Blue Beach is a 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) stretch of cliff-bordered coastline at Avonport, Nova Scotia near the mouth of the along the Avon River in the southern bight of Minas Basin, Kings County, Nova Scotia, Canada.
It is best known as a globally significant fossil location for Lagerstätte of the Tournaisian Stage (Lower Carboniferous) period.
[2] The Blue Beach cliffs consist of soft shales and sandstones of the Horton Group.
They erode rapidly because of the high tides in combination with winter freeze-thaw and ice shaving conditions, thus continuously creating opportunities for new discoveries.
Sir William Logan, the first Director of the Geological Survey of Canada, found footprints from a tetrapod in 1841.
Fauna includes tetrapods,[4] fish, arthropods (horseshoe crabs, trilobites and ostracods[5]) and shells.
The species name honors Sonja Wood who runs the Blue Beach Museum and has studied the fossils for many years along with her husband Chris Mansky.
[3] Fish fossils include Elonichthys,[3] Rhadinichthys,[3] Canobius,[3] Letognathus,[7] ?Ctenodus,[3] Gyracanthides,[3] Gyracanthus,[3] Acanthodidae,[3] and Bothriolepis.
[7] This includes the species Rhizodus (now Letognathus) hardingi of Dawson, named after a Dr. Harding of Windsor, Nova Scotia.
[3] From 2000 onward, a small museum formed in a barn near Blue Beach has displayed fossils from it, as founded by Chris Mansky and Sonja Wood.