Beside the Trans-Canada Highway east of Cache Creek, and visible from it, lies the bed of a lake that existed about 52 million years ago, internationally known for the variety of its fossil plants, insects and fish. Up to 76 genera of plants have been found, including a tree now native only to China, and the insects are so diverse and so finely preserved, from an extinct bulldog ant to lacewings and stick insects, that their variety is compared to a modern tropical forest; fossil palm beetles show that palms grew here too. The climate was temperate and wet, with winters that never froze. Large collections of McAbee fossils ended up in private hands and on sale online. In 2012 British Columbia made 548 hectares a Provincial Heritage Site, and collecting stopped. The land is managed by the Bonaparte First Nation, who hold title to it, and the site has been closed to the public while interpretive features are installed.
Eocene insects, fish and plants · Early Eocene, about 52 mya
This ground is protected. Photograph it, record it, leave it where it lies. On US federal land the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act 2009 makes collecting vertebrate fossils an offence, and penalties are real.
British Columbia
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