Our fossil collection, of approximately 55,000 specimens, ranges from delicate impressions from the Paleozoic Burgess shale (nearly 600 million years old) to mammoth and mastodon bones and teeth of the last 20,000 years. We have beautifully preserved remains of fish that once swam in the Triassic seas where the Rockies now stand. Ammonite fossils represent many swimming cephalopod mollusks that lived 70 to 90 million years ago in Late Cretaceous seas on what is now the east side of Vancouver Island. The Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) are represented by many invertebrate species. The collection also contains turtles and bones and footprints of dinosaurs that roamed northern BC at the end of the Cretaceous, 50 million-year-old plant and insect fossils from the Kamloops area, and mollusks and vertebrate remains from 25 million years ago found at Sooke on Vancouver Island. Bird bones from Hornby Island, bison bones from Victoria and samples of lake, bog and stratigraphic sections from the last ice ages (Pleistocene Epoch) are also preserved.
Our earliest fossils were collected in the 1870s by George M. Dawson and in the 1890s by Charles F. Newcombe. Recent additions include a spectacular, anonymous donation of 20,000 Vancouver Island ammonite, nautiloid, crab, lobster, gastropod and bivalve fossils. Recent additions include a fossil bird and fish donated by Paul Casadio from the interior of BC, 3000 BC specimens donated by Rene and Anne Savenye, the Ken O’Neill Cretaceous fossil plant collection from east Vancouver Island, a magnolia-like fruit
holotype donated by Graham Beard, a mammoth tusk collected by Terry Hill from Cowichan River and several beautifully prepared and showy ammonites from Hornby Island donated by David Starr.
Several spectacular Late Cretaceous and Pleistocene fossils are on display in the Natural History Gallery. Two magnificent murals show the coast of British Columbia as it may have looked 80 to 90 million years ago and 1.8 million to 10 thousand years ago.
We have representative rock and mineral types from several BC mines. There are large and impressive specimens of various kinds of ores and even a historical collection of geological materials collected more than 100 years ago. Our rock and mineral collections are used mostly for educational programs.
Both fossil and rock and mineral collections are cared for with the assistance of expert volunteers and research associates.
Click here for information on accessing these collections.