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Quebec: Montréal, Montréal Biodôme – Digging Prehistoric Mammals at the Fossil Affair. Montréal’s Nature Museums invites families to come investigate The Fossil Affair, a fully updated and improved exhibition on the important stages in the evolution of life on Earth, at the Montréal Biodôme.

One of the key pieces in the exhibition is the addition of an impressive and nearly complete 10,700 year old beluga skeleton. The fossil, a priceless paleontological treasure, was discovered in 2001 in Saint–Félix-de-Valois. It gives us clues about its habitat back then, the Champlain Sea, and helps us better understand the evolution of this species and its relationship with its environment.

“By adding this exceptional fossil to the Biodôme’s collection, we are offering our visitors a different kind of contact with nature, a way of complementing the Biodôme experience. This encounter with our distant history helps us better understand the way life around us evolves and get a new perspective on it,” explains Charles-Mathieu Brunelle, Executive Director of Montréal’s Nature Museums.

Thanks to the expertise of the Société de paléontologie du Québec, the specimen was reconstituted in such a way that it looks as it did when it was found. Interactive games and animations give visitors information on the discovery of the skeleton in 3D and show what the Champlain Sea was like. The Sea disappeared long ago as Quebec’s ecosystem evolved, and was replaced by what is now the St. Lawrence Valley.

The Fossil Affair, a fun-filled exhibition with interactive, hands-on features designed to appeal to ages 6 to 12, invites visitors to experience the major stages in the evolution of life on Earth. What is a fossil? How did life on Earth evolve? Where did the oxygen essential to life come from? They can learn the answers to all these questions as they journey back in time and examine minerals, handle fossils and marvel at a rock from 4 billion years ago that even our youngest visitors can touch!

This permanent exhibition complements visitors’ immersive experience along the path through the Biodôme’s ecosystems and will help them acquire a very concrete understanding of biodiversity, in this International Year of Biodiversity.
 
Felix: An Exceptional Marine Fossil
•    The skeleton is from a beluga, dubbed Félix by the members of the Société de paléontologie du Québec, that lived 10,700 (± 90) years ago in the Champlain Sea, which was then at its largest.
•    It is from a male beluga that was 4.5 m long, the maximum size for its species. It died in its sixties, a relatively advanced age for a beluga.
•    Its left-hand side is remarkably well preserved. The animal was found lying on its left side, and sediment covered this part of its body faster, protecting the bones.
•    The skeleton is almost complete: the skull is more or less intact and the bones in its flippers are connected, as are all the vertebrae. All that is missing is a bone from its pelvis, parts of its ribs, parts of bones that had worn away – and one vertebra discarded by a veterinarian who mistook it for a cow bone!
•    Studying the skeleton shows that the anatomy of Ice Age belugas was similar in every way to that of today’s belugas
 
Make it happen. Montréal Biodôme, 4777 avenue Pierre-De Coubertin, Montreal, Quebec H1V 1B3, Canada. www.ville.montreal.qc.ca
 
 
Information provided by Montréal’s Nature Museums, images courtesy of Claude Lafo. Copyright 2012.
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