s, both in Joggins and on the Hebert River. In 1961 the last mine in Joggins closed with the “Bayview Mine” in the Forty Brine seam. In 1980, with the closure of the "Cochrane Mine" on the Hebert River in the Kimberley seam, the history of commercial coal mining in the Joggins Formation ended entirely. From 1847 until then, a total of 13 million tons of coal were mined.

Sandstone mining

The sandstones of the Joggins cliff were mainly mined for the production of millstones and whetstones. The mining, which began in the 18th century, did not take place in the Joggins Formation, but mainly in the Boss Point Formation, at the Lower Cove, about 3 km north of Joggins. These stones were very popular at the time and were mainly supplied to the east coast of the USA. The traces of stone extraction are still visible today: Half-finished millstones, which were damaged during the manufacturing process and therefore never completed, are scattered around the beach of Lower Cove, and heaps of overburden and stone unsuitable for grinding stone production can be found in the vicinity of the former quarries .

Joggins Fossil Center

Beach and stairs below the Joggins Fossil Center. In the background Coal Mine Point.
Skull of Eoraptor lunensis , a famous find (here a copy) from another World Heritage fossil site ( Ischigualasto , Argentina) in the exhibition of the Joggins Fossil Center.
The Joggins Fossil Center building.

The Joggins Fossil Center is located in the small community of Joggins up on the cliff near Coal Mine Point on the former site of the "Joggins # 7" colliery. It serves as an information center for tourists and is the starting point for any museum educational tour down to the beach. It should enable visitors to get a better insight into the geological history of the region and to be able to get a vivid picture of the Upper Carboniferous life, which is preserved in the rocks of the cliff. In addition, it should ensure that visitors familiarize themselves with the special rules that apply in the World Heritage area with regard to environmental and landscape protection. The Fossil Center houses an exhibition of fossils taken from the cliff, as well as specimens from other famous fossil sites. But the history of research and the history of coal mining is also represented with exhibits and display boards. The Fossil Center also has a café, a souvenir shop, conference rooms, toilets and a first aid station.

The Fossil Center also offers equipment and rooms for scientific and curatorial work. These are complemented by the various facilities in the Nova Scotia Museum in Halifax and in the Fundy Geological Museum in Parrsboro, u. a. the preparation workshops there .

literature

  • The heritage of the world: The 936 cultural and natural monuments of the world according to the conventions of UNESCO . Verlag Wolfgang Kunth, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-89944-817-7 .
  • Jenna Boon, John H. Calder: Nomination of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs for Inscription on the World Heritage List. 2007 ( PDF 107 MB, 1466 pages). Brochure to promote the Joggins Fossil Cliffs with a comprehensive brief overview of the world heritage site and extensive facilities, from legal texts on environmental and landscape protection to safety concepts and emergency plans to numerous current, peer-reviewed scientific publications, etc. a. to / to
    • History of science
      • Paper 1 - JH Calder: 'Coal Age Galapagos': Joggins and the Lions of Nineteenth Century Geology. Atlantic Geology, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2006, pp. 37-51
      • Paper 2 - HJ Falcon-Lang: A history of research at the Joggins Fossil Cliffs, Nova Scotia, Canada, the world's finest Pennsylvanian section. Proceedings of the Geologists Association. Vol. 117, No. 4, 2006, pp. 377-392
    • Paleecology
      • Paper 3 - JH Calder, MR Gibling, AC Scott, SJ Davies, BL Hebert: A fossil lycopsid forest succession in the classic Joggins section of Nova Scotia: paleoecology of a disturbance-prone Pennsylvanian wetland. Pp. 169-195 in S. Greb, WA DiMichele (Ed.): Wetlands Through Time. Geological Society of America Special Paper. Vol. 399, 2006
      • Paper 4 - HJ Falcon-Lang, MC Rygel, JH Calder, MR Gibling 2004. An early Pennsylvanian waterhole deposit and its fossil biota in a dryland alluvial plain setting, Joggins, Nova Scotia. Journal of the Geological Society of London. Vol. 161, No. 2, pp. 209-222
    • Fossil report and diversity analysis
      • Paper 11 - HJ Falcon-Lang, MJ Benton, SJ Braddy, SJ Davies: The Pennsylvanian tropical biome reconstructed from the Joggins Formation of Nova Scotia, Canada. Journal of the Geological Society of London, Vol. 163, No. 3, 2006, pp. 561-576
      • (not a peer-reviewed publication) HJ Falcon-Lang: Comparative Analysis of Pennsylvanian Fossil Sites. Bristol 2002
    • Sedimentology and Stratigraphy
      • Paper 12 - JH Calder, MC Rygel, RJ Ryan, MR Gibling, HJ Falcon-Lang, BL Hebert: Stratigraphy and sedimentology of early Pennsylvanian red beds at Lower Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada: the Little River Formation with redefinition of the Joggins Formation . Atlantic Geology, Vol. 41, No. 2-3, 2005, pp. 143-167
      • Paper 13 - SJ Davies, MR Gibling: Architecture of coastal and alluvial deposits in an extensional basin: the Carboniferous Joggins Formation of eastern Canada. Sedimentology, Vol. 50, No. 3, 2003, pp. 415-439
      • Paper 14 - SJ Davies, MR Gibling, MC Rygel, JH Calder, DM Skilliter: The Pennsylvanian Joggins Formation of Nova Scotia: sedimentological log and stratigraphic framework of the historic fossil cliffs. Atlantic Geology, Vol. 41, No. 2-3, 2005, pp. 115-142
  • JH Calder, MR Gibling, M. Gray, PK Mukhopadhyay, MC Rygel, MR Stimson: Coals and Organic Deposits of The Joggins Fossil Cliffs World Heritage Site. Field Trip of the Annual Meeting of The Society for Organic Petrology, Halifax, August 3, 2011 ( online )
  • United Nations Environment Program / World Conservation Monitoring Center (UNEP / WCMC): The Joggins Fossil Cliffs, Nova Scotia, Canada . World Heritage Information Sheet, IUCN, 2007–2011 ( online in a package with info sheets on other places included in the World Heritage by April 2013, sorted by country, link leads to countries A – L, ZIP file , 17 MB)

