All of the specimens that collected from the quarry near Perth were collected in the period from 1859 to 1882. Unfortunately, for over 130 years no one obtained fossils from the quarry near Perth that was the source for both the trace fossil Climactichnites and the trace fossil Protichnites, as the quarry could not be found. Most people who have searched for the quarry have looked in Lot 6, Concession III of Drummond Township (now within the municipality of Drummond/North Elmsley Township), because this is where Sir William Logan said the quarry was located. Like many others before me, I have walked and driven around Lot 6 looking for a quarry. Not only is there no quarry, there are no outcrops on Lot 6.
The Blueberry Marsh encroaches slightly upon the northern edge of the lot and the Long Swamp covers the southern third to a half of the lot. Most of the remainder of Lot 6 is now covered with houses, landscaped lots, a large retail outlet for Hillside Gardens, a commercial greenhouse, which is about in the center of the lot, and a car dealership (Hinton’s) on the eastern half of the lot. A plot of land to the northeast of Hinton’s is covered with fill. A farm still occupies the northeastern eighth of the lot. The boundary between Lot 6 and Lot 5 is an unopened concession road, as is the boundary between Lot 6 in Concession III and Lot 6 in Concession IV. The northern part of the boundary between Lot 6 and Lot 5 is marked by an overgrown cedar fence/hedgerow crowded with hawthorn trees and poison ivy. Along that fence, and partially hidden by the hawthorn trees, are angular slabs (some measuring three feet by three feet by two feet thick) of badly eroded sandstone. These angular slabs are the only possible evidence of a quarry that I have seen. (Rounded boulders are the norm along fences in Lanark County, not angular blocks of sandstone.)
Last April I attended an invigorating talk delivered by Michael Bainbridge, Recreational Geology Project Co-ordinator for the Ontario Highlands Tourism Office, where Michael discussed Ontario’s plans to promote Lanark County as a geotourism destination. In response to his comment that no one knew the location of the quarry where Dr. James Wilson had found Climactichnites wilsoni, I offered to prepare a memorandum listing references to the quarry in the literature. I prepared that memorandum for Michael and, to further the hunt for the quarry, circulated it to a number of geologists who had been looking for the quarry. I put off my search for the quarry last June when I found more interesting rocks and trace fossils in a quarry a few kilometers to the north of Lot 6. In early January of this year, while debating which topic to cover next, I found a new reference to the trace fossil Climactichnites at the Lanark Archives, and decided to start writing a posting to provide an update of that memorandum and to record of what I had found. As I had a number of points I wanted to cover, it made sense to break it into a number of parts.
When reading this posting, please note that the specimens of Climactichnites were found in fine grained Potsdam Sandstone (which in Ontario we would now call the Nepean Formation of the Potsdam Group), that the quarry is at least three feet deep, that the beds in the quarry are flat lying, that the tracks are impressed on a bed which varies in thickness from an inch to three inches, that the quarry is about a mile from Perth as the town existed in 1859, and that the owner has been identified by Sir William Logan as both Mr. Glyn and Mr. Glen (and others as Mr. Glenn). Please also keep in mind that the only individuals to collect specimens from the quarry were Dr. James Wilson, who found the original specimens, and Mr. James Richardson (first on instructions from Sir William Logan, and over twenty years later to collect specimens for the Peter Redpath Museum in Montreal). Sir William Logan and the others who report on its location never visited the quarry.
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. Logan (1860) provided the initial hints to its location by describing it as being "in the neighbourhood of Perth" . He goes on to mention that "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 ... 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 ...so well known to belong to the Potsdam formation .... The tracks are impressed on a bed which varies in thickness in different parts from an inch to three inches.... " (Canadian Naturalist and Geologist, 5, 279-285, at page 282).
In 1863, three years after presenting the above paper, Sir William E. Logan published the location of the quarry. See: Geology of Canada, Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress from its commencement to 1863, at pages 107-108, where Sir William E. Logan mentions that the specimens of Climactichnites were found a mile from Perth in Mr. Glen’s quarry in Lot 6, Concession III, Drummond Township. In this paper he identified the owner as Mr. Glen. [In his 1860 paper he gave the owner as Mr. Glyn.] Sir William E. Logan (1863) commented "About a mile from Perth, in a quarry on the sixth lot of the third range of Drummond, belonging to Mr. Glen, Dr. James Wilson of Perth has discovered, in association with Protichnites, the trail of what is supposed to have been some species of mollusk."
For completeness sake, I should note that Lot 6 is about a mile from the boundaries of the town of Perth as the town existed in 1859.
