Fossil hunter with a taste for trilobites is foraging in the Rockies

A University of Calgary paleontologistsays he will beout in the mountains licking rocks this summer totrack down fossils.

Chad Morgan, a PhD candidate with the geosciencedepartment at theUniversity of Calgary, is on the hunt for fossilized bugs better known as trilobites at B.C.'s StanleyGlacier.

• Dino of the week: Edmontonia

"They're often described as the sort of beetles of the Paleozoic," Morgan told the CalgaryEyeopener."They kind of look like pill bugs ... but these guys lived in the oceans."

Morgan says trilobites were aquatic creatures that lived in prehistoric oceans during the Cambrian Period more than 500 million years ago. Their shells are now scattered across the Rocky Mountains.

'Stuck in the past'

Morgan says there are two main typesof trilobites smaller scavengers about thesize of a peanut and much larger"predatory" ones.

Morgan admits he is "still stuck in the past" andfavours a "map and pencil and pencil crayons" over computers when it comes to his trade.

Even more interesting, Morgan said he uses his sense of tastefor clues onwhere to start looking for fossils.

"Geologists taste the rock a lot, so a lot of the time we end up tasting theCambrianto see some of these things," Morgan says.

"If you see a weird guy licking rocks in theRockies, it might just be apaleontologist."

Tracking down trilobites

Trilobites werearthropods and had a hard exoskeletonaround their body.Because the creatures used to shed their skeletonso often there are plenty of trilobitefossils to be found.

• New evidence suggests mighty T-rex couldn't outrun human

A hiker discovered the fossils at the Stanley Glacier in the 1980s. The site just east of Highway 93, about 15 kilometres southwest of Castle Junction, has becomea trilobite buffet for paleontologists like Morgan.

Morgan says the fossils near the glacier absorbed calcite from limestone and arebetter preserved compared to fossils found at other sites that are predominantly made up of shale.

Morgan is astratigraphic paleontologist, meaning he collects full sections of rock toidentifythe different species in the rock layers.

By examining and identifying the different trilobites in the rock from multiple fossil sites, Morgan says he can "age bracket" the rocks and the fossils trapped inside.

"We use all of this to figure out the environment (trilobites) were living in 500-million years ago, and also figure out their evolution and use that to try to time the rate of the fossil record in the area."

Withfossil sites at the Stanley Glacier, Castle Mountain and a third in YohoNational Park,Morgan will be hard at workanalysing fossils and licking rocks all summer long.

• With files from the Calgary Eyeopener