Hold a piece of rock from the beach at Joggins and you may be holding a fern that grew three hundred million years ago. The cliffs along this stretch of the Bay of Fundy expose rocks laid down in the Coal Age, the Carboniferous period, when this part of Nova Scotia lay near the equator and was covered in tropical swamp forest. Layer after layer of sandstone, shale and coal runs along the shore for kilometres, and in them are the fossilised trunks of giant trees still standing upright, with the remains of the animals that lived among them. UNESCO listed the site in 2008.
The place has a good scientific pedigree. In the nineteenth century, Charles Lyell, the great geologist, visited with John William Dawson, a Nova Scotian, and in 1852 they found the bones of a small reptile inside a hollow tree stump. It was one of the earliest reptiles ever found, later named Hylonomus, and the find fed into the argument about the age of the Earth. Charles Darwin mentioned Joggins in On the Origin of Species, as an example of the slow accumulation of rock.
The Bay of Fundy does the rest. It has the largest tides in the world, more than ten metres between low and high water, and the sea sweeps in twice a day over the flat mud and sand at the foot of the cliffs. The tide erodes the cliffs constantly, exposing new fossils, and that is why the place stays fresh. You can walk the beach with a guide at low tide, and the timing is everything, so check the tide tables first. At high tide the base of the cliff is under water.
The road here, in the Chignecto area of Cumberland County, is quiet and flat, with farmland, salt marsh and a few small villages, and you will meet more tractors than cars. Amherst, about twenty-three kilometres away, is the nearest town with fuel, supermarkets and a good choice of food, so fill the tank there. Summer is the best season, and fog and cool wind are common off the bay, even in July. Opening times at the visitor centre change with the season, so check ahead before you make a special trip.