In an article published in 1863, Professor E. J. Chapman of University College, Toronto mentions that tracks of Protichnites and Climactichnites "have been found near the Town of Perth in the Township of Drummond, Canada West" and that the tracks of Climactichnites "exhibit narrow bands about five or six inches in width, with "beaded" edges, ... the whole presenting, as stated by Sir William Logan, a general resemblance to a rope-ladder." (See: Chapman, E. J. (1863), A Popular Exposition of the Minerals and Geology of Canada, Part V., Paleozoic Rocks of Canada, The Canadian Journal of Industry, Science and Art, New Series, Volume VIII)
Sir J. William Dawson in a paper entitled On Burrows and Tracks of Invertebrate Animals in Palaeozoic Rocks , and Other Markings described two specimens of Climactichnites collected by Mr. Richardson from the quarry near Perth that are in the collection of the Peter Redpath Museum in Montreal. He gives no indication of source other than being from the Potsdam Sandstone of Ontario. (See: (1890) London Quart. Journal Geol. Soc. 46, pp. 595-617).
R. W. Ells of the Geological Survey of Canada mapped parts of Eastern Ontario in 1901 and his report can be found in the GSC’s Annual Report for 1901 (See: Ells, R. W. (1904), Report on the Geology of a Portion of Eastern Ontario, Geological Survey of Canada, Annual Report for 1901, Volume XIV (New Series), Part J, Report No. 790). A geologic map that covered most of Lanark and Renfrew counties, Perth Sheet, No. 119, accompanied his report. Attached as an Appendix to his report is an article on fossils found within the area of the Perth Sheet (No. 119) that was authored by Dr. H. M. Ami, Assistant Palaeontologist to the Geological Survey of Canada. This included Dr. Ami’s following comments on specimens of Climactichnites and Protichnites found near Perth.
"POTSDAM FORMATION.
I. Perth, Ontario. Collected by Sir W. E. Logan and Dr. James Wilson.
In the neighbourhood of Perth, the formation consists of white sandstone displaying tracks or trails of marine organisms referred to Protichnites and Climactichnites. Two forms have been noticed on the slabs of sandstone as follows:--
1. Protichnites. sp. a form allied to P, septem-notatus, Owen.
2. Climactichnites Wilsoni, Logan.
The type specimen from which Sir Wm. Logan described the so-called ladder-tracks referred to as Climactichnites is now preserved in the Museum of the Geological Survey and exhibited on the west wall of the palaeontological hall. An excellent woodcut or illustration of Climactichnites Wilsoni, Logan may be seen on page 107, Chapter VI of the "Geology of Canada" 1863.
It was in a quarry and on the property of Mr. Glen, lot 6, Range III, in the Township of Drummond, near the town of Perth, Ont. , that the late Dr. James Wilson discovered these trails and tracks of marine organisms."
(See: Ami, H. M. (1904), Preliminary lists of fossil organic remains from the Potsdam, Beekmantown (Calciferous), Chazy, Black River, Trenton, Utica and Pleistocene formations comprised within the Perth Sheet (No. 119) in Eastern Ontario, page 80J at pages 81J-82J).
The location of the quarry does not appear on the Perth Sheet (No. 119).
In 1961 the Geological Survey of Canada published a geologic map of Lanark County with margin notes that mention Climactichnites. See: GSC Map 1089A - Geology of Perth, Lanark and Leeds Counties, Ontario, published in 1961 (Geology by M. E. Wilson, 1930 and Jean Dugas, 1949. Descriptive Notes by Jean Dugas), which bears the comment "Supposed fossil-tracks, known as Climactichnites , are a typical feature of the Perth Area, and were seen on lot 6, concession III, Drummond Township." Would that they were "a typical feature". In fact, no one has found a new specimen of Climactichnites in the Perth area since about 1882.
The last reported specimens of Climactichnites collected from the quarry near Perth were likely collected by Mr. Richardson in, or shortly before, 1882 for the Peter Redpath Museum at McGill University in Montreal (see: The Report on the Peter Redpath Museum of McGill University, No. 11, January, 1883, which 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.")
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.
