COLLECTING FOSSILS IN GASPE 



By G. ARTHUR COOPER 



Assistant Curator, Division of Invertebrate Paleontology, 



U. S. National Museum 



In all Quebec Province there is perhaps no portion more pictur- 

 esque than Gaspe Peninsula. Bounded on the north by the St. Law- 

 rence River and on the west by Matapedia River, the peninsula ex- 

 tends into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Along the shores of the gulf, 

 sediments deposited in the Palaeozoic era and containing many kinds 

 of fossils have been exposed by wave action. Few of these fossils 

 were represented heretofore in the collections of the United States 

 National Museum, and it was to remedy this deficiency that the writer 

 spent six weeks in Gaspe and northern New Brunswick. 



To the eyes of the tourist the southern and eastern coasts of 

 Gaspe present a succession of bold cliffs separated by low land. But 

 to the eyes of the geologist these bold cliffs show distorted and 

 crumpled fossiliferous strata of great antiquity, the roots of ancient 

 mountains. These strata tell the old, old story of origin in an ancient 

 sea, followed by mountain-making disturbances which wrinkled the 

 sea bottoms. These contorted sea floors were elevated, and then for 

 eons of time weather, wave, and river joined forces to reduce the once 

 majestic mountains thus formed to their present modest heights. 

 These ancient and worn mountains of Gaspe are composed of Ordovi- 

 cian, Silurian, and Devonian rocks. Detailed studies record a time of 

 orogeny at the end of the Ordovician, followed by subsidence and 

 deposition of Silurian and Devonian sediments over the worn edges 

 of the Ordovician mountains. The middle and late Devonian saw 

 more mountain-building, following which, red conglomerates of the 

 Carboniferous period were deposited by rivers in valleys and de- 

 pressions. Since this latter period, so far as known, Gaspe has been 

 above the level of the sea. 



Early settled by the French, Gaspe still retains much of the lan- 

 guage and some of the customs of the mother land. These French 

 settlers have been content to inhabit the shores of the srulf, earning 

 their modest, often meager, livelihood from the fish of the sea and the 

 few vegetables that can be raised in a short growing season. The in- 

 terior of the peninsula is almost a total wilderness, unsettled and 

 little explored, but a promising region for mineral development. 

 Recently a good gravel road encircling the peninsula has been com- 

 pleted by the Quebec government. 



