palaeontology – Grant Keddie

Preface I have always had a love of caribou and was saddened to learn about the extinction of the Dawson caribou (Rangifer tarandus dawsoni) after seeing its physical remains in the (then) Provincial Museum collection. This seemed to have been a preventable extinction. I learned about the importance of caribou and their habitat when doing an archaeological survey of portions of Wells Grey Park in 1970. I met Ralph Ritcey who gave me a copy of his recent paper on the mountain caribou of Well’s Grey (Ritcey 1970). I also met Park supervisor, Charlie Shook (1924-2000). Charlie guided big game hunters to the park in the 1940s, he started as an assistant ranger in the park in 1954, and worked … Continue reading “The Extinct Caribou of Haida Gwaii”

By Grant Keddie. 2016. Introduction Included here are notes on three mastodon (Mammut americanum) molars in the Royal B.C. Museum Collection and one private collection specimen. Three are from the South-East Corner of Vancouver Island and one from the Yukon Territory. Two of these have been found in the same locations as a larger number of mammoth remains. Although there are interglacial deposits in the areas where the mastodon remains of southeastern Vancouver were found, most of the fossil bearing layers have been deposited in front of the advancing glaciers during cold conditions between about 22,000 and 18,000 years ago. Later around 16,000 to 15,000 years ago ice sheets from the Fraser glaciation passed over the area depositing layers of … Continue reading “Mastodon. In the Royal B.C. Museum Collection”