This UNESCO World Heritage Site is on the Nova Scotia side of the Bay of Fundy, and it is a remarkable area for fossils. The high cliffs in the background have tilted layers, so that if you walk north (left) you go back in time and south forward. I took the tour at low tide, because the high tide rises 30 feet over where I took the photo above. The tidal erosion is harsh, so that we heard and saw several small rockfalls in 90 minutes. As a result, new fossils are constantly being revealed.

Most of the discoveries date to the Carboniferous Period or the coal age. That’s after the age of fishes and before dinosaurs, although they did find a very small reptile here which was identified as one of the first reptiles to lay eggs out of the water, the first time our ancestors could live away from the sea. Most of the fossils are of marine life, algae and plants, including giant fern-like trees that grew over 100’ tall, leaving copies of themselves in stone that formed in their hollow trunks. We also found some 12” wide tracks of a giant 150 pound bug with lots of little legs.

Most of our fossil fuel comes from this 75 million year long Carboniferous Period. So when someone claims that fossil fuels are sustainable, ‘the same as burning an ancient forest’, you can tell them that we are actually burning maybe a million global forests every year at current rates. And then you can tell them that’s not at all sustainable and is obviously changing our global climate very quickly.

Many ages have ended in mass extinctions for various reasons including asteroid strikes. It’s sad that we, the first species with the capability of averting an asteroid-strike mass extinction, are currently causing a carbon-pollution mass extinction out of foolishness, rather than simply switching most of our fossil fuel to sustainable fuels like wind, solar and tidal power.

The fossil record and science is clear. We just need to pay attention, think and act before it’s too late.