The Fossil Forests of Joggins: How a Quest for Coal Shaped Paleontology 

Thumbnail Image Credit: Michael C. Rygel via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ca... (This is an awesome image of the fossil wall at Joggins, take a look).
The Mi’kmaw called the area Chegoggin, “the place of the fishing weirs.” Chegoggin became “The Joggins,” to the English, then “The South Joggins,” and finally, “Joggins.” This form of haunting is common among place names in Nova Scotia. The original name lies curled inside the shape of the new one, at once destroyed and preserved.
Today, Joggins is a tiny village on the western coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. 315 million years ago, it was an equatorial forest whose ghost would profoundly affect the emerging science of paleontology.
The cliffs below Joggins are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Dr. John Calder, who was instrumental in securing that recognition, calls them the “story book of the Coal Age.” It is a book to be read in wonder, but not lightly. To Calder, the cliffs “hold great lessons for us about our shared past and our future together on this changing earth.”
Here and there, embedded high in the face of the cliffs, are what appear to be Grecian columns. The columns are the trunks of fossilized lycopsid trees, kings of the Coal Age forests. Within the layers of rock, 60 ancient forests are still standing. Their trees are upright and hollow, their stone roots reaching deeper than in life. Small creatures are entombed inside the trees, some of the earliest land-dwelling vertebrates. One is Hylonomus lyelli, the first reptile in the fossil record.
After 315 million years in darkness, erosion is pulling them all back into the light. The first hollow tree creatures were discovered in 1852 by the famous Scottish geologist Sir Charles Lyell and his colleague, Canadian paleontologist Sir William Dawson; but you might equally say that the creatures discovered them, by crashing down onto the beach at the right time.
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Further Reading:
The main source for this essay is The Joggins Fossil Cliffs: Coal Age Galapagos by John Calder books.google.ca/books/about/T...
Another main source, this video showing amazing views of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs by Brian Hebert and the Atlantic Geoscience Society: • Joggins Fossil Cliffs-...
The Fossil Cliffs of Joggins by Laing Ferguson, a guidebook to interpreting the site: books.google.ca/books/about/T...
The Carboniferous: ucmp.berkeley.edu/carbonifero...
Uniformitarianism: Charles Lyell: evolution.berkeley.edu/the-hi...
Reptiles: www.britannica.com/animal/rep...
Which Came First: The Reptile or the Egg?: www.sciencedaily.com/releases...
The Joggins Fossil Center: jogginsfossilcliffs.net
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Chapter 6, “Science red in tooth and claw,” on 19th century geological controversy: books.google.ca/books/about/A...