Canada Pictures Its World Heritage Sites On March 31 Canada Post These include Banff‚ Canada’s launched a Unesco World first park preserve, Jasper, Heritage Sites in Canada se- Kootenay and Yoho national ries. Canada has 17 UNESCO parks as well as Mount Rob- World Heritage, five of which son, Mount Assiniboine and are included in this first set, all Hamber provincial parks (Brit- in “Permanent” domestic rate ish Columbia). On her choice (85¢) format. Left to right in of photographs to depict this the souvenir sheet, they are: iconic landscape, designer The pristine ridges and Lara Minja chose a climber’s cliffs, bogs and tundra, ocean bird’s-eye view that presents inlets and lakes of Gros Morne the vastness of the surrounding National Park (Newfound- mountain range. land and Labrador) might be During the gold rush in stunning, but this site’s World what was to become Nahanni Heritage status was granted due to what is hidden underground, a perfect National Park World Heritage Site (Northwest Territories), prospec- example of plate tectonics, proof the Earth’s continents have joined and tors failed to find their fortune, but discovered an incredibly varied separated repeatedly over the eons. Once-liquid magma that filled the landscape. Virginia Falls and the twists of Hell’s Gate were sculpted gap between plates of Earth’s crust remains clearly visible in the cliffs by the last ice age. of Gros Morne’s Western Brook Pond. Imagine palm trees in Canada! Nearly 400 million years ago, Nearly 200 fossil species found in the Joggins Fossil Cliffs reveal today’s Miguasha National Park (Quebec) on the Gaspé Peninsula the world’s most complete record of terrestrial life from the Pennsyl- was once a tropical estuary. The fossil beds of the Escuminac Forma- vanian Period (the Coal Age), over 300 million years ago. Here we tion, exposed in a seaside cliff provide a rare portrait of Devonian find fossilized reptiles and amniotes, the first vertebrates to reproduce life, including 21 species of fish fossils that have made Miguasha on land, marking one of the most significant events in the evolution famous. of life on Earth. For information on this and other Canada new issues and a link Every year, more than nine million people visit the Canadian to the Canada Post website, please go to Rocky Mountain Parks along the Alberta-British Columbia border. http://www.stampnewsnow.com/canadaPostnewissues.html.