Finding Trilobites on Anticosti Island

[LIGHT ELECTRONIC MUSIC]

[The camera pans over boxes of trilobite fossils on a shelf.] 

MELANIE HOPKINS (Curator, Division of Paleontology): Extinction happens all the time. But every once in a while during Earth history, there’s a period-

[A bed of jumbled up fossilized organisms comes in and out of focus.] 

HOPKINS: when environmental change is so drastic that-

[HOPKINS appears on screen, wearing a hat to shade from the sun, standing on a beach with large stone cliffs in the background, speaking to camera.]

HOPKINS: a huge proportion of species go extinct. And we refer to those intervals as “mass extinctions.”

[Four scientists in outdoor hiking gear walk along a rocky riverbed surrounded by conifer trees.]

HOPKINS: 445 million years ago- 

[The scientists hike along a rocky beach with cliffs on the side.]

HOPKINS: -was the first major mass extinction-

[Two scientists lean over flat rock beds, inspecting them.] 

HOPKINS: -to impact animal life on Earth.

[A scientist inspects a large flat rock he holds in his hands.] 

HOPKINS: There aren’t very many places in the world where

[Scientists walk along exposed rocky cliffs, looking at them.]

HOPKINS: this extinction is actually represented in the rock record, and this is one of them.

[The American Museum of Natural History logo appears. Drone footage above some massive rocky cliffs. Title appears: “Finding Trilobites on Anticosti Island, Constantine S. Niarchos Expedition.” A birds-eye view of a deer carefully walking through a clearing of conifer trees. Drone footage from above a conifer forest, where a black-crowned night heron is perched on a treetop.] 

HOPKINS: Anticosti Island is-

[Camera flies over a conifer forest before an illustrated map of North America is superimposed on top of it. The map zooms in on the gulf between Quebec, Newfoundland, and New Brunswick, on a large island which fills the screen. Text reads: “Anticosti Island.”]

HOPKINS: -an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, off the northern coast of Quebec.

[A bald eagle takes off from the beach of Anticosti Island, with large cliffs in the distant background.] 

HOPKINS: It is a relatively large island, 

[Two large white pickup trucks drive slowly over a gravel road among the conifer trees.]

HOPKINS: about 250 kilometers long

[View of the blue sky from a truck window as treetops fly by.]

HOPKINS: -and 40 to 50 kilometers wide.

[A deer bounds from the beach into the conifer forest. Scientists push through thick grass and foliage in the forest.] 

HOPKINS: Most of it is parkland and managed by the province of Quebec.

[Scientists wade through a river in the rain with backpacks and rain gear.]

HOPKINS: A lot of the exposures that we want to get to are relatively remote.

[Scientists inspect a rocky riverbed.]

HOPKINS: All of the rocks are exposed either in rivers

[Scientist hike along a rocky beach with cliffs overhead.]

HOPKINS: or along the coastline.

[The scientists gather around the white pick-up truck, leaning a map of Anticosti Island against the side.]

HOPKINS: We can drive pretty close, 

[Scientists hike across a rocky beach with a conifer forest right at the edge.] 

HOPKINS: but we often have to walk in a ways to get to them.

[The camera moves through a forest into a clearing, where the scientists have set up a campsite.] 

HOPKINS: And we almost always have to camp.

[The camera pans over the cliff-like gorge walls next to a river. The rock appears in clear layers.] 

HOPKINS: The rocks that are exposed on the island are 

[HOPKINS appears on screen, speaking to camera.]

HOPKINS: -late Ordovician to early Silurian, and they actually are a relatively complete record of the end Ordovician mass extinction. 

[A trilobite fossil appears on screen. Text reads “445 million years ago. End-Ordovician mass extinction.” Other fossils appear on screen after the trilobite.] 

HOPKINS: Everything that basically was around during the Ordovician is represented in the rocks here. 

[The camera focuses on a fossil coral embedded in a rock.]

HOPKINS: Lots of corals that were major reef-builders,

[A jumbled up bed of fossils, including many bryozoans.]

