Discover Canada and Explore the Fossils and Geodiversity of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut Territory
- Wayne Munday
- Oct 8
- 6 min read
Sip back and discover Canada and explore the fossils and geodiversity of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut’s Qikiqtaaluk Region. This Arctic wilderness preserves an extraordinary fossil record. The Late Devonian Fram Formation has revealed fossils of Tiktaalik roseae and other lobe-finned fish that document the crucial evolutionary transition of fish from water to tetrapod's living on land. In contrast, the Eocene-aged Margaret Formation of the Eureka Sound Group captures a warm, forested Arctic world, home to early primate relatives such as Ignacius mckennai, Arctic tapirs (Thuliadanta), and alligators and giant tortoises. Dinosaurs are absent due to Ellesmere’s younger Cenozoic geology but a rare Lower Cretaceous plesiosaur called Colymbosaurus highlights ancient marine connections across the Arctic. Today, melting permafrost and erosion threaten these fragile deposits, whose fossils remain essential for understanding vertebrate evolution, paleoclimate history, and the environmental lessons of past greenhouse worlds.
Ellesmere Island is in the remote Artic, one of the most sparsely inhabited places in Canada with fewer than 200 residents and largely inaccessible where the landscape is dominated by rugged mountains, glaciers and vast ice fields. The Islands fossil sites are mainly visited by scientific expeditions or specialised Arctic cruises rather than by the casual tourist. Located in Canada’s Qikiqtaaluk Region in the Territory of Nunavut the Island forms part of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago lying off Greenland’s northwest coast. Ellesmere Island is the northernmost point of land in Canada. Fossils are curated off-island and key specimens and exhibits appear in the Canadian Museum of Nature (Ottawa), the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto) and The Field Museum (Chicago).
Despite its extreme conditions the northernmost part of Ellesmere Island is protected by the Quttinirpaaq National Park. Translated from Inuktitut an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in Nunavut, Greenland and Alaska the word Quttinirpaaq means “land at the top of the world”. This park covers an area of 37,775 Km² and lies just 720 Km from the North Pole making it Canada’s most northerly protected area where Arctic wildlife such as Muskoxen, Arctic Hares, Wolves and the endangered Peary Caribou live. At the heart of Quttinirpaaq National Park is Lake Hazen one of the largest freshwater lakes in the circumpolar region renowned as a thermal oasis. The park also preserves exceptional archaeological heritage dating back to the early Indigenous peoples of the Independence I and II, Late Dorset and Thule cultures some dating between 2400 - 1900 BC ago who live and migrated across the North American Arctic.
The fossil record of Ellesmere Island focusses first on the Late Devonian Fram Formation a sequence of siltstones and sandstones deposited in ancient braided rivers and floodplains. Dated to the Frasnian Stage the earlier of the two stages of the Late Devonian Epoch spanning roughly between 382.7 - 372.2 million years ago.
The Fram Formation was formed on the continent of Laurentia and at this time the climate was warm and tropical and near to the equator. The combination of running river water, abundant plant life on the floodplains and a warm climate created ideal conditions for diverse aquatic and terrestrial fauna to flourish.
In 2004 a team from the Academy of Natural Sciences, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University working in the south of Ellesmere Island near Bird Fiord discovered a fossil of a lobe-finned fish with a flattened skull, a mobile neck and wrist-like bones in its fins. Identified as Tiktaalik roseae this fossil is important in understanding the transition of how fish took their first steps as tetrapod's on to land.
Tiktaalik roseae bridges the evolutionary gap between fish and the first amphibian-like tetrapod's marking the crucial water-to-land transition in vertebrate evolution. The fossil exhibits a number of traits such as fish-like scales, fins and gill structures alongside tetrapod-like features such as a flat head, mobile neck, robust ribs and wrist-like joints in its fins capable of supporting its body in shallow water.