Yochelson and Fedonkin (1993) report that they came to Perth, Ontario to look for the quarry where Dr. Wilson found Climactichnites. They commented at page 7 that "At Perth, the precise locality, in Mr. Glyn’s quarry "about a mile from the town..." as it existed in 1859, cannot be located with any certainty and might now be covered by buildings. A geologic map of the area (Wilson and Dugas, 1961) noted reports of the fossil in Concession III, Lot 6. Through the assistance of Mr. D. McNicol we were able to locate a small long-abandoned quarry in this area, but did not observe any of the fossils of concern." Mr. Douglas McNicol was the Curator of the Archibald W. Campbell memorial Museum in Perth, which is now the Perth Museum. It is unfortunate that Mr. McNicol did not leave notes. That "long-abandoned quarry" can no longer be found.
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. 1161-117. Appendix 1 to this paper provides a list of references, and longitude and latitude coordinates, for the field localities for specimens of Climactichnites that they had examined in their study. They looked at Climactichnites specimens collected from localities in Wisconsin, Missouri, New York State, Ontario and Quebec. Beside the listing for Perth is the notation "Logan (1860); no longer exists." I sent emails to Getty and Hagadorn asking about this and was told that they had relied on Yochelson and Fedonkin (1993).
A Climactichnites specimen in the Perth Museum’s collection provides a hint for the quarry’s location. A badly worn tag accompanying the specimen (a specimen that was only found in the basement of the museum last fall and would not have been shown to Yochelson and Fedonkin when they visited Perth) bears the following inscription:
"Climactichnites Wilsoni (Logan).
?as? of the "ladder-tracks" preserved on the
accompanying Potsdam sandstone slab.
Locality - Lot 6, Con. III, Drummond Township.
????????? Dr. James Wilson prior to 1850.
From ????????????? collection. - Loaned by -
Archibald Campbell, Mining Geologist, Perth."
Archibald Campbell was the driving force behind the creation of the Perth Museum and was the first curator of the Perth Museum. I assume that the tag was prepared in about 1930.
As noted above, I have looked in Lot 6 for the quarry. I’ve also searched for the quarry using Google Satellite view, and have checked on various maps. For example, the topographic map for this area (Perth Sheet, 31C/16, 1:50,000) fails to show a quarry in Concession III of Drummond (though it does show a tiny rectangular pond that is no longer present). The official plan for the Township of Drummond/North Elmsley shows a magenta coloured "U"-shaped feature at the north end of the Lot 6, which is on private land. This "U"-shaped feature is barely visible on Google satellite view, but is overgrown – mostly a swamp in a wood lot. I had initially thought that this was an abandoned quarry as the colour magenta is used on the map for quarries. However, the colour magenta is also used for a swampy area. I haven’t visited the quarry/swamp, but hope to do so this summer, and will post if I find anything of interest.
I have also looked at the Registry Act pages for Lot 6, Concession III of Drummond Township. None of Mr. Glyn, Mr. Glen or Mr. Glenn (a spelling used in an article in the Perth Courier and another source) owned property in Lot 6 in the 1800's. That is of course not determinative, as Mr. Glyn/Glen/Glenn may have been a tenant farmer.
Geologic Mapping
The Geological Survey of Canada published geologic maps that covered Canada West (now Ontario) and Canada East (now Quebec) in association with Logan’s (1863) book The Geology of Canada. The Geological Map of Canada by Sir William E. Logan (1864) shows the Potsdam sandstone and Calciferous formation crossing Drummond Township, but because of the scale of the map it is difficult to tell if he considered Lot 6 to be Potsdam sandstone.
In 1875 the Geological Survey of Canada published a map entitled Map of Lanark County and parts of Renfrew and Leeds, Province of Ontario, "Geologically Shaded to illustrate the Report of Mr. Henry G. Vennor 1874-1875". The map uses one kind of shading for both the Potsdam and the overlying Calciferous formations, and this shading covers all of Lots 4 to 15 of Concessions I to IX of Drummond Township. Lots 1 to 3 of Concessions I to IX are shaded for Gneiss and crystalline limestones.
In 1900 the Geological Survey of Canada published a map entitled Map Shewing the Occurences of Iron Ores and Other Minerals in portions of the Counties of Frontenac, Renfrew and Leeds, Ontario. This map used separate types of shading for the Potsdam and for the overlying Calciferous formation and identifies some sandstone quarries. It shows Lots 3, 4, 5 and 6 of Concessions I through VIII of Drummond Township as being Potsdam, but shows no quarry in those lots.
I mentioned above that R. W. Ells (1904) prepared a geologic map that covered most of Lanark and Renfrew counties: Perth Sheet, No. 119. As he used the same colour and similar shading for the Potsdam sandstone and the overlying Calciferous, it is difficult to interpret his map. In Concession III of Drummond, Lot 1 is definately mapped as " Gneisses, etc.", Lot 2 appears to be Potsdam and Lots 3 to 10 are Calciferous. He shows quarries on the map, but none in Drummond Township.
