Partridge Island (Nova Scotia) - Fossils and Dinosaurs

Fossils and Dinosaurs

Since 1970 when the American paleontologist Paul E. Olsen discovered a neck vetebra of a long-necked dinosaur known as a prosauropod near Parrsboro, the north shore of the Minas Basin has been recognized as an important source of fossils. In 1984, for example, amateur rock specialist Eldon George discovered the world's smallest dinosaur footprints at Wasson Bluff about 10 kilometres from Partridge Island. Then, in 1986, Olsen and two colleagues announced they had retrieved 100,000 fossilized bones including some belonging to the oldest dinosaurs ever found in Canada.

The cliffs at Partridge Island have not yielded such spectacular fossil finds, but Sarah Fowell, one of Olsen's students, gathered evidence in rocks at the island concerning a mass extinction of ancient animals about 200 million years ago at the boundary between the Triassic and Jurassic periods. She found what has been described as "a rapid and dramatic changeover" from the wide diversity of Triassic plant life to the much-lower diversity characteristic of the early Jurassic. Olsen said at the time that her findings were consistent with the theory that a giant asteroid collided with the Earth causing the mass extinction which allowed the dinosaurs to flourish unopposed. (Some scientists believe it was also an asteroid collision that wiped out the dinosaurs themselves about 135 million years later.) More recently, however, scientists have theorized that massive volcanic eruptions may have led to the extinctions.