Kenny Sharpe's In: Like Polaroids in rock, Table Point preserves ancient fossils

If you blink while travelling route 430 along Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula, chances are you'll miss Table Point ecological reserve.

The stretch of beach is worth more than a blink. Open your eyes and and take in creatures that lived, and died, on earth, nearly half-a-billion years ago.

• See a 360 view of Table Point

Trilobites, gastropods & cephalpods

The oddly-shaped, mostly rocky beach is home to fossilized versions of life forms that look like ancient earwigs, known as trilobites. Captured in the rock like Polaroids in time, there are thousands of snail-like looking creatures known as gastropods. And there are thousands more one- to three-inch long spears, known as nautiloid cephalpods.

According to Newfoundland and Labrador's Department of Environment and Conservation, the fossil and rock formations found along this beach are between 458 and 468 million years old, and were preserved in stone during the beginning of the formation of Appalachian Mountains — a time known as the Whiterockian portion of the Middle Ordovician Period.

View the photos to get a feeling of how life from half-a-billion years ago is naturally preserved today at Table Point on Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula.

Kenny Sharpe's In: A series

This has been the sixth instalment of In, a series that aims to take you inside places we don't often see. If you have a place, event or topic that you think Kenny Sharpe should explore, send him an email (kenneth.sharpe@cbc.ca) or follow him on Twitter.

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