Ancient Fossils From the Hibernia Field East Coast Canada

Collected by Glenn R. Power, geologist

The following PowerPoint Presentation contains images of microscopic fossils from the Hibernia Field (collected in 1998).

Fossils can help geologists determine the age of the rock formations that they are found in, the type of environment (tidal inlets, beaches, or deep sea for example) and many other useful things which help in the search for oil and gas deposits.

Some of the fossils shown here have come from rock layers in the Hibernia Formation and are therefore over a hundred million years old (when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and swam in the ancient oceans).

Other fossils have been found in ‘younger’ layers but ALL of the fossils are MILLIONS of years old.

The novelty of these fossils however is that unlike dinosaurs (and their fossils) which are very large, these fossils are very, very small. So small in fact that a powerful microscope is necessary just to be able to see them.

The fossil pictures were taken with a digital camera that was placed on the ‘eye’ of the microscope, so the quality is not as good as it would be if it the pictures were taken ‘professionally’.

The first few slides contain some images to help illustrate the size of the fossils and the necessity to have something familiar to compare the size to.

Many of the fossil pictures have been photographed on coins to help the viewer appreciate their amazingly small size.

Looking for these fossils in the “cuttings” (broken bits of rock) was part of my job when I worked on the Hibernia Platform but it was also a hobby which I did in my spare time. For me, it was a lot of fun!

I hope that you will enjoy seeing them.

Keep in mind, that millions and millions of years ago these fossils were living creatures that were ‘swimming’ in the ancient oceans.

Glenn Power

In the absence of any type of scale these two shark’s teeth appear to be the same size.

A penny provides a relevant scale.

There is a shark’s tooth on the penny.

These two pictures are of the same tooth. The one on the penny (left) has been ‘distorted’ due to ‘resizing’ from the previous photo.