The Parrsboro Fossil Site, located on Wasson's Bluff, on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, 6 kilometers from Parrsboro, was designated a Special Place under the terms of the Special Places Protection Act on March 1, 1990. The designation was based on the 200 million year-old fossil assemblages discovered in 1984 by a team of American scientists led by Dr. Paul Olsen of Columbia University and Neil Shubin of Harvard University. The team returned to the site in 1985, when they collected three tons of bone-bearing matrix which contained 100,000 pieces of bone from a series of assemblages.

The 200 million-year-old assemblages of well-preserved reptiles apparently just post-date a mass extinction event at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. They comprise the largest discovery ever made in North America of vertebrate fossils from that period, and are the strongest evidence so far supporting a mass extinction prior to the emegence of dinosaurs and mammals. Though not yet proven, it is speculated that the impact of a large meteorite threw enough debris into the atmosphere to block out the sun, killing off plants and seriously disrupting the entire food chain. Approximately 43% of all life is thought to have died out about this time.

The bones that are found in the rocks are those of the creatures that survived the extinction. Most are small creatures that lived in and among the boulders of a talus slope, though larger bones have ben found. The assemblages include early crocodillian species, freshwater sharks, and small dinosaurs. One of the most significant finds was the small jawbone of Trithelodont, a very rare, mammal-like reptile. It is at this time in the earth's history that mammals first made their appearance, so these fossil remains provide a wonderful opportunity to gain insight into this important part of our past.

A Final Note

The Fundy Geological Museum in Parrsboro has some great information on the Parrsboro Fossil Site. The Parrsboro fossil site is a popular and important tourist spot. The site also contains extremely important and fragile palaeontological deposits. Please remember that it is a protected Special Place. It is illegal to dig fossils from the cliff without a Heritage Research Permit. The Nova Scotia Museum is currently revamping its permit system to account for collecting loose fossils on the beach. They may be collected in the interim, though the fossils remain the property of the Province of Nova Scotia.