Winter in Manitoba is not generally a time for animals to breed. Resources are scarce – many species have migrated and those that remain are often struggling to survive or have slowed their metabolism, perhaps to hibernate or essentially freeze solid.
But two Manitoba bird species are unusual finches known to breed through the winter months! Learn about these birds’ special adaptions in this video with Curator of Zoology Dr. Randy Mooi.
Animals today are mindbogglingly diverse, encompassing flies and flamingoes, elephants and earthworms, sharks and snails, and of course, ourselves. It’s hard to even imagine a world before animals, or how such staggering diversity came to be.
My name is Dr. Joe Moysiuk and I am the new Curator of Palaeontology and Geology at the Manitoba Museum. It’s my job to reconstruct ancient worlds through scientific study of the evidence that remains – fossils and rocks – and bring them “back to life” for museum visitors. I’m particularly fascinated by the evolution of major groups of animals and have devoted the past several years to researching fossils from the Burgess Shale, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the world’s most significant palaeontological discoveries.
The Burgess Shale is located high in the mountains of Yoho and Kootenay National Parks in British Columbia. Fossils were discovered by workers during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s. Although a few sites were explored by earlier researchers, it wasn’t until 1909 that Charles D. Walcott of the Smithsonian Institution made the famed discovery of a particularly diverse excavation site and provided the name Burgess Shale after the nearby Mount Burgess. Subsequent expeditions by Harvard, the Geological Survey of Canada, and Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) have yielded large research collections that have been scrutinized by countless scientists and popularized in books like Wonderful Life by legendary palaeontologist Stephen J. Gould. Collection and research continues, notably at ROM, my previous institutional home.
The Burgess Shale fossils date back roughly 506 million years, to the Cambrian Period – long before the dinosaurs or even the earliest evidence of large lifeforms on land. At first glance, they are not particularly charismatic; most appear as small, dark stains on dark rocks and are difficult to see without special lighting conditions. Contrary to their modest appearance, these fossils have had an outsized impact on our understanding of the origin and evolution of animals.
Walcott’s quarry today, showing the marks of 100 years of excavation.
When I mention the word fossil, dinosaur bones may come to mind. Alternatively, you might recall seeing the shells of molluscs and corals in the Tyndall stone walls of buildings that dot the streets of Winnipeg or other Canadian cities. These sorts of hard, mineralized remains of organisms are resistant to decay, scavenging, and breakage, so they have a decent chance of persisting long enough to become fossilized. The softer parts of organisms, like eyes, digestive tracts, or brains tend to be lost long before they can be buried and preserved from further degradation.
However, there are some fossil deposits that defy these rules, preserving traces of the soft tissues of organisms alongside their mineralized bits. In technical parlance, we call these sites Konservat-Lagerstätten, deriving from an old German mining term for “conservation motherlode.” The Burgess Shale is one such Lagerstätte, and the exceptional quality and quantity of fossil material has made it among the most renowned.
A specimen of Stanleycaris, a smaller relative of the more famous Anomalocaris. This fossil is exceptional even by the standards of the Burgess Shale – the dark matter in the head and extending into the bulbous eyes is the remains of the brain and associated nervous tissues. Photo by Jean-Bernard Caron, © Royal Ontario Museum, used with permission.
A pair of Burgessomedusa phasmiformis, the oldest jellyfish known from the fossil record. These fossils were collected in the 1980s, but the species was only formally described last year. Photo by Jean-Bernard Caron, © Royal Ontario Museum, used with permission.
As you can imagine, soft tissue preservation provides unique insights about past life. For example, we recently uncovered fossilized elements of the nervous system of Stanleycaris hirpex, a distant relative of modern insects, spiders, and crabs, giving us extraordinary direct evidence of the form of the brain in the common ancestor of these disparate animals. We also find representatives of entirely soft bodied groups of organisms, which would never be found in a typical fossil deposit. For example, my colleagues and I recently described the oldest definitive swimming jellyfish.
The reasons behind the exceptional quality of preservation at the Burgess Shale, and other similar sites around the world, remain the subject of research. It’s generally thought that a combination of factors played a role: rapid burial of the organisms in undersea mud flows, low oxygen near the sea floor, and unusual sea water chemistry during this time in Earth’s history. Subsequently, chemical reactions during rock formation reduced the organic remains to carbon-rich traces which were resistant enough to survive for over half a billion years.
Aside from the quality of preservation, the age of the Burgess Shale makes it particularly significant. The Cambrian Period witnessed a spectacular diversification of animals. Essentially all major groups that are with us today can trace their roots back to this time. The Burgess Shale provides a window into life on Earth shortly after this pulse of animal diversification.
