A Note on Fossil Sites
Palaeontological heritage is a subset of the natural heritage that falls under natural criterion (i) [now criterion viii], being ”outstanding examples representing major stages of earth’s history including the record of life….” In practice, both the World Heritage Committee and IUCN, as the advisory body on natural sites, have taken a tentative and guarded approach to applying this criterion to specific fossil sites. Nevertheless, four sites [as of March 2004, there are now seven fossil sites on the World Heritage List] have been inscribed solely on the basis of their internationally outstanding fossil values including the Miguasha National Park in Quebec. Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta is another famous fossil locality but it was also inscribed under criterion N iii) [now vii] for additional values. The first site inscribed for its fossil values was the Burgess Shales, which was subsequently absorbed within the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks WHS and is no longer a separate entry on the World Heritage List. A previous contract study on “Significant Fossil Sites of Canada”, undertaken in 1979 by Asoka Weerasinghe, inventoried 56 sites and provided some guidance, but this is now out of date.
Nominations of natural sites that are singularly focussed on fossil deposits require specialized knowledge and a clear understanding of how they compare to similar deposits found elsewhere. Such a study was done for Miguasha National Park (Quebec), which demonstrated that it was in the “outstanding” category rather than just “representative”.(17) To assist in the process of comparison, IUCN has prepared a “Fossil Site Evaluation Checklist” which is appended to this report.