On Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, Miguasha National Park protects a narrow fossil-bearing landscape on the south shore of the Restigouche estuary, near Chaleur Bay. The park is small—UNESCO lists the property at 87.3 hectares—but its scientific significance reaches far beyond its size. The Escuminac Formation preserves evidence of life from about 370 million years ago, during the Late Devonian, a period often called the Age of Fishes. The best way to visit is to combine the outdoor setting with the museum interpretation: the cliff and shore show where the story is written, while the exhibits explain how researchers read it.
UNESCO considers Miguasha an outstanding fossil site because its fish, plant and invertebrate remains capture an important stage in vertebrate history. The formation contains five of the six fossil fish groups associated with the Devonian, an unusually broad representation for a site of this age. Especially significant are exceptionally preserved lobe-finned fishes, a group related to the evolutionary emergence of the first four-legged vertebrates able to breathe air. That relationship should not be simplified into a claim that one fossil species was the direct ancestor of every land animal. The scientific value lies in comparative anatomy, diversity and a well-preserved record of life in transition.