Moominmama Visits Gros Morne National Park

 

Wherein Moominmama walks the mantle of the Earth, crosses from the Ordovician to the Cambrian, and hikes the boreal forests of Newfoundland...

Moominmama had a largely sleepless overnight ferry ride from Sydney, Nova Scotia, but the drama of Newfoundland quickly woke me up as I traveled up the island's Northern Peninsula to arrive at Gros Morne National Park.

The mountains and boreal forests of the park are thrilling. And if that wasn't enough, the geology of this area turns out to be incredibly unique. Newfoundland's west coast was shaped initially by a collision of tectonic plates. In the process, a section of the Earth's mantle slid up over the crust instead of below. This has happened in only a few places in the world, and Gros Morne is one of them.

The area is called the Tablelands, and it's a rusty red color, with rocks called peridotite that discourage plant life. Apparently, this area has been studied for its similarity to the planet Mars. Peridotite is dense and dark green until it oxidizes on the outside. Slice into it, and the rust red is only a a crust on the surface. 

Pressure and heat also create metamorphic rocks of serpentinite, so-called because of the snakeskin-like patterns. But all of this rock is full of heavy metals and remains toxic to most forms of plant life. 

Only a few plants, able to absorb and store toxins, grow here. And even then, they have to endure ferocious winds, harsh sun and frigid winters. These plants are studied because they have potential to help remediate contamination in other parts of the world.

One other thing that grows here are carnivorous plants! In fact, the Newfoundland emblem is a pitcher plant, which survives on flying midges, ants and other small bugs, trapping them in its "pitcher" shape. It also grows a fascinating stalk with an almost clam-shaped "flower" that also catches flying prey.Newfoundland has proven to be so much more exotic than I ever expected! 

One other fascinating area for scientists turns out to be the pastorally named Green Point. But below the grassy point is sedimentary rock that was pushed and folded by the tectonic collision.

Because of the fossils found in these folds, scientists recognized these were layers that date back to the Cambrian and Ordovician periods. 

In fact, there were changes to the forms a few of these creatures took at the end of the Cambrian and the beginning of the Ordovician. One of them is a conodont, an ancestor of the lamprey, which evolved teeth by the time of the Ordovician but did not have teeth during the Cambrian era.

Here's our parks guide, Carol, with an illustration of what an Ordovician conodont might have looked like, as she calms our fears by indicating with her fingers that the creature was no longer than 10 centimeters.

The fossil finds at this site allow it to serve as a reference site for anyone trying to identify rocks or fossils along the Cambrian/Ordovician timeline. In 2000, it became the world's "stratotype," an official designation that makes it THE global comparison point for scientists studying these eras.

Each of the thin layers of shale marks roughly 100 years, Carol said, but the steady accrual of these layers is interrupted by flooding, earthquakes or other dramatic events that lay down thicker layers of limestone in between. It's a timeline written into the cliff but not one we can fully read, as yet. Moominmama finds it thrilling to learn new things when I can see those things right in front of me -- and literally cross the rocky ground going back in time!

As many of you know, I came to love glaciers when I met the Columbia Icefield between Jasper and Banff national parks in western Canada a few years ago. 

Glaciers play a huge role here in Newfoundland too. They moved over the island after the tectonic collision and further carved the landscape into long fjords. So the coast is a zigzag of points and coves. Villages form in the more protected coves, but it turns out the fishing is best out at the points, where summer fishing camps remain.

One of these fjords, Western Brook, eventually sealed itself off from the ocean and filled with freshwater. But it was clearly carved by a glacier and Moominmama was able to get on a boat that took us up its length.

The long and deep lake is called a "pond,"  because apparently the British settlers that arrived in western Newfoundland chose familiar terms to describe these waterbodies. And since there were no lakes at home, this is Western Brook Pond.

The two-hour boat trip was on a beautiful sunny day, and after showing us around the cliffs and waterfalls, we got a concert on the ride back. Boathand KJ Hollahan trained up a handful of the kids to play spoons then whipped out his guitar to entertain us with some Newfoundland folk classics!