Tumbler Ridge Aspiring geopark
CHARLES W. HELM1 AND RICHARD T. MCCREA2 - 1. Tumbler Ridge Aspiring Geopark Steering Committee, Box 1600 Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia V0C 2W0, Canada
The Tumbler Ridge Aspiring Geopark Steering Committee submitted an application to become a member of the Global Geoparks Network in 2013 (the second from North America and the first from the west). Tumbler Ridge is a small, remote, community on the eastern flanks of the northern Rocky Mountains in northern British Columbia. The proposed geopark area is 7,822 km2, centred around Tumbler Ridge. Sedimentary rocks of the Western Canada Foreland Basin predominate, from Precambrian to Cretaceous. Till and alluvial deposits from the Wisconsin glaciation of the Late Pleistocene are also present. Metallurgical coal-mining forms the mainstay of the local economy, along with natural gas and forestry.
The proposed geopark is rich in palaeontology. Cretaceous dinosaur bones and trackways, and Triassic fishes and marine reptiles are of particular significance. The Peace Region Palaeontology Research Centre is the only museum that supports the research of British Columbia’s vertebrate palaeontology heritage. It boasts a large collection of vertebrate fossils from the Triassic to the Pleistocene, and is the central institution of the proposed geopark, with public interpretive displays in the Dinosaur Discovery Gallery, guided tours to dinosaur tracksites (including evening lantern tours) and educational camps.
There is a network of thirty hiking trails to geological and natural features that include dinosaur trackways, waterfalls, canyons, caves, rock formations, alpine lakes and mountain summits. All these attractions were featured in 2013 at a symposium in Tumbler Ridge that brought together representatives of established and aspiring geoparks in Canada. The initiative is volunteer-driven, and is supported by expert scientific advisors.
Presented in Theme 4
Atlantic Geology, 2014, Volume 50, Number 1 6th International UNESCO Conference on Global Geoparks 2014 Abstracts doi: 10.4138/atlgeol.2014015 Copyright © 2017 Atlantic Geology