By Patrick Newhook/December 16, 2021
Provincial Environment Minister Bernard Davis is delighted that visitors to the Royal Ontario Museum’s new permanent gallery will get a chance to examine the historic fossil record of Newfoundland, namely some of the fossils from the Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve near Cape Race.
The Royal Ontario Museum unveiled the Willner Madge Gallery, Dawn of Life, this month featuring almost 1,000 fossil specimens representing over four billion years of evolution from the earliest microbes to the dawn of dinosaurs and mammals. Exceptional Canadian fossil deposits of great scientific significance, including from the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, are among the specimens on display.
The Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve is one of four UNESCO World Heritage Sites featured in the new gallery. Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016, the reserve is located on the south coast of the Avalon Peninsula and is home to the world’s oldest, large, complex multicellular fossils, representing the remains of soft-bodied creatures that lived 560 to 580 million years ago.
Mistaken Point’s fossils of multicellular life, such as the standing frond Charniodiscus procerus from 575 million years ago during the Ediacaran Period, are included in the new gallery.
“Congratulations to the Royal Ontario Museum for their work on the new gallery, Dawn of Life,” said Davis. “This permanent gallery details the global history of environmental changes and mass extinctions and will help us better understand our environment and how our ecosystems first began. We are proud that fossils from Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve will help tell the story of early life and evolution on Earth.”
