Joggins’ Fossil Cliffs – UNESCO World Heritage Site

On our road trip last Saturday, we ventured to Joggins, Nova Scotia to see the newly designated, World UNESCO Heritage site.

Joggins is on the Bay of Fundy and has world famous cliffs full of fossils from the coal age.

We knew we had to hit the site at low tide, because the tides there are over 15 feet and the fossils are under the way for a portion of the day! We got there shortly before 10am and ventured along the beach to search for signs of prehistoric life!

There was a group of children staying over at the site for the weekend, and they had signed out all of the hard hats, so we were on our own! But warned to not go within two car-lengths of the cliffs or we stood a good chance of being hit on the head by falling rocks and boulders.

Oh! And don’t forget to get back to the stairs by 3pm or you’ll get caught by the rising tide!

There was a coal mine at the site before that closed up for good in the 1960’s. There is evidence of an old wharf near the stair case going down to the beach level, and coal pieces are still scattered amongst the rocks on the beach.

Here is an entire vein of coal.

The fossils we found were all of plants and trees. They were 300 million years old, but some of them you could feel the texture left from the imprint of the vegetation.

Here is a dead fish that didn’t make it out with the tide. Jeff said it is a skate.

Who knew that Christopher Columbus even walked along this beach? 😀

The trees were tropical trees – as big as 30 metres high they think. The bark is similar to a palm tree:

If you ever visit Joggins, be very leery of these green, algae covered rocks. They are as slippery as ice.

In case you thought I had odd dimensional hands, that quarter should clear up any photo scale confusion. 😉 That is a fossil of a stick of some sort.

Plant or amphibian? I am not sure, but you could feel the texture like it was just imprinted.

The one on the left was a cookie slice of a tree – way way cool. If there was any fossil I would want, it was that one. But you aren’t allowed to take any so when you go, see if you can find it!