Browse "Geology"

The site is important because it confirms that Centrosaurus was a herding dinosaur, and documents that the herds were larger than previously thought, numbering well into the thousands.

Early land plants have long been known from Eastern Canada, thanks to pioneering work by Sir J. William Dawson, father of Devonian palaeobotany and principal of McGill University from 1855 to 1893. But this record poorly represented the earliest phase of land colonization.

Origins Lava tube caves, an important minor class, are formed by channelled outflow of molten lava in congealing flows. Sea caves most commonly result from erosion by waves.

The main objective of the multidisciplinary expedition was to carry out a geological survey of the ridge. Researchers, therefore, brought a veritable geotechnical arsenal to bear on the polar ice to gather seismic, gravimetric, bathymetric and other data.

Coal is a fossil fuel that has been used as a source of energy in Canada since the 18th century. Canada is home to 0.6 per cent of the world’s coal resources. Most of the country’s coal reserves (over 95 per cent) are found in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. In recent years, the environmental movement has opposed the coal industry for disrupting local ecosystems, creating adverse health effects and for its large contribution to the carbon-dioxide emissions that drive climate change. In an effort to curb harmful emissions, the federal government has signalled its intention to phase out traditional coal-fired electricity by 2030, and Alberta has a plan to achieve the same goal as a province.

The CYPRESS HILLS and Swift Current Plateaux of southwestern Saskatchewan preserve Eocene, Oligocene, and Miocene FOSSILS 42 million to 16 million years old, in the Cypress Hills Formation. Faunas of at least 14 different ages are represented there.

 FOSSIL bones were first discovered in 1978 in the rocks formed in the now vanished Haughton Lake.

Drumlin, smooth, half egg-shaped or ellipsoidal hill which formed beneath Quaternary GLACIERS. Drumlins [Gaelic druim, "hill"] were first described in Ireland. They lie parallel to the direction of ice movement, the blunt (stoss) end facing up-glacier, the lee sloping down-glacier.

​An earthquake is a vibratory motion generated from the movement of rock along a fault line beneath the Earth’s surface.

 Having been mapped on foot, by dogsled, and from the air by rugged geologists from the GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA, the Canadian High Arctic was untouched by vertebrate palaeontologists until the mid-1970s.

Toward the close of the Tertiary (5 to 2 million years ago) and the beginning of the ice age (Quaternary - about 2 million years ago), a beaver pond existed on what is now Canada's Ellesmere Island, Nunavut.

An esker is a ridge (Gaelic eiscir, "ridge") of gravel and sand emplaced during glacial melt by the deposition of sediments from meltwater rivers flowing on the ice (channel fills) or beneath a glacier (tunnel fills).

  Fossil [Lat fossilis, "dug up"], trace of an ancient animal or plant preserved in the Earth's crust. Palaeontology is the modern, scientific study of fossils, but these curious objects have attracted attention since ancient times.

The first animals were microscopic in size and left no known fossil remains. The oldest animal fossils occur in sediments deposited under shallow equatorial seas over 600 million years ago.

"Plant" refers to familiar land plants, and also to aquatic plants, mosses, liverworts and algae plants. Although not technically plants, fungi and bacteria are often included. Palaeobotany is the study of ancient plant life using fossil evidence. Plant fossils are found coast-to-coast in Canada, from 45-million-year-old mosses in British Columbia to fossil forests on Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere islands in the Canadian Arctic.

For centuries people have argued about the age of the Earth; only recently has it been possible to come close to achieving reliable estimates.

Fundamental to all ordering of events of the Earth's history is the principle of the positional relationships of rock and mineral bodies. For example, in any stratified rock sequence, younger rocks overlie older ones.

Based on geological history, Canada can be divided into six regions, each characterized by a distinctive landscape: the Canadian Shield, Interior Platform, Appalachian Orogen, Innuitian Orogen, Cordillera and Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, and the Eastern Continental Margin.