In addition to Tiktaalik roseae the Fram Formation of Ellesmere Island preserves a remarkable assemblage of Late Devonian vertebrates including the first North American record of Laccognathus embryi a predatory porolepiform lobe-finned fish as well as Qikiqtania wakei a tetrapodomorph fish formally described in 2022 and closely related to Tiktaalik but adapted as an open-water swimmer. Other vertebrates include heavily armoured placoderms such as the flat headed bottom feeders Asterolepis and Bothriolepis species and lungfish (dipnoans). Collectively, these fossils indicate a rich record of lobe-finned fish diversity in a high-latitude ecosystem.
The second major window into deep time that Ellesmere Island exposes is the Eureka Sound Group that spans from the Campanian Stage of the Late Cretaceous to the Middle Eocene between 85 - 40 million years ago. The Eureka Sound Group on Ellesmere Island preserves both terrestrial and marine deposits reflecting the influence of the Eurekan Orogeny or mountain building event where the Eurekan tectonics shaped much of the Arctic, including northern Ellesmere Island, North Greenland and the North American and Barents Shelf margins.
Within the Eureka Sound Group is the Margaret Formation from the Early Eocene between 52 – 54 million years ago. This formation is linked to the Eocene Thermal Maximum 2 (ETM-2) the second-largest global warming event of the Early Eocene following the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). This hyperthermal event was triggered by a massive release of carbon dioxide into the ocean-atmosphere system and subsequently rapid global warming.
The fossil assemblage of the Margaret Formation reveals a temperate high-latitude ecosystem with dense forests of Metasequoia (Dawn Redwood) and high-latitude cypress swamps and remarkedly includes the northernmost relatives of primates known as the Ellesmere Ignacius and the species of Ignacius mckennai and Ignacius dawsonae. These animals were thought to look like a "cross between a lemur and a squirrel that was about half the size of a domestic cat".
The remaining fossil assemblage from the Margaret Formation includes a mix of small primitive insectivorous mammals including the northernmost record of a palaeanodonta called Arcticanodon dawsonae. Palaeanodonts were small now extinct fossorial placental mammals adapted to digging and burrowing and spending much of their lives underground. Another mammal that also adapted to this environment was a new genus and species of Arctic Tapir called Thuliadanta.
This warm, swampy and forested high-latitude “greenhouse Earth” ecosystem also supported alligators such as Allognathosuchus and giant tortoises like Geochelone. The fossil evidence from these reptiles, along with diverse mammals, indicates year-round above-freezing temperatures and subtropical conditions.
It is also important to note what Ellesmere does not have in its fossil record. No dinosaur fossils have been found on Ellesmere Island (yet?) because the region’s geology postdates the Mesozoic Era. Most exposed rocks such as the Eureka Sound Group and Margaret Formation belong to the Cenozoic that formed long after the extinction of dinosaurs. Any Mesozoic sediments that could have preserved dinosaur remains were likely eroded, buried or deformed during major tectonic events. During the Mesozoic, this area lay near the Arctic Ocean margin and was dominated by a marine and delta environment unsuitable for preserving terrestrial dinosaur fossils.
However, in 1952 a Danish geologist called Johannes Troelsen discovered by accident in the Sverdrup Basin the fossil remains of a Colymbosaurus, a genus of cryptoclidid plesiosaur the only known predatory plesiosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of this region. At the time the bones were sent to the Natural History Museum Denmark in Copenhagen where they were partially prepared but soon ended up being stored in various boxes and crates, forgotten, and damaged by water leakage, until eventually being described in 2024.
Ellesmere Island is primarily a center for scientific research rather than tourism, with fieldwork restricted to those with permits, logistical support and access during the short Arctic summers. Many of its fossil discoveries are best explored through museum exhibits. Conservation challenges, including melting permafrost, erosion and past resource exploration threaten the island’s delicate fossil beds. Protecting these sites is vital, as Ellesmere’s fossils ranging from Tiktaalik to early primates offer crucial insights into evolution, paleoclimate and the ecological impacts of past greenhouse worlds. The island preserves a unique geological story of rivers where early vertebrates first ventured onto land and forests thriving under polar light together forming a record of Arctic life that continues to inform our understanding of climate change today.
