Blue Beach is a stretch of cliff-bordered coastline at

Avonport, Nova Scotia Avonport is a community in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada, located in Kings County between the mouths of the Avon River and the Gaspereau River. Early settlers included the Fillis and Reid families. It was part of the Horton Township sett ...

near the mouth of the along the Avon River in the southern bight of

Minas Basin The Minas Basin () is an inlet of the Bay of Fundy and a sub-basin of the Fundy Basin located in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is known for its extremely high tides. Geography The Minas Basin forms the eastern part of the Bay of Fundy which splits ...

Kings County, Nova Scotia Kings County is a county in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Nova Scotia. With a population of 62,914 in the 2021 Census, Kings County is the third most populous county in the province. It is located in central Nova Sco ...

, Canada. It is best known as a globally significant fossil location for

Lagerstätte A Fossil-Lagerstätte (, from ''Lager'' 'storage, lair' '' Stätte'' 'place'; plural ''Lagerstätten'') is a sedimentary deposit that preserves an exceptionally high amount of palaeontological information. ''Konzentrat-Lagerstätten'' preserv ...

of the

Tournaisian The Tournaisian is in the ICS geologic timescale the lowest stage or oldest age of the Mississippian, the oldest subsystem of the Carboniferous. The Tournaisian age lasted from Ma to Ma. It is preceded by the Famennian (the uppermost st ...

Stage (Lower Carboniferous) period.

Geographic setting

Blue Beach is informally named. The name relates to the bluish-black colour of the cliffs. It stretches from a small creek to Avonport Station. The

tidal range Tidal range is the difference in height between high tide and low tide. Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and Sun, by Earth's rotation and by centrifugal force caused by Earth's prog ...

in this part of Minas Basin may be as high as . The nearest town is

Hantsport Hantsport is an unincorporated community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located in West Hants Regional Municipality. The community is situated at the western boundary between West Hants Regional Municipality and Kings County, along ...

, approximately to the south. The beach is accessible on foot from the end of the Blue Beach Road or from Avonport Station. There is a small private museum near the parking lot before the trail to the beach. It contains numerous excellent and important examples of fossils from the beach. The tides make for dangerous conditions because visitors can find themselves trapped. Visitors should familiarize themselves with the Hantsport tide table (see external references). In addition to the tides, the cliffs are quite fragile with rocks regularly giving way. Care should be taken when approaching the cliffs due to the potential of rockfall and earth flows.

Geologic setting

The section is exposed in rocks of the

Carboniferous The Carboniferous ( ) is a Geologic time scale, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era that spans 60 million years, from the end of the Devonian Period Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the ...

Maritimes Basin. The Maritimes Basin opened and filled between ca. 360 Ma and 325 Ma. The Blue Beach cliffs consist of soft shales and sandstones of the Horton Group. They erode rapidly because of the high tides in combination with winter freeze-thaw and ice shaving conditions, thus continuously creating opportunities for new discoveries. Closer to the trail and lower in the sequence is the Blue Beach Member and further along is the Hurd Creek Member. Blue Beach is the type locality for the apparent gap in the

tetrapod A tetrapod (; from Ancient Greek :wiktionary:τετρα-#Ancient Greek, τετρα- ''(tetra-)'' 'four' and :wiktionary:πούς#Ancient Greek, πούς ''(poús)'' 'foot') is any four-Limb (anatomy), limbed vertebrate animal of the clade Tetr ...

fossil record known as

Romer's gap Romer's gap is an apparent gap in the Paleozoic tetrapod fossil record noted in the studies of paleontology and evolutionary biology, which represent periods in the Early Carboniferous from which excavators have not yet found relevant transition ...

. Sir William Logan, the first Director of the Geological Survey of Canada, found footprints from a tetrapod in 1841. It remains one of very few such outcrops in the world; the others are in Scotland. In recent decades, numerous tetrapod fossils dating from the earliest Carboniferous have been found.

Flora

Flora include

Lepidodendron ''Lepidodendron'' is an extinct genus of primitive lycopodian vascular plants belonging the order Lepidodendrales. It is well preserved and common in the fossil record. Like other Lepidodendrales, species of ''Lepidodendron'' grew as large-tree ...

Calamites ''Calamites'' is a genus of Extinction, extinct arborescent (tree-like) horsetails to which the modern horsetails (genus ''Equisetum'') are closely related. Unlike their Herbaceous plant, herbaceous modern cousins, these plants were medium-size ...

, Aneimites, Diplotnema, Carpolithus, Genselina. In addition, countless spores can be found. Surface exposure of the base of a couple of trees on Blue Beach.JPG, Photograph of exposed fossil tree bases at Blue Beach, Nova Scotia. Blue_Beach_Lepidodendron.jpg, A well-preserved section of ''Lepidodendron'' from Blue Beach.

Fauna

Fauna includes tetrapods, fish, arthropods (horseshoe crabs, trilobites and ostracods) and shells. Fish material is quite common, but articulated bones are very rare. Most common are scales, small ribs and teeth. Uncommon are larger bones including fin spines, jaws, cranial material, clavicles, limb bones and pelvic bones. Arthropods include Paleolimulus woodae, an extinct horseshoe crab. Contrary to some erroneous reports in the popular press, it is not the world's oldest horseshoe crab (Order Xiphosurida), but is scientifically instead the oldest paleolimulid (Family Paleolimulidae). It is known from two examples found by visitors - including a Grade 4 student. The species name honors Sonja Wood who runs the Blue Beach Museum and has studied the fossils for many years along with her husband Chris Mansky.

