Joggins Fossil Cliffs Teams up with Nova Scotia Museums to present at the IPC

Dr Melissa Grey, Curator of Palaeontology is heading off to London this weekend to attend the 3rd International Palaeontological Congress.

Melissa has worked with Deborah Skilliter of the Natural History Museum, Halifax to present the abstract on the procedures and policies of collections management here at Joggins.

s5 - COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT AT THE JOGGINS FOSSIL CLIFFS UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE: A NEW MODEL?
Grey, Melissa1 and Skilliter, Deborah M.2

1Joggins Fossil Institute, Joggins, NS, Canada B0L 1A0

2Nova Scotia Museum (Museum of Natural History), Halifax, NS, Canada B3H 3A6
e-mail: sci-edu@jogginsfossilcliffs.net

The Joggins Fossil Cliffs (Nova Scotia, Canada) contains an unrivalled fossil record, preserved in its environmental context, which represents the finest examples in the world of Carboniferous terrestrial tropical ecosystems.

The Joggins Fossil Institute (JFI) is a non-profit, charitable, community-based organisation which was created to aid in the promotion, conservation, and sustainable development of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. All fossils in Nova Scotia legally belong to the province and collecting is only allowed with a Heritage Research Permit. JFI works in partnership with the Nova Scotia Museum (NSM, Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage) to manage the most comprehensive collection of Carboniferous fossils that is housed at the award-winning interpretive and research centre in Joggins.

JFI houses a collection of Joggins fossils that is on loan from the province. JFI and the province share curatorial responsibilities for the collection and training of new staff on curatorial practices and care and handling of the collection. The province has provided a specialized, sitespecific database that allows JFI staff to catalogue new material as it is collected and share these records with a central server. NSM, in partnership with JFI, has also developed an on-line searchable database of the collection housed at the Institute.

This style of collection management is a new model that allows for shared responsibility and best-practices for curation between institutions. Our institutional relationship represents a critical step in achieving JFI‘s goal of having a co-managed site with the provincial government.

Annual Community Cleanup

Friday, June 11th was a hot and sunny day...the perfect weather for our annual community cleanup! Instead of cleaning around the Joggins area, as we did last year, we decided to focus our attention on the River Hebert area. We had five staff members from the Joggins Fossil Centre team up with 5 classes from the River Hebert Elementary School. Equipped with rubber gloves and garbage bags supplied by the Joggins Fossil Institute, the groups picked up garbage from the bottom of Beach Hill to the bridge, up and around Pit Road, and all the side streets along the way.

After the groups arrived back at the school, brown bag lunches prepared by the Joggins Fossil Institute were handed out to the students and to anyone who helped in the cleanup effort. Mr. Berry volunteered to collect and dispose of the 32 bags of garbage, which consisted mostly of coffee cups and cigarette cartons, from the side of the road that were produced by the cleanup.

The Joggins Fossil Institute would like to thank Mr. Brian Carter of the River Hebert Highway Garage for setting up orange flags and road signs indicating to motorists that a community cleanup was in progress. Brian also supplied orange vests for the event. We would also like to say thanks to Mr. Berry for collecting and disposing of the garbage. Everyone involved had a great time and the Joggins Fossil Institute would like to thank all the students from the River Hebert Elementary School who participated in this important event aimed at making our community a cleaner place to live.

So far, we’ve been able to make Joggins and River Hebert cleaner communities through our annual cleanup efforts. Where should we focus our community cleanup next year?