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Well here we are on the Bay of Fundy at Gardner Creek, not far from
Saint John and these red rocks behind me belong to what's called
the Tynemouth Creek Formation
which is a 300 million year old rock unit which was deposited
at a time when New Brunswick was actually lying on the equator
and we were covered in sort of dry tropical environments, a bit like
East Africa today.
And it was in these rocks in the region around me that in 2008
we found incredibly exciting fossilized footprints. Footprints
of some of the earliest reptiles to ever evolve on our planet.
Reptiles were some of the first animals to colonize the very dry
continental interiors of our planet and therefore pave the way for all
the ecosystems that have subsequently evolved.
So here at Gardner Creek in southern New Brunswick we’ve got tell-tale
impressions on the rocks of those first reptiles as they crawled
along waterholes and dry river channels 300 million years ago,
a tantalizing glimpse of lost ecosystems.