I started my museum career at a particularly exciting time. Field work at the Burgess Shale had just resulted in the discovery of a brand new Burgess Shale site in the vicinity of Marble Canyon in Kootenay National Park. This site lies a mere 40 km south of Walcott’s quarry, but differs substantially in terms of the fossil species present. For several summers between 2014 and 2022, I joined international crews in exploring the region and excavating several dig sites systematically. Access to the sites is challenging and mostly by helicopter. We would camp in these remote settings for 2-6 weeks at a time, hiking long distances to reach fossil-rich outcrops. The work was hard and physical, but the rewards were truly spectacular. In the early days of exploration, new fossil species tumbled out of broken shale on a near daily basis. Some of these finds have now been formally published, but many still await attention and will be the basis of years of research to come.
Campsite from 2018. Finding a flat area to pitch multiple tents can be challenging in the mountains.
One of several excavation sites developed over the past decade in the vicinity of Marble Canyon, Kootenay National Park.
Using a rock saw to extract fossils from a block of shale.
A fossil of Marrella splendens, showing curving spines on the head, antennae, and numerous feather-like limbs. This animal is extremely common at the Burgess Shale and is a distant relative of insects and spiders.
The feeding claw of Anomalocaris, one of the largest predators from the Burgess Shale. This animal belongs to an early branch in the arthropod group, close to the common ancestor of insects, spiders, and crabs.
Getting fossils out of the mountains is no easy task! Here we employ a net suspended on a longline below a helicopter.
Given its protected status, collecting fossils at the Burgess Shale is by permit only. However, guided hikes are available to the intrepid fossil enthusiast through Parks Canada and the Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation. For those unable to make the somewhat arduous journey to the site, a selection of Burgess Shale fossils are on permanent display in the Earth History Gallery of the Manitoba Museum.
As I begin my tenure here at the Manitoba Museum, I feel equally excited about the potential for fantastic scientific discoveries. A legacy of field work has yielded important collections from three Konservat-Lagerstätten here in Manitoba. At roughly 445 million year old, these deposits are slightly younger than the Burgess Shale. They therefore provide complementary snapshots of early animal diversification. I look forward to “digging into” these collections and sharing new insights in the coming years.
The Burgess Shale display in the Manitoba Museum, Earth History Gallery, featuring a selection of different organisms.
The city of Winnipeg turns 150 this year! Join Curator of History Dr. Roland Sawatzky in the Winnipeg Gallery to learn about some of the history of Winnipeg as an Indigenous homeland.
This series will continue throughout 2024, so keep an eye out for more #Wpg150 videos!
Do you know the history of valentine’s cards? Learn more about Valentine’s Day and check out some unique valentines cards from the Manitoba Museum Collection in this video with Cortney!
As you trek across the snowy landscape in a (typical) Manitoba winter, one of the last creatures you might expect to be sharing the trail with is an insect. One of the reasons you are in the woods during this season might be to avoid insects! But as the temperatures hover around the freezing mark, keep your eyes open and you might be lucky enough to see a snow fly walking alongside you. Snow flies (genus Chionea) are harmless and flightless species of crane fly (family Tipulidae) (Fig. 1). Crane flies are more likely recognized as the long-legged, skinny flies that are often mistaken to be giant mosquitoes (but don’t feed as adults or only sip nectar) (Fig. 2).
Figure 1: A female snow fly (Chionea valga), a wingless member of the crane fly family (Tipulidae), walking on snow in January 2010 (© P. Taylor, used with permission).
Figure 2: A more typical warm-weather crane fly with wings and very long, thin legs from the Museum collection with a pencil for scale.
Snow flies are highly specialized, as you might expect given they are active in winter rather than in summer as other crane flies. Their odd habits have made them difficult to study; much less is known about the lives of snow flies compared to their relatives. They are usually found under the snow in what is called the subnivean zone, the space between the snow pack and the ground (Fig. 3). Here, there is an insulated layer with stable temperatures just below or near the freezing mark that harbours an entire community of lichens, mosses and other plants, mice, voles, shrews, and many invertebrates. Snow flies live in the decaying, woody debris of the forest floor under this snowy blanket. Eggs are laid in winter and the larvae are thought to feed on plant debris or, perhaps, are coprophagous – that is, they might eat mouse or vole poop (yum!). They pupate in late summer or fall and emerge as adults in winter, under the snow. The adults, like most other crane flies, are not known to feed, although they do sip water and readily drink maple syrup when offered in lab conditions.
