Ammonites And Fossils Along The Shores of Igloolik Point

My wife and I were lounging around having a lazy friday afternoon when Hive account@arcticgypsy got a text from her friend asking us if we'd like to catch a ride out to the southern end of the island to get out on the land for a bit. Her and her Husband were taking a ride out to "the point" to take a sack of snacks to the school kids out on the land doing a Summer Camp project focused on learning more about their own culture and traditions. From skinning seals and catching arctic char to storytelling and oral history.

It took around 45 minutes to drive around the extremely rough gravel road to the other side of the island due to the severe V shape of Tutton Bay. We passed by HUNDREDS of inukshuks that I will be doing a future blog on. As well as the stone piles of ancient Inuit sod households near the point.

At the area where we were finding fossils, to the northeast, it's a steep 20 foot shelf of flat jagged stones that have been broken and fractured by the freeze/thaw effect of water and the spring ice floes ramming massive amounts of ice into the shore. Facing southwest at low tide the ocean floor is exposed. It's all bedrock. No sediments rest upon the shore here and it makes finding fossils a total breeze.

Along the bedrock you can easily find fossils within the rocks. As they get fractured apart and then forced ashore they get broken down into smaller pieces. Sometimes (ie a lot of the times) they even make it ashore almost fully intact. All these photos were taken within the span of 10 minutes. They are everywhere. I felt like a kid in a candy shop. Because my candy is fossils!

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All photos are my own, taken by myself. They are taken using a Nikon P900 and a Samsung S20. Consider checking out my website, Midnight Sunsets. I'm also on Twitter and Instagram!