The Devonian: Age of Fishes

• In search of our origins
  • Records of past life
    • The notion of geologic time
    • The history of the Devonian System
  • Witnesses to evolution
  • A lost world
    • Tectonic context
    • Paleogeography
    • Climate
    • A Devonian day
  • Life in crisis
    • The Late Devonian extinction event
• The plant world
  • The conquest of land
  • The first forests
  • The plants of Miguasha
    • Protobarinophyton
    • Archaeopteris
    • Spermasporites
    • Spores by the millions
• The animal world
  • Life in the sea
  • The diversification of fish
  • Toward the first tetrapods
  • The animals of Miguasha
    • A window through time
      • Representativity
      • Fossil quality
      • Specimens by the thousands
    • The food chain
      • Of predators and prey
      • Stomach contents
      • Coprolites
    • Invertebrates
      • The aquatic environment
      • Land-based communities
    • Vertebrates
      • Jawless fish
        • Anaspids
        • Osteostracans
      • Jawed fish
        • Placoderms
          • Antiarchs
          • Arthrodires
        • Acanthodians
        • Actinopterygians
        • Sarcopterygians
          • Actinistians
          • Porolepiforms
          • Dipnoi
          • Osteolepiforms
          • Elpistostegalians

Localization systems

During the first century of fossil hunting at the Miguasha site, researchers had a tendency to extract fossils without recording their exact location in the cliff.(96 kb) Occasionally, collectors would take the time to record a few details about where they found their specimen, but this was not the general rule.

Around the turn of the 19th century, the Englishman M. Jex identified eight main layers that he thought represented the richest fossil zones. Later, in 1938, Graham-Smith divided the formation into 18 distinct lithological and biostratigraphic zones. The following year, Loris Shano Russell of the Royal Ontario Museum defined five fossiliferous zones that did not display continuity with each other. In 1982, Hesse and Sawh of McGill University in Montreal proposed that the entire Escuminac Formation be divided into eight stratigraphic units representing large-scale sedimentation cycles. These main units are still used today.

(100 kb)Since 1989, the location of each collected fossil is assigned to one of 394 catalogued sedimentary beds. In addition, the main section of the cliff is divided into forty-two 50-m long sections from east to west to allow a specific spot to be quickly located. These divisions are for geographic reference purposes only and do not take into account the stratigraphy. Because beds may extend over great distances and display significant lateral variations, the location of a fossil and its associated sedimentary characteristics is now systematically defined using a combination of bed number and geographic section.

Miguasha: A story written in stone

• The Gaspé Peninsula: A world of oceans and mountains
  • The birth of the Appalachians
  • The closing of an ocean
  • A sea of fossils
  • Faunal realms
  • Devonian lands in the Gaspé Peninsula
• The Miguasha Group
  • The Fleurant Formation
  • The Escuminac Formation
    • Geological characteristics
    • Localization systems
    • Biostratigraphy
    • An ancient estuary
    • An environment of exceptional preservation
• Of cliffs and men
  • The Seigniory of Shoolbred
  • A World Heritage Site
  • Miguasha fossils around the world
  • The geology craze of the 19th century
  • The first discoveries
  • Scientists come to Miguasha
  • Links to Scotland
  • Local fossil hunters
  • Erik Jarvik and the Prince of Miguasha
  • The birth of the Miguasha project
  • The 1991 International Symposium
• Le Parc national de Miguasha
  • Protecting a unique heritage
  • Fossil digs and research
  • The on-site museum

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Localization systems
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© Miguasha National Park 2007

Title: Numbering the beds
Author: Parc national de Miguasha
Sources: Parc national de Miguasha
Year: 1990

Description:
Each of the sedimentary beds in the Escuminac Formation is assigned a number. It is as part of a system that allows the location of each specimen to be precisely recorded.

Title: A fossil excavation site
Author: Fred Klus
Sources: Parc national de Miguasha
Year: 1983

Description:
Preparing a site at the Miguasha cliff for systematic fossil digging in 1983. The excavation site is in a section of the cliff immediately behind the Natural History Museum and is still being excavated more than twenty years later.