Today required a good deal of time in the car. We had to drive to the Joggins Fossil Center. Our guided tour did not begin until 12:30; I picked that time because the tides would be going out, allowing us to walk on the beach. Fortunately, we did not see any moose on the highway while driving there - sometimes traffic gets shut down in Nova Scotia if too many moose are near the highways.
Joggins is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is a long stretch of beach that contains rocks that are rich in fossils from the Carboniferous Period (both the Mississipian and Pennsylvannian eras) - which is when the continents of Earth were all joined together to form the Pangea super continent. This era predates the dinosaurs by millions of years. The fossils show the primitive early land plants. The oldest known fossil of a reptile was found here.
It was a good thing that we took the guided tour. Otherwise the land would have looked just like a rocky beach. The guide told us what we were looking at, and explained a lot of geology. She pointed out a number of fossils as we walked along the beach, and described conditions in that long ago era. For example, the oxygen content in the atmosphere was much higher than it is today (21%). Since insects breathe through their exoskeleton, air that is richer in oxygen allowed the insects to grow to much greater size than we see today. There were millipedes that were 8 feet long!
After Joggins, we drove to Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick. It was 4 PM in the afternoon and light mist was falling. We arrived near low tide, which meant we were able to walk on the ocean floor. The powerful tides of the Bay of Fundy have carved the rocks at Hopewell into interesting shapes. We walked for about a kilometer on the ocean floor, beneath arches and peering up at rocks balancing on columns that were being slowly eroded away with each tide.
We stopped for dinner of a Hawaiian pizza before reaching our overnight lodging at Marshlands.
This map hangs on the wall at the Hopewell Rocks Visitor Center. The black arrow points to Hopewell Rocks. I added the
text identifying the location of Joggins Fossil Center, the Bay of Fundy, and Prince Edward Island. This is the trail map at the Hopewell Rocks, posted on the sign board near the entrance.
Panorama Photos
