Fortune Head

The Fortune Head lighthouse, which is operated by the Canadian Coast Guard, is also on the reserve and functions as a visitor center.

[2] The Burin Peninsula is part of the Avalon Zone of the Appalachian Orogen, the geology of which chronicles the late Precambrian Alleghenian Orogeny.

The southern end of the peninsula includes a series of mafic pillow lavas, volcanigenic sediments, shales and limestones, collectively known as the Burin Group, as well as a 1500 m thick sill of gabbro about 760 million years old.

The northern end of the peninsula is defined by the Marystown Group, primarily carbon-lacking Silica-based sediments which span the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary.

Some of these rocks exhibit mud cracks and stromatolites, suggesting that deposition occurred in tidal or, at deepest, continental shelf environments.

Delegates from the Ichnia 2012 conference inspect the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary at Fortune Head Ecological Reserve, Newfoundland, Canada. The boundary is defined on the appearance of the complex, vertical trace fossil Treptichnus (formerly Phycodes) pedum.