It’s time to add a new spot to your bucket list, with UNESCO bestowing an area in Canada with a rank on its World Heritage List.
The Government of Canada announced on Tuesday that UNESCO inscribed Anticosti, an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Quebec, on the World Heritage List during its 45th annual session in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The federal government says Anticosti has a total area of more than 9,200 square kilometres and a coastline that stretches over 550 kilometres.
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The area represents one of the largest stratigraphic successions in thickness and the most complete fossil record of marine life of the period that spans more than 10 million years of Earth’s history between 447 and 437 million years ago.
This interval in the history of Earth was not yet represented on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the news release stated.
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There are currently more than 1,440 known fossil species on Anticosti Island whose assemblages demonstrate changes in global climate and sea level that, at the end of the Ordovician period, caused the extinction of almost all ocean life on the planet.
The naming of Anticosti as a World Heritage site includes all the fossil layers exposed along the coastline and the Vauréal and Jupiter rivers.
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The site is protected from any development and industrial activity because it is entirely located within a network of strictly protected areas consisting of a proposed biodiversity reserve, a Quebec national park, and two ecological reserves.
Anticosti now joins other World Heritage sites in Canada, including Tr’ondëk-Klondike, Nahanni National Park, Wood Buffalo National Park, Gros Morne National Park, the Historic District of Old Québec, and the Rideau Canal National Historic Site.
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