What to do if you find a fossil on P.E.I.

More people than ever before have been searching for and finding fossils on Prince Edward Island in the last few years. 

That interest has been further sparked by teacher Lisa Cormier's discovery last month of an extremely rare fossil of what's believed to have been a reptile or a very close relative. 

"Definitely, fossil finds are really increasing on P.E.I., especially by everyday people," says John Calder, the Nova Scotia-based geologist who's under contract to the P.E.I. government to help identify finds on the Island.

He is a geology professor at Saint Mary's University and the interim executive director of the Cliffs of Fundy UNESCO Geopark. He's also the author of Island at the Centre of the World: The Geological Heritage of Prince Edward Island.

"I'm really pleased that there's this boom of discovery on Prince Edward Island," he said, adding that inquiries from the public in recent years have grown from about five per year to five per week. 

If you think you have found a fossil on P.E.I., Calder said you should follow these steps:

"They're not always fossils. The thing to look for is an unusual pattern in the rocks," Calder said, noting the most common fossils found on the Island are footprints and parts of plants. 

"Fossil footprints aren't common everywhere, but on P.E.I., it's becoming a really rich trove of footprints of early reptiles and amphibians," he said. 

Of the hundreds of fossil finds reported each year on P.E.I., Calder said two or three are really special, and a few every month are noteworthy. 

"P.E.I. is going to become known as a real paleontological hot spot, whereas not long ago it was thought to be a place where there was nothing geological other than the sand dunes," he said. 

"It is becoming known internationally with researchers, especially researchers in a field we call vertebrate paleontology — so these are fossils of things with backbones."

Given the province's rich repository of fossilized bones as well as footprints, he said he looks forward to the day the province hires its own paleontologist to help examine them.

Back in 290 million BC, when the world's continents as we know them now conglomerated in a single super-continent known as Pangea, P.E.I. was right near the centre, at the equator. It was the Permian period, millions of years before dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

P.E.I.'s fossils are extraordinary, Calder said, in that they give us a peek at life forms during that crucial time — "a window on this chapter of evolution that is unique in Canada and one of the few places in the world."