Mistaken Point - An ecological reserve in Newfoundland and Labrador, known for its evidence of some of the oldest life forms on Earth, has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Mistaken Point geologist Richard Thomas said the UNESCO designation is the most prestigious recognition a fossil site can get and it will have an important effect on the reserve. "There's going to be a big influx of visitors," said Thomas. "We're expecting visitation to increase greatly." There will also be much more worldwide scrutiny of Mistaken Point, he added. "The provincial government now has a duty to protect and monitor and present the site to the world," he said. Mistaken Point, on the southeastern point of the Avalon Peninsula, is home to the oldest-known evidence of Earth's first, large, complex, multicellular life forms — a 565-mi...

Gros Morne National Park is considered a textbook example of plate tectonics, the theory that suggests the Earth's crust is composed of large plates that repeatedly collide and separate over geological time, opening and closing oceans between them. The park provides us with rare specimens of continental drift, where deep-sea crust and continental mantle rocks are exposed. Recent glacial activity has created many stunning landscapes, including coastal lowlands, mountain plateaus, fjords, glacier-carved valleys, sheer cliffs, waterfalls, and pristine lakes. Six hundred million years ago, Europe and North America were connected but began to drift apart. Magma from the lower crust erupted and filled the gap - solidified magma can now be seen in the cliffs of Western Brook Pond in Gros Morne. From 570 to 420 million years ago, there was an ocean between the two continents ca...

Rock formations and fossil finds on Newfoundland and Labrador's Bonavista Peninsula were given international honours Friday morning, as the Discovery Global Geopark received official UNESCO status. The Discovery Geopark, approved by UNESCO at meetings in Paris, is now one of more than 150 sites recognized for their international geological importance. "We're really excited. It's been a long road to get here," said Edith Samson, a longtime volunteer with the Geopark committee. "Lots of ups and downs, but … here we are." The geopark was recognized, in part, for the Ediacaran fossils that can be found in the area. These fossils — some of which can be accessed from the boardwalk in Port Union — are an estimated 560 million years old, and show some of the earliest multicell organisms. "With over 20 taxa present, these enig...

2023.4.29 CBC NEWS         Work is underway to establish a salmon processing facility at the massive Quinlan Brothers seafood processing plant in Bay de Verde. The plant will process farmed Atlantic salmon for Grieg Seafood Newfoundland. (Danny Arsenault/CBC)   A rapidly growing player in the Newfoundland and Labrador aquaculture industry plans to harvest its first market-sized fish from Placentia Bay this fall, launching what company officials hope will be a profitable and environmentally sound business that will create hundreds of long-term jobs." We have proven that Placentia Bay is not only viable, it's actually a very preferable place to do fish farming," Perry Power, a spokesman for Grieg Seafood Newfoundland, told CBC News this week. "The fish have performed extremely well. We're very pleased with their rate of...

2023.4.29 CBC NEWS     It was evening when I almost hit the moose.  We call it "duckish" — the time between sunset and full dark.  There were light showers, but I was paying attention and driving to conditions.  I had just grabbed a coffee for the short, 45-kilometre drive to Butterpot Park and then back home to Mount Pearl.  Just long enough to clear my head.  I was doing about nine kilometres under the speed limit when I spotted the young bull from about 100 metres away as it was climbing the small bank onto the highway near Paddy's Pond, so I didn't have to nail the breaks to stop — about as hard as you would approaching an amber light when you notice cops stopped at the intersection. My Corolla stopped with about 20 metres to spare between me and the moose. The animal stopped, turne...

  2023.5.3| CBC News Loaded   This stone doorway was found several feet beneath Water Street in Carbonear. The town's heritage society wants to know what it is before it gets destroyed.(Carbonear Heritage Society) The discovery of an underground entranceway deep beneath the road in one of Newfoundland's oldest towns ignited imaginations and led to a range of hypotheses on what the structure could be.  Was it an 18th century war shelter or hidden tunnels connecting old buildings? In the end, it turned out to be a fairly old drain. And while that may seem disappointing, provincial archaeologist Jamie Brake said it's still quite a find. "It's amazing. This sort of infrastructure is really impressive and worth documenting," he told CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show on Wednesday. Brake worked with fe...