Web links

Commons : Joggins Fossil Cliffs  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ Note: 'Fossil Cliffs' or 'Fossilkliff' here refers to the active cliff of a recent abrasion coast , which consists of fossil-rich rocks, and not the fossil cliff of a prehistoric abrasion coast, such as that of the cliff line of the Swabian Alb or the fossil cliff on the Steigerberg in the Pfalz.
  2. ↑ a b Calder (2006): Coal age Galapagos. (see literature list "Paper 1")
  3. ↑ Note: The coordinates mark the western exit of Downing Cove. The name "Downing Head" also stands for the headland a little further west, north of Boss Cove ( 45 ° 44 ′ 57 ″ N 64 ° 26 ′ 00 ″ W ), on which the coastline, from the south, towards Boss Point or Boss Cove, turn east towards Downing Cove.
  4. ↑ Note: The coordinate 45 ° 40 ′ 24 ″ N, 64 ° 23 ′ 09 ″ W given in the UNEP / WCMC / IUCN Information Sheet (see literature ) is incorrect. It marks a point on the Hebert River, about 10 km east of Ragged Reef Point.
  5. ^ A b Charles Lyell: Travels in North America, Canada, and Nova Scotia with Geological Observations. Second Edition, John Murray, London 1855, pp. 176–203 ( scanned microfiche on archive.org )
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m H. J. Falcon-Lang: Earliest history of coal mining and grindstone quarrying at Joggins, Nova Scotia, and its implications for the meaning of the place name “Joggins”. Atlantic Geology. Vol. 45, 2009, pp. 1–21, doi : 10.4138 / atlgeol.2009.001
  7. ↑ a b c d e Wiliam E. Logan: A section of the Nova Scotia coal measures as developed at Joggins on the Bay of Fundy, in descending order, from the neighborhood of the west Ragged Reef to Minudie, reduced vertical thickness. Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada. Vol. 4, 1844-1845, Appendix W, pp. 28-45. - Republished in the Proceedings and Transactions of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1908, pp. 419-499 ( online )
  8. ↑ Note: The carbonic Cumberland Basin is not to be confused with the Cumberland Basin, which forms the Cumberland Bay, the side bay at the northeast end of Chignecto Bay. This is geologically younger and also much smaller.
  9. ↑ Davies et al. (2005): The Pennsylvanian Joggins Formation of Nova Scotia. (see bibliography "Paper 15"); see also concepts / definitions of the Joggins formation in earlier authors
  10. ^ Falcon-Lang (2002): Comparative Analysis of Pennsylvanian Fossil Sites. P. 38 (see literature list )
  11. ↑ Falcon-Lang et al. (2006): Pennsylvanian tropical biome reconstructed. P. 567 (see bibliography "Paper 11")
  12. Jump up ↑ JH Calder, AC Scott, AC Milner: The Tree Hollow Fauna of Joggins: Ockham's Razor Fells the Pitfall Theory. North American Paleontology Convention, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, June 19-25, 2005, Programs and Abstracts. Paleobios. Vol. 25, No. 2 (Supplementum), 2005, p. 28 ( PDF 128 kB)
  13. ^ Matt Stimson, Spencer G. Lucas, Gloria Melanson: The Smallest Known Tetrapod Footprints: Batrachichnus salamandroides from the Carboniferous of Joggins, Nova Scotia, Canada. Ichnos: An International Journal for Plant and Animal Traces. Vol. 19, No. 3, 2012, pp. 127-140, doi : 10.1080 / 10420940.2012.685206
  14. ^ John William Dawson, Air-Breathers of the Coal Period: A Descriptive Account of the Remains of Land Animals Found in the Coal Formation of Nova Scotia with Remarks on their Bearing on Theories of the Formation of Coal and of the Origin of Species. Dawson Brothers, Montreal 1863, 81 p. ( Scanned microfiche on archive.org )
  15. ↑ Note: The opposite coast of the Maringouin Peninsula belonging to New Brunswick was called "North Joggins" ( Lyell, 1855 ), see also the origin of the name .
  16. ^ Charles Lyell, John W. Dawson: On the Remains of a Reptile ( Dendrerpeton Acadianum , Wyman and Owen) and of a Land Shell discovered in the Interior of an Erect Fossil Tree in the Coal Measures of Nova Scotia. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society. Vol. 9, 1853, pp. 58-67 (including J. Wyman: Notes on the Reptilian Remains. Pp. 64-66, and R. Owen: Notes on the above-described Fossil Remains. Pp. 66-67) ( Full text on BHL )
  17. ↑ See various digitized editions of this classic on Darwin Online .
