Fossils & Geological History

A geologically rich trail leads you to an exhibit of rock types, a limestone quarry, a dug trench, a riverview walk and fossils.

Slow-motion video footage of the Ottawa Valley’s past would have captured the formation and
disappearance of great mountain ranges and ice sheets, accompanied by massive earthquakes and
floods, interspersed with long periods of warm, shallow seas.

Graptolites

These narrow skeletal-like creatures lived nearly 400 million years ago. They floated on the surface of the ocean forming fragile, often branching skeletons.

What Are Fossils?
Where Do Fossils Come From?
How Are Fossils Formed?
Where Can I See Some Of These Fossils?

The Ordovician period began approximately 438 million years ago, with the end of the Cambrian, and ended around 510 million years ago, with the beginning of the Silurian.

The Ordovician is best known for the presence of its diverse marine invertebrates, including graptolites, trilobites, brachiopods, and the conodonts (early vertebrates). A typical marine community consisted of these animals, plus red and green algae, primitive fish, cephalopods, corals, crinoids, and gastropods.

Geologic Time is subdivided into a number of categories.

Source: Clyde Kennedy, The Upper Ottawa Valley

Glaciation and climate change shaped the Bonnechere Valley. The weight of mile-thick ice compressed the land, pushing it towards the earth’s crust and below the existing sea level. When the Wisconsin glacier receded, the land gradually rose, but not before the Atlantic Ocean swept in from the east, flooding the Ottawa Valley and the lower Bonnechere Valley, creating a branch of the ocean known as the Champlain Sea which lasted from about 11,000 to 9,500 years ago.