A field trip has been planned for Sunday, August 18th. VicPS members should watch their email for details.
Meet at the Helmcken Road Park and Ride at 9 am. Carpool to our destination. Return to Helmcken Road Park and Ride is expected to be late afternoon or early evening.
Please confirm in advance if you plan to join the field trip. Message Jerri Wilkins via the VicPS Facebook page or via email at jlwilkins2@hotmail.com.
All annual memberships expired as of Dec. 31, 2018. Reminders to renew your membership have been sent every month in the meeting agenda since January 2019. Many of you have renewed, and thank you.
Our revised Constitution and by-laws state that a member is not in good standing if the member fails to pay their annual membership dues, and the member’s membership in the society is terminated if the member is not in good standing for 6 consecutive months. This means that June 30, 2019, is the cut-off date.
For details on membership renewal, please see our Membership page .
A field trip has been planned for Sunday, June 30th. VicPS members should watch their email for details.
Meet at the Helmcken Road Park and Ride at 9 am. Carpool to our destination. Return to Helmcken Road Park and Ride is expected to be late afternoon or early evening.
Please confirm in advance if you plan to join the field trip. Message Jerri Wilkins via the VicPS Facebook page or via email at jlwilkins2@hotmail.com.
A field trip is being planned for May 26th. VicPS members should watch their email for details.
Meet at the Helmcken Road Park and Ride at 9 am. Carpool to our destination. Return to Helmcken Road Park and Ride will be mid to late afternoon.
Please confirm in advance if you plan to join the field trip. Message Jerri Wilkins via the VicPS Facebook page or via email at jlwilkins2@hotmail.com.
Thanks to Jerri Wilkins for arranging access to this site, which will be new to most members!
For Wednesday’s meeting, May 15, 2019, Dr. Ken Marr, Royal BC Museum Curator of Botany, will speak on the topic: New plant discoveries from Northern BC’s Alpine.
Ken’s presentation will cover images of the landscapes in which he and his Royal BC Museum colleagues have collected rare plants, common plants and a pseudoflower. He’ll also talk about a puzzling gap in the distribution of several species and what we are learning from DNA markers about the migration of several species.
He will provide many images of flowers and some fossils!
See you at 7:30 pm in the Cornett Building, Room A120, UVic.
Our speaker is Dr. Henry Choong, RBCM Curator of Invertebrates, who will speak on the topic: Hydroid Biodiversity – an overview of hydrozoan diversity at the Royal BC Museum. He will present an overview of hydroid biodiversity and discuss the challenges of hydrozoan taxonomy. He will highlight some of his recent work on the biogeography and long-distance dispersal of hydroids.
See you at 7:30 pm in the Cornett Building, Room A120, UVic.
A field trip is being planned for April 14th. VicPS members should watch their email for details.
Meet at the Helmcken Road Park and Ride at 9 am. Carpool to our destination. Return to Helmcken Road Park and Ride is expected to be by 3 pm.
Please confirm in advance if you plan to join the field trip. Message Jerri Wilkins via the VicPS Facebook page or via email at jlwilkins2@hotmail.com.
Thanks to Jerri Wilkins for arranging access to this site, which will be new to most members!
Key things to know about the 23rd Fossil Fair:
For all you school age palaeontologists out there, the Fossil Fair will occur during your Spring Break.
The Fossil Fair will display a rich and diverse variety of ancient fossil animals and plants from the Cambrian (550 million years ago) to the end of the last Ice Age (10,000 years ago). Fossils will be displayed from Vancouver Island, other parts of British Columbia and other areas. The fossils include dinosaur bones, ammonites, trilobites, corals, mollusks, insects, giant palm leaves and microscopic fossils.
Of interest will be a display of 42 million year old fossil snails from the Crescent Terraine which are partially crystalized. Information will also be available on the results of voting for a provincial fossil recently released by the provincial government.
The display cases and story boards from the VicPS Educational Kit which is used by the society in presentations to school groups, youth camps and other organizations will also be displayed. This will be of interest to school teachers and other educators.
The Fossil Fair is an educational experience for all age groups. The public is invited to bring in fossils for identification. Specific activities for children include a fossil scavenger hunt with prizes, fossil colouring, rubbings stampings, and looking through microscopes.
The Victoria Palaeontology Society cooperates with professional palaeontologists undertaking research on fossils collected by Society members. Information will be provided on some of the scientific contributions made by members, including the discovery and naming of new species. All scientifically important fossils are donated to the Royal British Columbia Museum.
The Society is a member of the British Columbia Paleontological Alliance, an umbrella organization representing the interests of a number of paleontological organizations in the province.
Admission is by donation.
The agenda for the Wednesday, March 20 meeting includes our AGM and election of officers and directors. We plan to move through this quickly, so we may enjoy the presentation from our speaker.
Our speaker is Dr. Gavin Hanke, Curator of Vertebrates, Royal BC Museum and the topic is Thelodonts – the Forgotten Fish. Thelodonts are a class of extinct Paleozoic jawless fish with distinctive scales instead of large plates of armor.
See you at 7:30 pm in the Cornett Building, Room A120, UVic.
The provincial government has recently announced the results of the Fall 2018 voting for a provincial fossil. Of the seven candidates, the Elasmosaur received the most votes at 48%. Legislation must first be passed before the Elasmosaur can officially be designated as the provincial fossil and a provincial symbol of British Columbia.
The folks at the Courtenay and District Museum and Palaoentology Centre and Vancouver Island Paleontological Society are ecstatic.