Figure 3: A cutaway view of a layer of snow and the forest floor to show the subnivean zone, the space between the snow and the ground that provides a stable and relatively warm environment for small mammals, invertebrates, and plants to survive the winter. This is a mini-diorama in the Arctic/Sub-Arctic Gallery of the Manitoba Museum.
Warm-weather crane flies live for only a few days, just long enough to find a mate and have females lay eggs. Snow flies are known to live for as long as two months, perhaps tied to a slower metabolism in a colder environment, but also perhaps a specialization that provides time to wait for favourable conditions to permit emergence from beneath the snow. When daytime highs go above -2°C, they go walkabout for tens of metres, perhaps farther, to find a mate (Fig. 4).
Figure 4: A female (left) and male (right) snow fly (Chionea valga) walking over snow one January, searching for each other along a trail in Pinawa, Manitoba (© P. Taylor, used with permission).
But why come to the surface in winter at all? The reason remains obscure, but it has been suggested that winter activity might help avoid predation; there are far more hungry organisms about in the warmer months. Another suggestion is that snow provides a uniform substrate on which to walk; it is easier for a flightless fly to cover more walking-distance and find a mate on a smooth flat surface than the rough, uneven, and complex terrain of the boreal forest floor (Fig. 5).
Figure 5: A trail near Pinawa, Manitoba showing typical habitat where snow flies can be found on warm winter days. © P. Taylor, used with permission.
And, indeed, these flies can’t fly. They have lost their wings and flight muscles. Their subnivean (under-the-snow) habitat does seem to make wings redundant and, even when above the snow, temperatures are likely too low to permit extended flight. But how loss of wings evolved along with this winter life-style is not understood. The females of at least some species take advantage of the loss of flight muscles by using that space to store more eggs (Fig. 6).
Figure 6: The head and thorax of a female snow fly. The thorax is shown in cross-section. Like all snow flies, the wings are absent, as are the flight muscles that would be located in the thorax. In this species, the area where the wing muscles would normally be is used to store additional eggs. From Byers (1983).
Many insects avoid freezing over winter by producing sugars and proteins in their body fluids to create an ‘anti-freeze’; they can lower their internal freezing temperature by keeping ice crystals from forming as early as they would ordinarily. Many freeze-tolerant insects can survive temperatures well below -25°C. Surprisingly, snow flies aren’t particularly good at producing antifreeze nor are they very freeze tolerant; they freeze (and die) at body temperatures below about -6°C. This means that they are restricted to the (relatively) warm subnivean world most of the winter, and explains why their mate-searching activities are limited to warmer days (as noted, about -2°C or higher). One of the snow fly’s more important adaptations is that they appear to have modified nerve and muscle function to operate at low temperatures. They can remain active to the point of freezing! This means, that on a sunny day when the dark body can absorb solar heat and remain above air temperature, a snow fly can be actively walking at -10°C (Fig. 7).
Figure 7: A female snow fly (Chionea valga) actively walking on the snow near Pinawa, Manitoba on January 27, 2015. © P. Taylor, used with permission.
A more astounding adaptation: it has recently been discovered that a snow fly can self-amputate its legs to keep a freezing limb from transferring killing ice crystals into its body and destroying critical internal organs. Many insects, and especially summer crane flies, lose their long, spindly legs quite easily if held; mechanical amputation of a leg can help to escape a predator. But the larger, more substantial legs of snow flies do not come off by pulling; rather, they are triggered to amputate by temperature-regulated nerves so that when a freezing leg is detected, amputation occurs. When air temperatures drop quickly, this can buy a little more time for a snow fly out on the surface, allowing it to seek shelter under the snow and avoid a frosty death.
You can learn more about amazing snow flies in the articles listed below; both provide excellent summaries on these surprising winter insects. You can explore the life of insects throughout the year and discover their incredible diversity in the Museum’s Boreal Gallery and Prairies Gallery, where you can get up-close and personal with hundreds of species, beautiful and bizarre.
Taylor, Peter. 2016. Snow flies and other winter invertebrates near Pinawa, Manitoba. Blue Jay 74(2): 18-22. https://bluejayjournal.ca/index.php/bluejay/article/view/6112/6101
Golding, D., Rupp, K., Sustar, N., Pratt, B. and Tuthill, J. 2023. Snow flies self-amputate freezing to sustain behavior at sub-zero temperatures. Current Biology 33: 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.09.002
It’s teamwork! Badgers and coyotes sometimes use their unique adaptations to work together in hunting small rodents like the Richardson Ground squirrel. Learn how in this video from the Prairies Gallery with Learning & Engagement producer Erin.