  18. ^ A b John William Dawson: Acadian Geology. The geological structure, organic remains and mineral resources of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. 1855 ( archive.org ), 2nd edition 1868 ( doi : 10.5962 / bhl.title.38560 ), 3rd edition 1878, 4th edition 1891 ( doi : 10.5962 / bhl.title.38814 )
  19. ↑ John William Dawson: On a Terrestrial Mollusk, a Chilognathous Myriapod, and some New Species of Reptiles, from the Coal-Formation of Nova Scotia. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society. Vol. 16, 1860, pp. 268–277 ( full text on BHL )
  20. ^ Othniel Charles Marsh: Description of the Remains of a New Enaliosaurian ( Eosaurus acadianus ), from the Coal Formation of Nova Scotia. American Journal of Science and Arts, 2nd Series. Vol. 34, 1862, pp. 1–16 ( full text on BHL )
  21. ↑ George Frederic Matthew: On Batrachian and other Footprints from the Coal Measures of Joggins, NS Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick. No. 21 (Vol. 5, Part 1), 1903, pp. 103-108 ( full text on archive.org )
  22. ^ Walter A. Bell: Joggins Carboniferous Section, Nova Scotia. Summary Report of the Geological Survey, Department of Mines, for the Calendar Year 1912. Ottawa 1914 ( online )
  23. ↑ Note: Steen later married the vertebrate paleontologist James Brough and together with him published several papers on permocarbon tetrapods.
  24. ^ Margaret C. Steen: The Amphibian Fauna from the South Joggins. Nova Scotia. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. Jhrg. 1934 (Vol. 104), pp. 465-504, doi : 10.1111 / j.1096-3642.1934.tb01644.x
  25. ^ A b Robert L. Carroll: The earliest reptiles. Journal of the Linnean Society (Zoology). Vol. 45, No. 304, 1964, pp. 61-83, doi : 10.1111 / j.1096-3642.1964.tb00488.x
  26. ↑ Note: Carroll emphasizes in his work that Dawson (1863, p. 47) also initially took the view that Hylonomus was a reptile. The order Microsauria (literally: 'tiny reptiles') established by him is largely defined by Hylonomus . Later, however, the taxonomic concept of the microsauria was changed so much and aligned with other genera - they are now considered a subgroup of the Lepospondyli  - that Carroll Hylonomus as a "real" reptile should have assigned to another group, the Captorhinomorpha. To put this into perspective, it should be added that in Dawson's early times a sharp distinction between early amniotes and early non-amniotic tetrapods ("Batrachians") was generally not yet made. This not least because neither the term “amniot” was particularly widespread at the time ( coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866 , but subsequently hardly considered in palaeontology) and because, due to a lack of comparative material, early non-amniotes from which were strongly adapted to rural life converged early “real” amniotes could not yet be distinguished. So it is not surprising that the first tetrapod species described from Joggins, Dendrerpeton acadianum , today classified under the Temnospondyli, was also called "reptile" at the time. The fact that Dawson attached the concept of the microsauria to Hylonomus of all things is more a coincidence.
  27. ↑ Robert R. Reisz, Sean P. Modesto: Archerpeton anthracos from the Joggins Formation of Nova Scotia: a microsaur, not a reptile. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. Vol. 33, No. 5, 1996, pp. 703-709, doi : 10.1139 / e96-053
  28. ^ Falcon-Lang (2002): Comparative Analysis of Pennsylvanian Fossil Sites. P. 52, fig. 9 (see literature list )
  29. ↑ a b c d e f Sarah L. Quann, Amanda B. Young, Colin P. Laroque, Howard J. Falcon-Lang, Gibling R. Martin: Dendrochronological dating of coal mine workings at the Joggins Fossil Cliffs, Nova Scotia, Canada . Atlantic Geology. Vol. 46, 2010, pp. 185-194, doi : 10.4138 / atlgeol.2010.011
  30. ^ A b c E. H. Hennick: Joggins - River Hebert - Chignecto: a Summary of Coal Mining Operations for the Years 1715–1997. Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources, Mineral Resources Branch, Open File Report ME 2011-001, Halifax 2011 ( online )
  31. ↑ For details on the quarrying and processing of the stones, see Peter Latta: The Lower Cove Grindstone Quarries. IA. The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology. Vol. 11, No. 1, 1985, pp. 67-72 ( JSTOR 40968072 )