Stonehammer Geopark

 

Located on Canada’s east coast, the Geopark is the birth place of geological research in Canada. The landscape of the geopark has been created by the collision of continents, the closing and opening of oceans, volcanoes, earthquakes, ice ages and climate change. The rocks of our park have been witness to the evolution of life, from the first discovery of Precambrian stromatolite fossils, to the ‘Cambrian Explosion’ of life, to the evolution of vertebrates and the emergence of life on land. The park includes geological stories from late Precambrian time a billion years ago to the most recent Ice Age, and almost everything between.

Why call it Stonehammer?

The geopark was one of the first places in Canada to be explored by geologists. In 1857 a group of young men in Saint John formed the ‘Steinhammer Club’ to explore the geology near their home. Even earlier, in 1838, another city resident Dr. Abraham Gesner began work as the first Provincial Geologist in the British Empire. Gesner opened one of the first public museums in Canada. Steinhammer Club members used Dr. Gesner’s reports as a guide to their work and later founded the Natural History Society of New Brunswick. Geologists have been visiting the park we call Stonehammer ever since and continue to make new discoveries.

 

The Stonehammer logo recognizes some of the many geological features of the park and the connection between people and geology. The central symbol is the trilobite in honour of one of our best-known fossils. Trilobites are extinct crab-like animals that lived on the ocean bottom starting in the Cambrian Period, about 530 million years ago. Steinhammer Club members George Matthew and Fred Hartt, and their colleague Loring Bailey found the first Cambrian age trilobites in Canada in the park in 1863. In the 1880s George’s young son Will Matthew found one of the world’s largest trilobites in the rocks of Saint John.

Stonehammer park is about geology, but it is also about people, society and culture. Our lives are shaped by geology. Where we settle, the landscape, the crops we grow, natural hazards, water resources, climate, what we mine, and the energy we use are all linked to geology.

Since the days of Gesner and the Steinhammer Club, the rock hammer (or stone hammer) is still the basic tool of a geologist.