By Roland Sawatzky, Curator of History at the Manitoba Museum
This year is the 150th anniversary of the City of Winnipeg. In 1874 it promoted itself from a small village nestled within the larger Red River Settlement, to a bona fide City, with all the aspirations of growth and importance it could muster. The Winnipeg Gallery at the Manitoba Museum is a great place to explore the fascinating history of our city.
The Winnipeg Gallery was completed at the end of 2019, so if you haven’t seen it yet, this year would be a great time. The gallery includes a seven-metre long wall of artifacts, related to seven themes that run through the history of Winnipeg, including Indigenous Homeland, City of Newcomers, and Celebrations, to name a few. And with special digital kiosks, you can do a deep dive into the story of each artifact, like Sergeant Tommy Prince’s authentic war medals, or a billy club from the 1919 General Strike.
This set of medals was awarded to Sergeant Tommy Prince, one of Canada’s most decorated Indigenous war veterans. Sergeant Prince was born on the Brokenhead Ojibway Nation.. The medals reflect his service in WWII and the Korean War. Loan from the Prince Medals Committee. ©Manitoba Museum
Many Winnipeg Grenadiers servicemen were imprisoned during WWII at Sham Shui Po Camp in Hong Kong. One prisoner made this chess set with scraps found at the camp. H9-37-547 ©Manitoba Museum
Discover Winnipeg’s changes over time through our ground-breaking interactive digital map, which lets you explore the city from seven time periods, right up to today. You can release the floodwaters over our unsuspecting city, trace the growth of your neighbourhood, or track the various epidemics (and pandemics) that have hit the city over the last century and a half.
Indigenous history is integrated throughout the gallery, including a nine-Nation treaty established at the Forks in 1285 CE; John Norquay, the Métis premier (1878-1887); the story of Shoal Lake 40 and the Winnipeg Aqueduct; and the 1972 establishment of the era-defining “Professional Native Indian Artists, Inc.” art collective, plus much more.
The inspiring experiences of immigrants in Winnipeg are told through old artifacts and new stories, accessed through a “kitchen table,” where you can sit and listen to the challenges met and overcome by new Canadians, like adapting to the extreme cold, establishing a business, and learning a new language.
This jingle dress was made by Linda Tait from Swan Lake First Nation around 1970. Pow wows are important cultural events in Winnipeg today, and the Jingle Dress Dance is a major feature. H4-0-377 ©Manitoba Museum
During the catastrophic flood of 1950, this pair of hip wader boots was used by a volunteer to assist with relief. Around 100,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes. H9-37-632 ©Manitoba Museum
This is a Kaba dress made by Olayinka Ali in 2018 for the Manitoba Museum. Olayinka is a fashion designer and dressmaker for communities from Africa in Manitoba. H9-38-824 ©Manitoba Museum
Then explore the changes in “Winnipeg 1920.” Most visitors call it the “little town,” but Winnipeg in 1920 was Canada’s third largest city. We’ve made changes to populate it with the diverse peoples of the time.
Our city has had its fair share of important events and contributions to the Canadian story, along with deeply challenging social disparities, from 1874 right to this moment. Winnipeg’s history is tumultuous ever-changing, and contentious. But it isn’t dull. See for yourself!
February skies usually mark a transition point between winter and spring, with Imbolc (the Celtic “first day of spring”) occurring at the beginning of the month. Many ancient cultures marked the start of the seasons not using the solstice and equinox, but with the dates halfway between them, since it suited their local weather patterns better. (As a Winnipegger, I’ve never bought into the idea that winter doesn’t start until December 21st!) The modern Groundhog Day draws its inspiration from this custom, falling on Imbolc.
Of course, weather is a local phenomenon, and climate is changing rapidly, so many of these dates seem increasingly out of touch with actual events. In southern Manitoba this year we’ve already had autumn, winter, and spring since the beginning of January, and expect second winter in a couple of weeks – or is it third winter?
Either way, February skies will offer some great sights – if we manage to get any cloud-free nights!
The planets are described in the order they are most visible in this month’s Manitoba skies.
Saturn is visible very low in the southwest after sunset but sets before 7:30pm in Early February. It disappears into the glare of the Sun later in the month as it passes behind our star. It is on the far side of its orbit on February 28th.
Neptune is low in the southwest as darkness falls and sets soon after. You’ll need a telescope and good star-hopping skills to be able to spot it this month as a faint dot.
