Living Landscapes

Natural History
A Compendium of Environmental and Resource Information

Earliest Beginnings

Half a billion years ago, where the Columbia Basin is now, seawaters lapped at the shores of an ancient continent. The earth was already old by then - old enough for mountains to have formed and eroded, their rocks ground by countless eons of wind and water erosion to become sediment deposited in a shallow coastal sea.

Click icon to enlarge graph

Those sediments, from a time called the Cambrian (see table, below) washed in from distant lands to preserve some of the oldest animals in the Columbia Basin. The 10,000 years since humans arrived in the Columbia Basin, coinciding roughly with the extinction of large mammals like mastodons and giant cave bears, is called the Holocene. It represents only 0.01% of the time that has elapsed since the first record of life in the Columbia Basin. The following table gives examples of recorded life in the Columbia Basin at each time interval. More detailed information on each time interval follows the table.

The names of geologic time intervals occasionally change as scientists gain new understanding and as scientists from different parts of the world attempt to standardize their naming systems. For the current naming structure, see Life in Stone: A natural history of British Columbia's fossils by Ludvigsen, referenced below. In this summary, only the time intervals of particular relevance to the Columbia Basin are mentioned.

Geologic time and the emergence of life in the Columbia Basin

Vendian 660-550 million years ago	Only very simple, primitive life-forms occurred. Sandstones of this age are widewpread in the Rocky Mountain part of the Columbia Basin, but the only fossils found so far are a few tracks and burrows ("trace fossils").
Cambrian 550-500 million years ago	Soft-bodied animal fossils in formerly shallow marine seas (now deep rocks) in the Burgess Shale formation at Field, B.C.; Trilobites at Cranbrook, Fort Steele and Mount Stephen, Yoho National Park.
Ordovician 500 -440 million years ago	Stromatoporoid (sponge-like animals), brachiopods and corals in limestones at Top of the World Provincial Park; conodont fossils at Golden.
Silurian 440-410 million years ago	Trilobites, brachiopods and corals in limestones above the Columbia River at Radium.
Devonian 410-360 million years ago	Brachiobods and corals are common in limestones and shales along the Columbia River.
Carboniferous 360-290 million years ago	Brachiopods, crinoids and corals are found in limestones which originated with marine sediments and were later uplifted in the Rocky Mountains.
Permian 290-250 million years ago	Conglomerates and chert with few fossils are found in the Rocky Mountans.
Triassic 250-210 million years ago	Shales and limestones with ammonites and clams occur in the Crowsnest Pass area.
Jurassic 210-140 million years ago	Dinosaurs, marine reptiles, pterodactyls, flowering plants and birds were characteristic of the period. Shales with ammonites are found in the Crowsnest Pass area.
Cretaceous 140-65 million years ago	Thick sandstones with plant fossils and coal seams occur in the Crowsnest Pass area. Although tyrannosaurs, hadrosaurs, ankylosaurs and ceratopsids roamed coniferous forests in adjacent regions at the time, only rare dinosaur fossils (such as an ornithopod dinosaur at Fernie) and dinosaur footprints have been found in the Columbia Basin.
Tertiary 65 to 2 million years ago	Early rodents, rabbits, deer and marsupials have been found on the Flathead River.
Pleistocene 2 million to 10,000 years ago	Small horses, giant bison, Columbia mammoth, Imperial mammoth, giant sloth, mastodon, cave bear, dire wolf, saber-tooth cat and helmeted muskox occurred in adjacent regions, but have not been found in the Columbia Basin (yet).
Holocene 10,000 years ago to present	Humans, mountain goat, elk deer, moose, bighorn sheep, salmon; forests and grasslands still responding to glacial retreat.

Living Landscapes


	Copyright © Royal BC Museum All rights reserved