Iconic Geology: Two Parks Canada Sites Named to Exclusive Global List

 

by Suzanne White

The Tablelands, Gros Morne National Park. Photo: Guillaume Paquette- Jetten

The iconic Canadian Rockies are home to stunning vistas of mountain tops, rivers, and glaciers that feed our senses, and populations of unique plants and animals, from the whitebark pine to the grizzly bear. High in the mountains of Yoho National Park, the rocks tell a story of the Earth before tree roots and elk hooves, where a vast sea hosted the beginning of life as we know it, in a place we know as the Burgess Shale. 

A short time later (geologically speaking), the continents were crashing together on Canada’s east coast, pushing rock from the earth’s mantle and ocean crust towards the surface. Today we see these mantle rocks at the Tablelands – a barren, flat-topped mountain in Gros Morne National Park – in dramatic contrast to the surrounding forested hills. The great diversity of rocks reminds us of these violent beginnings and that these landforms display more than recent glacial handiwork.

The Burgess Shale, Yoho National Park. Photo: Shannon Martin

In early 2023, Gros Morne National Park and the Burgess Shale site in Yoho and Kootenay national parks were named to a prestigious international list of the first 100 geological heritage sites, an initiative of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This new international designation acknowledges iconic locations around the world, recognized for their contribution to the development of geological science and their relevance and impact in understanding the Earth and its history. 

There was a lot of competition to be included in this inaugural list. A panel of earth scientists evaluated 181 proposals from across the world and selected outstanding geological sites from fifty-six countries, including a total of six sites from Canada, with the Burgess Shale and Gros Morne as the two Parks Canada-administered locations.

The first 100 IUGS geological heritage sites were announced during the IUGS 60th anniversary celebration in October 2022 in Zumaia, Basque Coast UNESCO Global Geopark in Spain. Parks Canada’s own Todd Keith from Yoho National Park attended the IUGS conference and gave a presentation to the international community on the significance of the Burgess Shale.

The Burgess Shale is one of the most significant fossil sites in the world, first identified in 1909, but with new discoveries still being made today. The sites preserve evidence of some of the earliest complex animals that existed in the oceans of our planet over 508-million-years ago. Most of these fossils are of soft-bodied animals that are only very rarely preserved. The research and discoveries at these mountain sites shed new light on how life began and developed in the world’s oceans giving us new insights into the evolution of complex life.

Anomalocaris canadensis, one of the iconic fossils from the Burgess Shale. Photo: J.B. Caron, Royal Ontario Museum

The Burgess Shale is critical to our understanding of how animals evolved shortly after the Cambrian Explosion, when life began to flourish and diversify. It is a reference for paleontologists globally, such that similar Cambrian deposits around the world are often referred to as “Burgess Shale-type” fossil sites. The Burgess Shale fossils were first documented in 1909 and the vast majority of research has focused on a few sites in Yoho National Park but since 2008, scientists have explored related sites in Kootenay National Park, leading to the discovery of several new species, and to new understandings. 

An example of Moho in Gros Morne National Park. Photo: R. Hingston

There are lots of ways to learn more about the Burgess Shale: 

Gros Morne National Park is acknowledged as having one of the world’s best exposures of the Moho – or Mohorovičić discontinuity – the boundary between crust and mantle rocks. In the Tablelands, you can walk across a “fossil” Moho, rocks normally found up to seventy kilometres beneath the Earth’s surface that were pushed up as continents collided more than 450 million years ago. These rocks illustrate the birth and death of an ancient ocean, and the creation of both supercontinents and mountain chains. This geology has played a key role in our understanding of plate tectonics and the formation of mountain systems.

Gros Morne National Park is proud to be recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its scenic beauty and unique geology. Walking through Gros Morne is like taking a trip back in time to when an ocean was dying over half a billion years ago. The “Moho” can be found in the Tablelands in the southern section of the park, where its rusty orange rock – peridotite – is so rich in metals that it is toxic to most plants. Walk the Tablelands Trail and explore this bizarre and beautiful landscape with a Parks Canada guide, or hike it on your own with a virtual tour available on your phone through the Parks Canada app. 

You can see this amazing geology at Gros Morne’s Discovery Centre and throughout the park’s many trails: 

  • Hike the Green Gardens trail down to a shoreline of volcanic rock to coastal cliffs, beaches, fertile meadows, and towering sea stacks. 

  • Summit Gros Morne Mountain and enjoy views of the glacier-carved cliffs while standing on the rocks formed from the shallow water sands of a long-destroyed ocean. 

  • Explore the layered rocks of Green Point’s seaside cliffs where tiny fossils mark the point for the boundary between the Cambrian and Ordovician periods. 

Both Gros Morne National Park and the Burgess Shale and the surrounding mountain parks are known as places of inspiration, reflection, connection, renewal, and transformation. By continuing to build connections to these places, we can foster tomorrow’s stewards of these extraordinary places. 

For more information on the conference and geoheritage, visit iugs-geoheritage.org.

Suzanne White is a Public Relations and Communications Officer for the Lake Louise, Yoho, Kootenay Field Unit, Parks Canada.

 
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