Logan’s Original Protichnites Specimens From Beauharnois Were Found in the Collection of the Canadian Museum of Nature

I noticed a recent 2026  article in a leading geological journal which mentioned that Logan’s specimens of Proctichnites from Beauharnois were lost, but that original plaster casts of the specimens had been located in the Amherst College Museum of Natural History.   While the specimens were lost, they were found in 2014 in the collection of  Canada’s Museum of Nature at their research facility in Gatineau, Quebec, indexed with the wrong identification   [Kouphichnium] or not indexed with any identification.   I looked at them on July 29, 2014 with Dr. Robert MacNaughton, Michelle Coyne,  Keiran Shepherd and  Margaret Currie,    

Dr. MacNaughton  gave a talk in 2017 at the Canadian Paleontological Conference in Calgary, Alberta where he described how the specimens were found and the significance of the specimens.  The text of the abstract for his talk mentioned that “most of Logan’s specimens from Beauharnois were rediscovered in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Nature”.   As the abstract is not available online, it  is reproduced below.  

"SIR WILLIAM LOGAN AND THE ADVENTURE OF THE  ANCIENT AMPHIBIOUS ARTHROPOD 

R.B. MacNaughton, C.P. Brett, M. Coyne  and K. Shepherd

  Keywords: ichnology; Protichnites; Cambrian; Potsdam Group; Sir William Logan 

In his first literary appearance, Sherlock Holmes opined that “There is no branch of detective science which is so important … as the art of tracing footsteps.” The study of footsteps has an equally proud pedigree in paleontology. Forty years before the great sleuth made his debut, fossilized trackways produced by a long-vanished arthropod were found at several sites in Cambrian strata of the Potsdam Group at Beauharnois, Québec. Sir William Logan, the founding Director of the Geological Survey of Canada, carefully documented these localities and collected several very large specimens. Logan transported the trackways to the United Kingdom, where the anatomist Sir Richard Owen described them formally in 1852. Owen named the trackways Protichnites, the first time that arthropod-produced fossil trackways were given a formal Linnaean name. Owen documented six ichnospecies of Protichnites, providing detailed, but densely written descriptions illustrated by high-quality lithographic plates. Logan, in a very early example of applied comparative sedimentology, documented sedimentological evidence that the track-makers might have come out of the sea to walk about on land, providing the fullest account of his reasoning in the classic 1863 text The Geology of Canada. Logan’s prescient ideas would be borne out by studies a century and a half later, and Protichnites now provides evidence for the earliest-known forays of animals onto dry land. Recently, most of Logan’s specimens from Beauharnois were rediscovered in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Nature, providing an opportunity to reassess the ichnotaxonomy of Protichnites and to view at first hand some of the evidence on which Logan based his conclusions regarding the environmental range of the track-making arthropod. In honour of the 175th anniversary of the Geological Survey of Canada, this talk will discuss the importance of Protichnites as a record of early non-marine animal behaviour, while celebrating Logan’s pioneering, downright Holmesian work on the subject. "

In fairness to those that didn’t realize that the specimens had been found, I note that the title to the talk did not disclose that the specimens had been found, and that the abstract could not be found online.

Photos of Logan’s specimens of  Protichnites septemnotatus, Protichnites alternans and Protichnites lineatus can be found in my October 17, 2017 blog posting.

I suspect that Logan’s specimens were 'lost' when the Centre Block of Canada’s Parliament Building burned down in February, 1916  (fifteen months after the start of the First World War)  and the Geological Survey of Canada  had to quickly vacate the Victoria Memorial Museum so that Parliament could sit at the museum, and so that offices could be provided for the members of the House of Commons..  Most specimens were crated and moved out within 40 hours of the start of the fire.   Harlan (1916) describes the hurried crating of specimens.  Here is part of his description:

    “The east hall, with invertebrate palaeontological exhibits, similar in size to the other exhibition halls, contained thousands of small and delicate specimens. These were all carefully wrapped, packed and taken away. Forty hours after the beginning of the fire, all the museum specimens and cases had been moved from this part of the building, which was made into offices for the members of the House of Commons.   

    Of the east wing, containing tentative vertebrate palaeontological exhibits, three-quarters were cleared, and these exhibits were stored, with those of the' other quarters, along the walls of the southern half of the hall. This clearing involved not only the moving of small exhibits in cases, but also of such heavy fragile specimens as the titanotherium and the skulls of dinosaurs and mammoths, yet it was all done within two hours after this notification, that is by noon, or in less than twenty hours from the time that the fire broke out.” 

The Victoria Memorial Museum  served as the home of the Parliament of Canada from 1916 to 1920 while the Centre Block was being rebuilt.  I expect that the Protichnites specimens  were just left in storage when the Geological Survey of Canada moved back into the Victoria Memorial Museum in 1920,  and over time the significance of the specimens was overlooked and forgotten.  Or it may have been that the fossil dinosaurs collected in Alberta by the GSC (see Russell, 2012)  were deemed more appealing to museum visitors.

Christopher Brett

Ottawa

Reference and Selected Reading

MacNaughton, R.B., Brett, C.P., Coyne, M., and Shepherd, K., 2017. Sir William Logan and the Adventure of the Ancient Amphibious Arthropod. In: Gouwy, S., and Bell, K. (eds.), Canadian Paleontology Conference Proceedings No. 14, (The Geological Association of Canada - Paleontology Division; St. John’s, NF), p. 19.

 

Brett, Christopher, 2014:  My Hunt for Sir William Logan’s Specimens of Protichnites.   March 7, 2014 blog posting  https://fossilslanark.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-hunt-for-sir-william-logans.html

 Brett, Christopher:  2017  Protichnites, etc. on display at the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Collection and Research Facility.  October 27, 2017 blog posting   https://fossilslanark.blogspot.com/2017/10/protichnites-etc-on-display-at-canadian.html

 Brett, Christopher, 2019  Are Elkanhah Billing’s Specimens of Aspidella Truly Missing, or are they just Hanging Out with Logan’s slabs of Protichnites at the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Research.   March 30, 2019 blog posting   https://fossilslanark.blogspot.com/2019/03/

Brett, Christopher, 2020  Reports of Trace Fossils from the Potsdam Group Sandstones of Ontario, Quebec and New York State  See: subheading:  Logan’s Specimens of Protichnites Were Found

https://fossilslanark.blogspot.com/2020/10/reports-of-trace-fossils-from-potsdam.html

Anonymous,  Charles Mortram Sternberg, Wikipedia, retrieved May 18, 2026

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mortram_Sternberg

Russell, Loris S., 2012  History of Palaeontology in Canada.  The Canadian Encyclopedia.  Published Online May 7, 2012, retrieved May 18, 2026  https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/history-of-palaeontology-in-canada

 Smith, Harlan, 1916  The Fire and the Museum at Ottawa.  The Ottawa Naturalist, March, 1916, pages 164-167  https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/28021#page/172/mode/1up