Trilobite Trilobites (; meaning "three-lobed entities") are extinction, extinct marine arthropods that form the class (biology), class Trilobita. One of the earliest groups of arthropods to appear in the fossil record, trilobites were among the most succ ...

s are also rarely found. This is interesting because trilobites are marine, whereas the majority of the Blue Beach location is seen as a lacustrine deposit. The trilobites found thus far are restricted to a thick layer. Fish fossils include Elonichthys, Rhadinichthys, Canobius, '' Letognathus'', ?Ctenodus,

Gyracanthides ''Gyracanthides'' is an extinct genus of Acanthodii, acanthodian gnathostome, known from Devonian to Mississippian (geology), Early Carboniferous. Description ''Gyracanthides'' is large Acanthodii, acanthodian, ''G. murrayi'' reached the lengt ...

, Gyracanthus,

Acanthodidae Acanthodiformes (alternatively spelled Acanthodida) is an Order (biology), order of "Acanthodii, acanthodians" which lived from the Early Devonian to the Early Permian. Members of the order have been found Cosmopolitan distribution, worldwide in ...

, and

Bothriolepis ''Bothriolepis'' (from , 'trench' and 'scale') was a widespread, abundant and diverse genus of antiarch placoderms that lived during the Middle to Late Devonian period of the Paleozoic Era. Historically, ''Bothriolepis'' resided in an array ...

. '' Letognathus'' was originally assigned to ''Rhizodus'' in the mid 1800s and later to ''Strepsodus''. This includes the species ''Rhizodus'' (now ''Letognathus'') ''hardingi'' of Dawson, named after a Dr. Harding of Windsor, Nova Scotia. Similarly, Dawson's ''Acrolepis'' is now attributed to ''Elonichthys'' and his ''Palaeoniscus'' is attributed to ''Canobis''. Tetrapod fossils include acanthostegids, ichthyostegids, tulerpetontids, whatcheeriids, and

embolomeres Embolomeri is an order of tetrapods or stem-tetrapods, possibly members of Reptiliomorpha. Embolomeres first evolved in the Early Carboniferous ( Mississippian) Period and were the largest and most successful predatory tetrapods of the Late Carbon ...

. Blue_Beach_shell.jpg, Shell Blue_Beach_fish_scale.jpg, Fish scales Blue BEach jawbone.jpg, Fish jawbone with tooth Blue_Beach_clavicle.jpg, Clavicle Blue Beach fish fossils Dawson.jpg, Figure of fish fossils from Dawson's Acadian Geology

Trace fossils

Trace fossils are common. Examples include tetrapod footprints, fish fin trails, arthropod trackways, wave ripples, mud cracks, rain drops, and bromolites - including coprolites, fossilized dung. The tetrapod footprints and trackways are particularly important due to their age. They are reasonably common at Blue Beach, with over 2000 specimens known. Prints of tetrapods from this era can exhibit

polydactyly Polydactyly is a birth defect that results in extra fingers or toes. The hands are more commonly involved than the feet. Extra fingers may be painful, affect self-esteem, or result in clumsiness. It is associated with at least 39 genetic mut ...

, or more than five digits per limb., however the specimens from Blue Beach are all pentadactyl (five digits) or are at least functionally pentadactyl. Six morphotypes have been identified so far. Several types of arthropod trace fossils are found including trackways of ''

Diplichnites ''Diplichnites'' are arthropod trackways with two parallel rows of blunt to elongate, closely spaced tracks oriented approximately perpendicularly to the mid-line of the trackway. The term is more often used for the ichnofossils of this descript ...

'' and ''Diplopodichnus'' (possibly millipedes), ''

Rusophycus ''Rusophycus'' is an ichnogenus of trace fossil (fossil records of lifeforms' movement, rather than of the lifeforms themselves) allied to '' Cruziana''. ''Rusophycus'' is the resting trace, recording the outline of the tracemaker; ''Cruziana' ...

'' (possibly trilobites), ''Paleohelcura'' (scorpions), and ''Arborichnus''. Raindrop_impressions_mcr1.jpg, Photograph of trace raindrop impressions from Blue Beach. Blue_Beach_coprolites.jpg, Fish coprolites from Blue Beach.

Museum

From 2000 onward, a small museum formed in a barn near Blue Beach has displayed fossils from it, as founded by Chris Mansky and Sonja Wood. The museum plans to expand to a larger facility.

References

Finck,P.W. and Utting,D. J. (2010
Coastal Hazard Assessment Along the Blue Beach Fossil Cliffs, Kings County
''In'' Mineral Resources Branch, Report of Activities 2010; Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources, Report ME 2011-1, p. 29-39.

External links

Hantsport Tide tableBlue Beach Fossil Museum
{{Coord, 45, 05, 54, N, 64, 12, 54, W, display=title Fossil trackways Geology of Nova Scotia Fossil parks in Canada Paleontology in Nova Scotia