Over one hundred and fifty years ago Sir William E. Logan of the Geological Survey of Canada announced to the world the finding of a "new and remarkable" fossil track in sandstone from a locality "in the neighbourhood of Perth" ... "for the discovery of which we are indebted to my friend Dr. James Wilson of Perth, who sent me specimens of it in the month of November last." Logan considered the tracks to be "those of some species of gigantic mollusc". He concluded his article with the sentence "From the resemblance of the track to a ladder, the name proposed is Climactichnites Wilsoni, the specific designation being given in compliment to its discoverer, Dr. Wilson." Sir William Logan announced the finding of the fossil in a paper entitled On the Tracks of an Animal lately found in the Potsdam Formation that he read before the Natural History Society of Montreal in June, 1860, and that was published later that year in volume V of The Canadian Naturalist and Geologist.
Dr. James Wilson (1798-1881), who discovered the first fossils of Climactichnites, was a medical graduate of Edinburgh University who emigrated to Canada and practiced as a physician in Perth, Ontario from 1821 to 1869, and then retired to Scotland. Dr. Wilson was an amateur mineralogist and geologist who is credited with being the first to find the trace fossil Climactichnites Wilsoni, Perthite and Peristerite. In addition, he found outcrops that later became apatite (phosphate) and mica mines, and numerous mineral occurrences. In October, 2012 the Perth Museum at Matheson House in Perth, Ontario opened to the public its new Geology Exhibition, which features a display of part of the mineral and fossil collection of Dr. James Wilson, including the two specimens of Climactichnites wilsoni that are shown below.
The specimen on the left is the overlying impression or natural cast in the sediment laid down on top of the original trail. The specimen on the right records the original trail. The lateral ridges that are shown in the specimen on the right were formed by creature that made the original trail and are recorded as indentations in the overlying bed. The tracks are about six inches (15 cm) in width. The two specimens are not mirror images of one another, and while they may be parts of the same track, are not two parts split from the same rock. While Logan suggested that the track looked like a ladder, I expect that most people would be more likely to describe it as looking like a motorcycle track in sand.
It should be kept in mind that Climactichnites Wilsoni is a trace fossil (not a body fossil). It is the track, or surface trail, of a soft bodied creature –an unknown and unnamed tracemaker (probably a giant slug or another mollusc)– that was among the first to exit the oceans and ‘walk’ on land. The presence of lateral ridges in the specimens found at Perth confirms that they are surface trails.
In addition to the specimens in the Perth Museum, other specimens of the trace fossil Climactichnites wilsoni that were collected from the quarry near Perth can be found in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Redpath Museum at McGill University in Montreal, the Geological Survey of Canada and the National Museum of Scotland. All of the specimens were collected in the period from about 1859 to 1882.
A specimen in the collection of the Geological Survey of Canada is particularly impressive. Not only is it a very large specimen, it displays a number of crossing trails of Climactichnites and clearly shows the trail of the trace fossil Protichnites. Measuring seventy-six square feet (and being about ten feet high by seven feet wide), it hung on the wall in Sir William Logan’s office in Montreal until he retired, and when the GSC was moved to Ottawa was on display at the Geological Survey of Canada’s museum in Ottawa until at least 1901. It is not currently on display.
It is interesting to consider the effort that went into collecting the specimen that hung on the wall in Sir William Logan’s office in Montreal. Sir William Logan (1860) in his article On the Track of an Animal lately found in the Potsdam Formation mentions " in the beginning of December, I sent Mr. Richardson to Perth, where he was guided to the quarry by Dr. Wilson, and shewn the bed in which the tracks occur. The quarry, of which the strata are nearly horizontal, is about a mile from the town, and with the aid of Mr. Glyn, the proprietor, Mr. Richardson obtained in fragments, a surface which measures about seventy-six square feet. To obtain this required a good deal of patience, for there was half a foot of snow on the ground, and from under this it was necessary to remove between two and three feet of rock in order to reach the bed. The rock is a fine grained white sandstone ... and of that pure silicious character which is so well known to belong to the Potsdam formation wherever it is met with. The tracks are impressed on a bed which varies in thickness in different parts from an inch to three inches. When the upper bed was removed large portions of the track-bearing bed came away with it, and it was necessary to separate the layers. This was done by heating the surface with burning wood placed upon it, and then suddenly cooling it with the application of snow. " (Canadian Naturalist and Geologist, 5, 279-285, at page 282).
One of the specimens in the possession of the Redpath Museum is prominently on display in the main stairway at that museum, and also features both the trace fossil Climactichnites and the trace fossil Protichnites. That specimen is the larger of the two specimens shown the photograph to the left, which appeared in a paper by Sir J. William Dawson, read May 14, 1890, entitled On Burrows and Tracks of Invertebrate Animals in Palaeozoic Rocks , and Other Markings; (1890) London Quart. Journal Geol. Soc. 46, pp. 595-617. This is again a large specimen, being over six feet in height, with the trails being about six inches (15 cm) wide.