Jupiter is still high in the southwest after sunset, the brightest object in the evening sky (other than the Moon). Telescope users should enjoy watching as they pass in front of or behind the planet from night to night. Jupiter’s four largest moons can be glimpsed in binoculars, but a telescope allows viewers to see the passing in front of or behind the planet, casting their shadow on the cloud tops, and even reappearing from eclipse as they exit the giant planet’s giant shadow.
Uranus is still about halfway between Jupiter (on the right) and the famous Pleiades (or Seven Sisters) star cluster on the left. You’ll need binoculars to be able to spot it as just one more star in a sea of stars. Point your binoculars halfway along and just below a line from Jupiter to the Pleiades, and Uranus will be in your field of view. If you make a sketch of all the stars you can see and then go back to the same area a few days or a week later, one of the “stars” will have moved. That’s Uranus.
Venus rises early in the morning in the southeast, a brilliant “morning star” that many will notice as during their morning walk or commute. It gets lower each morning as it moves around the far side of the Sun. Also see “Mars”, below.
Mercury drops back into the twilight early in February after a mediocre showing in January’s pre-dawn skies. It passes around the far side of the Sun on February 28th, after which it will reappear in the evening sky this spring.
Mars is still too close to the Sun to be easily seen in the first half of this month, rising just before the Sun in the morning. It passes close to Venus on the 22nd but being much fainter it is unlikely to be seen by most observers.
The dwarf planets are all too faint to be seen without large telescopes, except Ceres, which can sometimes be spotted in binoculars. Unfortunately, Ceres is just coming out of the morning twilight this month and won’t be easily visible until later in the spring.
Fri Feb. 2, 2024: Last Quarter Moon
Tue Feb. 6, 2024 (morning sky): Venus and a thin crescent Moon are both low in the southeast during morning twilight.
Wed Feb. 7, 2024 (morning sky): Theoretically, Venus, Mars, Mercury and the thin crescent Moon are all above the horizon by 8am, but the sky is likely to be too bright to see anything except Venus.
Fri Feb. 9, 2024: New Moon. It’s also the monthly meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Winnipeg Centre. The meetings are open to the public; find details here.
Wed Feb. 14, 2024 (evening sky): The Moon is to the right of Jupiter in the evening sky. Both fit comfortably into the field of view of typical binoculars (e.g. 7x50s).
Fri Feb. 16, 2024 (evening sky): The First Quarter Moon is close to the Pleiades star cluster.
Tue Feb. 20, 2024 (morning sky): Mars and Venus are in the same telescopic field of view for the next few mornings. You’ll need a clear horizon to the southeast and crystal clear skies to be able to spot Mars against the bright colours of twilight.
Sat Feb. 24, 2024: Full Moon
Thu Feb. 29, 2024: Leap Day plus Dome@Home! We add an extra day in the calendar every four years to keep the calendar in synch with the4 Earth’s orbit around the sun. It actually takes us 365 and a quarter days to orbit the Sun, so every four years we have an extra day to account for. (It’s more complicated than that, since it’s not exactly a quarter day extra, but 0.2422 days… so we don’t have leap years in century years like 2000 and 2100, unless they are divisible by 400. So, 2000 was a leap year; 2100 will not be. Got it?)
Dome@Home, the Manitoba Museum’s award-winning online astronomy show, runs the last Thursday of every month on the Museum’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. This month’s episode will be on February 29th.
Zodiacal Light: Towards the end of February, the zodiacal light becomes visible from dark locations. This ghostly cone of light rises into the sky from the horizon along the ecliptic, with its broad end roughly centered on the sunset point on the horizon. The light is the combined glow of myriad dust particles in the plane of our solar system, being backlit at just the right angle to be seen from Earth. See Roy Bishop’s excellent article on this dust on p.268 of the 2024 Observer’s Handbook, published by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
To learn when the International Space Station and other satellites are visible from your location, visit Heavens-Above.com and select the closest city or town to you.
For information on Manitoba’s largest astronomy club, visit the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada – Winnipeg Centre.
Long winter nights are perfect for sky watching! In this video, Planetarium Astronomer Scott Young will show you how to find the constellation Orion and the Winter Triangle.
Find the next showing of Manitoba Skies on the Planetarium schedule.
Join us for Dome@Home on the last Thursday of the month at 7 pm. We’ll be live on both Facebook and YouTube.
Did you know that vibrations and gravity can change the dioramas in the Museum Galleries? These dioramas are cared for by our Conservation team, who have a variety of challenges in their up-keep and must constantly adapt to find solutions to issues that arise! Learn about some of the work of a conservator in this video with Assistant Conservator Loren.
To learn more about diorama conservation in Loren’s recent blog post, click here.
