Tropical Nanaimo!
Geoscience for central Vancouver Island communities
Life 80 million years ago
The sedimentary rocks beneath Nanaimo record an environment very different from that of today. Sand, gravel, and mud eroded from coastal mountains accumulated along shorelines and on the seafloor. Decaying vegetation in swamps accumulated as layers of peat that later transformed into coal, oil, and gas. Eighty million-year-old fossil leaves, flowers, nuts, turtles, clams, snails, lobsters, crabs, and sharks can all be found in the sedimentary rocks. Some of the animals, including ammonites, mosasaurs, and elasmosaurs, are long extinct.