HOPKINS: as well as bryozoans, which are also a really important component of reefs, although less well-known. 

[The camera pans across a dark grey fossil trilobite in a box.] 

HOPKINS: Fossil arthropods, particularly trilobites.

[The camera pans across two more trilobite fossils.] 

HOPKINS: Trilobites are marine arthropods. They’re part of the same group that includes crustaceans, 

[HOPKINS reappears on screen, speaking to the camera.]

HOPKINS: like lobster, shrimp, spiders, scorpions. But they’re entirely extinct.

[HOPKINS and another scientist lean over a stratified rock cliff, looking at something.] 

HOPKINS: The reason that they’re so useful for studying-

[A close-up shot of a trilobite fossil still embedded in the rock that HOPKINS is looking at.]

HOPKINS: is because they’re some of the first animals that- 

[The camera pans down a large rock surface covered in small fossils, and a hand points to something on the rock.]

HOPKINS: showed up in large numbers and- 

[Close-up of a trilobite head embedded in a slab of rock.]

HOPKINS: abundance in the fossil record.

[HOPKINS reappears on screen, speaking to the camera.]

HOPKINS: And so they’re critical to any questions that we have about the early evolution of animals and early ecosystems.

[The camera follows HOPKINS as she hikes between a riverbed and a forest.]

HOPKINS: The first time that I visited Anticosti Island- 

[HOPKINS holds up a slab of rock to the camera, pointing to a fossil embedded in it. The camera zooms in on the fossil crinoid.]

HOPKINS: was in 2017.

[HOPKINS turns over a rock slab in her hands with gardening gloves on.]

HOPKINS: And I almost immediately realized that

[HOPKINS reappears on screen, speaking to camera.]

HOPKINS: there was a lot of work that could be done.

[Two scientists sit on a rock ledge, looking at the fossils embedded in it.]

HOPKINS: So the following two years, I came back with

[The same two scientists hold up a slab of rock, pointing at it and discussing it with one another.] 

HOPKINS: two colleagues who work on crinoids.

[The camera focuses on a small fossil that looks like a flower bud, a crinoid.]

LENA COLE (Assistant Professor, The University of Oklahoma): Crinoids are part of a larger group called echinoderms, which means they are closely related to things like sea urchins and starfish. 

[COLE appears on screen, sitting at a picnic table with a muddy beach and a conifer forest in the background.] 

COLE: They’re basically like if you took a starfish, flipped it upside down, and then put it on a stick.

[The camera pans across several different unfurled crinoid fossils.]

COLE: Crinoids have a fossil record that goes back more than 450 million years. 

[A black crinoid with white tips sways in the ocean current atop a rock, followed by a closeup of a pink feathery crinoid’s interior.]

COLE: They’re still alive today, though. So they have this incredibly long fossil record that we can study

[COLE reappears on screen, speaking to camera.]

COLE: to address all kinds of really interesting questions, how they’ve responded to extinction events, how they’ve changed through time. 

[COLE leans over a rock and looks at it with a hand lens. HOPKINS also leans over a rock where certain fossils have been circled in permanent marker.]

HOPKINS: The one type of data that we’re collecting while we’re here is body size. Body size is a pretty simple thing to measure,

[HOPKINS and COLE sit on a beach, taking notes in their field notebooks.]

HOPKINS: which makes it really easy to get a lot of data.

[HOPKINS takes a photo of a fossil with a digital camera.]

HOPKINS: But it’s an indirect proxy for a lot of things that are important ecologically. 

[HOPKINS reappears on screen, speaking to camera.]

HOPKINS: If you’re not getting enough nutrients, you can't grow very big.

[COLE and other scientists crouch over a riverbed filled with fossils.]

COLE: Often times over mass extinctions, there’s this observation that 

[Two brachiopod fossils, one larger and one smaller, embedded in rock. Brachiopods look similar to clams or scallops, but are not related.]

COLE: species get smaller and smaller.

