Columbia Valley Guide
History & Heritage
Burgess Shale discovery changes understanding of evolution
Discovery pushes fossil record back 200 million years.
Canada’s 505 million year-old Burgess Shale fossil beds, located in Yoho National Park, have yielded yet another major scientific discovery – this time with the unearthing of a strange phallus-shaped creature.
A study to be published online in the journal Nature on March 13 confirms Spartobranchus tenuis is a member of the acorn worms, seldom-seen animals that thrive today in the fine sands and mud of shallow and deeper waters. Acorn worms – also known as enteropneusts – are themselves part of the hemichordates, a group of marine animals closely related to today’s sea stars and sea urchins.
“Unlike animals with teeth and bones, these spaghetti-shaped creatures were soft-bodied, so the fossil record for them is ...Full story
Conrad Kain interpretive sign
The Conrad Kain Centennial Society has planted another interpretive sign in the valley celebrating Canada’s premiere historic mountain guide. This time, mountaineer Conrad Kain, who was based in Wilmer until his death in 1934, shares the stage with a Catholic nun.
Sister Ethelbert (nee Marie-Madeleine Newlen) was a member of the Order of the Sisters of Providence who visited the upper Columbia in 1894 on behalf of the Saint Mary’s Hospital in New Westminster. Her mission, as with many previous in other parts of B.C., was to raise money for the support of the hospital. She travelled up the river from Golden on Captain Armstrong’s sternwheeler and died in New Westminster soon after the arduous journey. Captain Armstrong subsequently named the prominent 3176-m mountain within sight of the ...Full story
Burgess Shale — Yoho’s ‘sea floor’ high in the Rockies
Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan and the Royal Ontario Museum have discovered the footprints of a 500-million-year-old arthropod on the ‘sea floor’ above the tree line near Emerald Lake in Yoho National Park. (Photos by Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation)
New discovery of 500-million-year-old arthropod.
On November 9, 2011, just over a century after Charles Doolittle Walcott made his first fossil discovery in the Burgess Shale, researchers from the University of Saskatchewan and the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) announced the first discovery of tracks –- the footprints of a Tegopelte gigas, a caterpillar-like animal, with a smooth dorsal carapace (shell) and 33 pairs of legs and whose size could reach up to 30 cm in length. It was one of the largest arthropods to roam the ...Full story
Fairmont Indian baths
On a little knoll about a minute’s hike up from the Fairmont Hot Springs parking lot, lies a real treasure. Sitting on a plateau of tufa rock coloured orange, brown, green and blue by the streams of spring water that leap out of the rocks above, is a very old stone bathhouse.
Fairmont Indian baths are natural hot spring pools that were popular among early settlers of the valley. It is not known why they were called ‘Indian’ baths. At the time that explorer David Thompson described them in his journal, there was no building.
“There is much petrified wood. From many places a white siliceous water was trickling … it is a strange fact that the hot spas, so common in Europe, in the great extent of my travels have never been seen by me nor do the Indians know of any.”
Later a stone ...Full story
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History & Heritage
