Fossil Huntress — Palaeo Sommelier

Today on the show, we travel back in time to the Late Cretaceous, some 66 million years ago, when death fell from the sky.

Step into the sunbaked folds of West Union Canyon, just beyond Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada, and you are quite literally walking along one of North America’s most important geological fault lines in time—the elusive boundary between the Carnian and Norian stages of the Late Triassic.
Here, the Upper Triassic Luning Formation—specifically the Early Norian Kerri Zone—reveals itself in a series of beautifully exposed beds, each one a page in a story written some 220 million years ago.
This is no ordinary outcrop. It is a reference point, a kind of stratigraphic Rosetta Stone for understanding the Carnian–Norian boundary (CNB) on this side of the ancient world.

At first glance, anemones look like soft blossoms anchored to rock, their tentacles swaying with the tide. But look a little closer and you’ll see a skilled predator at work.
Each of those delicate arms is armed with nematocysts—microscopic, harpoon-like cells loaded with venom—ready to stun passing prey in a split second.
Sea anemones belong to the class Anthozoa, making them close relatives of corals and jellyfish. Unlike jellyfish, though, they’ve traded a life of drifting for one firmly planted in place, attaching themselves to reefs, rocks, and seafloors across the globe—from shallow tide pools to the deep sea.
Now, for us fossil folk, anemones present a bit of a challenge. They are soft-bodied, with no shells or bones to readily fossilise. So their presence in the fossil record is rare—more whisper than shout.
But we do have some beautiful clues.
Exceptional fossil sites, like the Burgess Shale in British Columbia—dating back over 508 million years—have preserved soft-bodied organisms in stunning detail. Here, we find anemone-like creatures that give us a glimpse into early anthozoan life during the Cambrian Explosion, a time when complex life was just beginning to flourish in Earth’s oceans.
We also find trace fossils—subtle impressions left in ancient seabeds. Circular marks and anchoring traces hint at where anemones once lived, even when their bodies themselves have long since vanished.
Modern anemones also host fascinating partnerships. Many live in symbiosis with algae, gaining energy from photosynthesis, while others form famous alliances—like clownfish weaving safely among their stinging tentacles.
So while they may seem delicate, anemones are ancient survivors—holding fast through mass extinctions and vast shifts in Earth’s history.

Long, long ago—millions of years before you or me, before the canoes of the Polynesian voyagers, before the first birds ever touched these shores—there was only ocean. 
A vast blue desert stretching farther than the eye could see. But beneath that endless water, far below the waves, the Earth was stirring.
Deep inside our planet lies a restless heart, a molten engine. It churns and pulses, and sometimes, it leaks upward through the skin of the world. 
In one special place beneath the Pacific Plate, a hot spot—a plume of heat rising from the mantle—began to melt rock, making it buoyant and eager to break free.
Imagine molten stone, glowing red-orange, pushing upward for thousands of years until—at last—it broke through the ocean floor. The sea hissed and boiled as lava met saltwater. Bit by bit, eruption after eruption, a new land began to rise from the deep. That was the beginning of the Hawai'ian Islands.
But here’s the magic, Hawai'i is not a single island, but a story told in chapters, one after another, spread across millions of years. You see, the Pacific Plate is always moving—slowly, but steadily, like a great raft drifting northwest. The hot spot itself doesn’t move. It’s fixed, like a candle’s flame. So as the plate slides across it, new islands are born in sequence, while the old ones drift away, cooling, eroding, and eventually sinking back beneath the waves.
It’s as though the Earth is sewing a necklace of emeralds and sapphires across the ocean, each island a bead in the chain. Kaua‘i, the eldest, is weathered and softened, its sharp volcanic ridges worn into velvet valleys. O‘ahu, Maui, Moloka‘i—all follow, each younger, each shaped by fire and rain. And finally, the youngest, Hawai‘i Island—often called the Big Island—still burns with creation. Its great volcanoes, Mauna Loa and Kīlauea, continue to pour molten rock into the sea, adding new land even as we speak.

Join in the exploration of the fascinating science of paleontology — that lens that examines ancient animals, plants & ecosystems from wee single-celled organisms to big & mighty dinosaurs.