Alice E. Wilson (1946), in a publication entitled Geology of the Ottawa-St. Lawrence Lowland, Ontario and Quebec, GSC Memoir 241, renamed what had been called the Potsdam as the Nepean Formation, renamed the Calciferous as the Oxford formation, and introduced the term March formation for what had been the transition or passage beds between the Potsdam and the Calciferous. The maps accompanying her Memoir did not extend as far west as Drummond Township.
It took another fifteen years for the Geological Survey of Canada to map this area and to publish a geologic map that used Alice E. Wilson’s formations. See: GSC Map1089A Geology of Perth, Lanark and Leeds Counties, Ontario, published in 1961. This map uses separate colours and numbers for the Nepean Formation "sandstone, some conglomerate", March Formation interbedded sandstone and dolomite, and Oxford Formation dolomitic limestone. Lots 2 to partway through Lot 8 of Concession III, Drummond Township, were mapped as Nepean Formation, with the March Formation starting halfway through Lot 8 and going to the east. Lot 1 is mapped as Precambrian Migmatitic rocks (syenite-migmatite).
The geologic boundaries shifted when the area was mapped in the early 1980's by the Ontario Geological Survey. See: D.A. Williams and R.R. Wolf’s (1984) map Paleozoic Geology of the Perth Area, Southern Ontario, (Map P. 2724, Ontario Geological Survey, Geological Series - Preliminary Map, scale 1:50,000, Geology 1982). This map shows a number of major faults intersecting to the west of Perth (presumably on the basis of geophysical evidence) and shows Lots 5, 6, 7, 8, etc. in Concession III, Drummond Township as being March Formation, with the Nepean Formation sandstones (which they considered to be part of the Potsdam Group) covering most of Lot 2, all of Lot 3 and part of Lot 4 of Concession III of Drummond Township. Lot 1 is Undifferentiated metamorphic and igneous rocks. On their map they use the symbol "x" to show outcrops. They show no outcrops in Lots 1 to 6 in Concession III (or in any of Concessions II to VI).
Similarly, B.V. Sanford and R.W.C. Arnott (2010), Stratigraphic and structural framework of the Potsdam Group in eastern Ontario, western Quebec and northern New York State, GSC Bulletin 597, show Lot 6, Concession III, Drummond Township as being March Formation on their map, Figure 3, with the Nepean Formation sandstones starting to the west, but they appear to have relied on Williams and Wolf (1982) and do not appear to have remapped this area.
All specimens of the fossils Climactichnites and Protichnites that have been found in the Ottawa embayment, whether in Ontario, Quebec or upper New York State, have been found in Potsdam Group sandstones. None have been found in the overlying March Formation rocks (formerly the transition or passage beds), or the even younger Oxford formation (formerly Calciferous) dolomitic rocks.
The above summary shows that while Lot 6 was originally mapped as Potsdam sandstone, it has been most recently mapped as March Formation dolomitic sandstone. If the recent mapping is accurate, it suggests that Climactichnites ought not to be found in Lot 6, unless there is only a thin veneer of March formation rocks on top of the older, underlying, Potsdam Group sandstone. Finding an outcrop in Lot 6 would help.
I mentioned above that I found no outcrop on Lot 6. There are outcrops .7 of a kilometer (.4 of a mile) to the north of Lot 6 along both sides of Highway 7 that are definitely not Potsdam sandstone, and were mapped as March formation by Williams and Wolf (1982). (The rocks in the outcrops are grey weathering carbonates that display pink Liesegang banding. This rock also outcrops near the top of the sequence of March Formation rocks at Tackaberry’s aggregate quarry, an additional two kilometers to the north along Highway 7.) As those were the closest outcrops to Lot 6 that I found, it suggests that Lot 6 could be March Formation.
To summarize this posting, a review of the scientific literature and geologic mapping fails to pinpoint the quarry’s location but has revealed a number of clues to the quarry’s location (namely that the specimens of Climactichnites and Protichnites were found in fine grained Potsdam sandstone (now, the Nepean Formation of the Potsdam Group) in a quarry that is at least three feet deep, that the beds in the quarry are flat lying, that the tracks are impressed on a bed which varies in thickness from an inch to three inches, that the quarry is about a mile from Perth as the town existed in 1859, that the owner of the quarry was Mr. Glyn or Mr. Glen, and that the quarry is in Concession III of Drummond Township).
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 posting.
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/