While Dawson gives no indication of source other than that they are from the Potsdam Sandstone of Ontario, the specimens were collected by Mr. Richardson in about 1882, and are likely the last reported specimens of Climactichnites collected from the quarry near Perth. The story behind their collection is interesting. The Geological Survey of Canada had been headquartered in Montreal before Confederation. In 1881 the Geological Survey of Canada, the Geological Survey of Canada Museum, and its rock, mineral and fossil collections were moved to Ottawa. Sir William Logan, in his will, left funds to collect replacement specimens for a museum in Montreal. Replacement specimens of Climactichnites, Protichnites and other fossils were collected by Mr. Richardson, and other fossils were purchased, for display in Montreal. The Report on the Peter Redpath Museum of McGill University, No. 11, January, 1883, mentions at page 16 under the heading
Part V. - Notice of Collections, Logan Memorial Collection that specimens added to the collection included a "Series of large slabs of Protichnites and Climactichnites, collected by Mr. Richardson, at Perth, Ontario."
The specimen at the Royal Ontario Museum is not currently on display but could be included along with other Potsdam trace fossils in the ROM’s new Gallery of Early Life which is scheduled to open to the public in 2014. A curator at the ROM sent me an email stating that the specimen was collected by "J. Wilson", which I assume identifies Dr. James Wilson.
The specimens in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland (formerly the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art) are not currently on display, and have been overlooked by those that have published articles on Climactichnites. The Report of the Keeper of the Natural History Collections for the year 1875, that is in the Report of the Director of the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art for 1875, appears to provide the only published description of these specimens. It mentions that "Dr. James Wilson has presented three valuable slabs from the Potsdam sandstone of Canada, one of which displays the supposed Crustacean track Protichnites, while on the other two are seen splendid examples of the still more remarkable and problematical Climactichnites Wilsoni." The current Principal Curator, Paleobiology, National Museum of Scotland, in answer to an email that I sent to him, has confirmed the specimens are in the museum’s specimen register: Climactichnites wilsoni under number 1875.24.1 and Protichnites under 1875.24.2.
Twenty years ago the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., published an extensive review of Climactichnites that summarized the geologic distribution of this fossil. See: "
Paleobiology of Climactichnites, an Enigmatic Late Cambrian Fossil by Ellis L. Yochelson and Mikhail A. Fedonkin, 1993, Number 74, Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology. The publication is available free over the internet and I would encourage anyone interested in this fossil to download the publication. Googling the title and the names of the authors should provide the paper.
In their publication Yochelson and Fedonkin (1993) published photographs of Climactichnites specimens collected from the quarry near Perth. Figure 18 shows the specimen owned by Geological Survey of Canada that hung on the wall in Sir William Logan’s office, Figure 55 shows the specimen on display at the Redpath Museum in Montreal, and Figure 42 shows the specimen at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Portions of those specimens are shown in other figures in their article.
More recently Patrick R. Getty and James W. ("Whitey") Hagadorn have published a series of papers dealing with Climactichnites, including Getty, P.R. and Hagadorn, J. W. (2008) Reinterpretation of Climactichnites Logan 1860 to Include Subsurface Burrows, and Erection of Muscoulopodus for resting traces of the Trailmaker, Journal of Palaeontology, V. 82, pp. 1161-1172, and Getty, P.R. and Hagadorn, J. W. (2009) Paleobiology of the Climactichnites Tracemaker, Palaeontology, Vol. 52, pp. 753-778. Both papers can be downloaded over the internet. These papers should be read by anyone with a serious interest in the fossil.
I’d like to conclude this posting by looking at the ages of the three major players. James Richardson was born in March, 1810 and died in November, 1883. He was three months shy of fifty when he first visited the quarry in 1859 (dug through half a foot of snow, dug through two to three feet of rock, and separated rock layers by heating the surfaces with burning wood and quenching with snow) and was in his early seventies when he collected the specimens for the Peter Redpath Museum. Dr. James Wilson (1798-1881) was 61 when he sent the first specimens to Sir William Logan (1798–1875), who was 62 when he delivered the paper announcing the finding of a "new and remarkable" fossil track in sandstone about a mile from Perth. Makes one feel young.
Christopher P. Brett
Perth, Ontario
I believe that I located the quarry where James Richardson collected the first specimens of Climactichnites that were described by W. E. Logan. See my following blog postings.
Monday, 11 February 2013
On the trail of Climactichnites wilsoni - Part 2: References to the Quarry Near Perth in the Scientific Literature, and the Geologic Mapping of Lot 6
https://fossilslanark.blogspot.com/2013/02/
Monday, 6 May 2013
On the trail of Climactichnites wilsoni - Part 3: A quarry about a mile from Perth as the town existed in 1859 https://fossilslanark.blogspot.com/2013/05/
One of the specimens in the possession of the Redpath Museum is prominently on display in the main stairway at that museum, and also features both the trace fossil Climactichnites and the trace fossil Protichnites. That specimen is the larger of the two specimens shown the photograph to the left, which appeared in a paper by Sir J. William Dawson, read May 14, 1890, entitled On Burrows and Tracks of Invertebrate Animals in Palaeozoic Rocks , and Other Markings; (1890) London Quart. Journal Geol. Soc. 46, pp. 595-617. This is again a large specimen, being over six feet in height, with the trails being about six inches (15 cm) wide. 
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