[COLE reappears on screen, speaking to camera.]

COLE: So we want to document whether or not that’s happening here on Anticosti. And if so, is it happening in all groups? 

[The camera zooms in on a small trilobite fossil embedded in rock, next to a rock hammer for scale.] 

COLE: Is it just certain groups of organisms?

[The camera focuses on what looks like a fossilized spiral snail shell.]

COLE: And what sort of mechanisms are actually driving that change?

[The camera follows HOPKINS and other scientists as she walks on a rocky and seaweed-covered beach.]

HOPKINS: The other remarkable thing about the way that the rocks are laid out is that

[A deep rock river gorge appears, the camera flying slowly through it. The outline of Anticosti Island animates onto the footage of the gorge, and the area around the island fades to blue, with just the gorge footage appearing in the center of the island graphic. A line to the left draws onto the screen, with a label at the top (near the north of the island) reading “Older” and a label near the bottom (the south of the island) reading “Younger.”] 

HOPKINS: they go from older to younger as you go from north to south

[The “Older/Younger” line fades away, and across the bottom of the island another line draws on from right to left, at a slight declined angle. A line on the right (near the east of the island) appears with text that reads “Ancient coastline” and a line on the left (near the west of the island) appears with text that reads “Ancient ocean.”] 

HOPKINS: and represent shallow to deeper marine environments as you go from east to west.

[HOPKINS reappears on screen, speaking to camera.] 

HOPKINS: So you can basically walk from the north part of the island to the south part of the island. You’re walking through time, and at any given point along the island, you’re either walking through

[A rocky cliff appears, with clear layers of rock running parallel to the ground like shelves.] 

HOPKINS: shallow waters during that time, or deep waters during that time.

[HOPKINS leans over a fossil in a rock bed. Another scientist kneels down beside her to look at what she’s looking at.] 

COLE: This is a location that’s really amazing for

[Scientists including HOPKINS and COLE inspect a cliff near a beach.]

COLE: young paleontologists and geologists to get training,

[Four scientists hike along a long beach at low tide.]

COLE: giving them the opportunity to take what they’ve learned in the classrooms, and what they’ve read about,

[Two scientists look at a rock, and point at different fossils.] 

COLE: and actually apply it in a really practical way. 

[Scientists hike across a clearing in a forest. A shot of a river flowing through the forest.]

COLE: There’s a lot of challenges to working out here,

[Closeups of trees within the forest, and a shot of the blue ocean beyond a forest.]

COLE: but for people that enjoy being outdoors, the island is just beautiful.

[COLE reappears on screen speaking to camera.]

COLE: The people here are incredibly warm and friendly, and they’re really enthusiastic about

[A deer wanders through a group of scientists chatting on a porch of the Anticosti Visitor’s Center.] 

COLE: paleontologists and geologists

[The camera flies over sunrise in Port Menier, the main town of Anticosti.]

COLE: being here on the island.

HOPKINS: More recently, there’s been considerable increase 

[Scientists lean over a rock bed with hand lenses, looking for fossils.]

HOPKINS: in the amount of research here as it’s recognized,

[Two scientists investigate the rocky nooks and crannies of a cliff wall.]

HOPKINS: how unique this place is in terms of the time period that’s represented

[Drone footage of a towering cliff with a conifer forest on top of it, jutting out of the ocean.]

HOPKINS: and the quality of the fossil preservation.

[The camera flies over a river that trickles over two short waterfalls.]

HOPKINS: We’re looking forward to coming back for many years.

[The sun sets over the beach of Anticosti Island.]

HOPKINS: Every year, we discover new things. We continue to find

[HOPKINS reappears on screen, speaking to camera.]

HOPKINS: new fossils that are important for our understanding of species that we were aware of but didn’t know completely,

[Footage of several trilobite specimens, beautifully articulated and prepared out of their surrounding rock.]

HOPKINS: as well as traces of fossils or of species that we’ve never seen before. And that will probably continue for many years to come.

[Credits roll.]

[MUSIC ENDS]