At a time when most university field trips were afternoon excursions to roadcuts close to campus, in 1947 Laudon took his graduate students and family on an unprecedented geological expedition into the wilderness of north-eastern British Columbia

The coelacanth Whiteia from the Triassic at Wapiti Lake. This 45 cm long specimen is from the University of Alberta Collections. (Photo by BDEC (c).)

In the spring of 1947 Lowell Laudon, professor of geology at University of Kansas, was getting ready for an extraordinary geological expedition. He planned to take seven graduate students (all ex-servicemen studying geology under the GI Bill) and his wife and three young sons to Wapiti Lake, a small glacial lake located in the middle of the Rocky Mountains east of Prince George, and150 kilometres distant from the nearest road at Grande Prairie in Alberta. In order to transport this large party and supplies to Wapiti Lake, the Laudons had mortgaged their house to buy a brand new Republic RC-3 Seabee, a single-engined amphibious plane with a unique rear-facing propeller.

The crew spent the summer mapping the sedimentary rocks exposed in the mountains in the vicinity of the lake. They concentrated on the shales and limestones of Devonian and Carboniferous age because of their potential as source and reservoir rocks for petroleum. In 1949 Laudon and his students published a long paper on the stratigraphy of the Wapiti Lake area. Near the end of that paper, almost as an aside, they mentioned that a locality 5 km south of the lake yielded spectacular fossils -- abundant, large and complete Lower Triassic fishes of (one specimen measured more than a metre in length!) Sites with Triassic fishes are not uncommon -- there are about twenty around the world -- but sites with abundant articulated fishes are extremely rare. So this paper predicated a modest paleontological stampede. The National Museums of Canada came first, followed by the Geological Survey of Canada and the American Museum of Natural History. A joint University of Alberta and Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology expedition in the early '80s succeeded in bringing out 800 specimens of fossil fishes and marine reptiles.

The diamond-shaped fish Bobasantrania from the Triassic at Wapiti Lake. This 25 cm long specimen is from the University of Alberta Collections. (Photo by BDEC (c).)

Albertonia from the Triassic of Wapiti Lake has extremely elongate pectoral fins. This 43 cm long specimen is from the University of Alberta Collections. (Photo by BDEC (c).)

The Lower Triassic (245 Ma) fishes from Wapiti Lake include about a dozen major types of sharks, bony fishes and lobe-finned fishes. Among the large bony fishes is the distinctive Albertonia with its deep body and extremely elongate pectoral fins and the laterally compressed and diamond-shaped Bobasatrania. The lobe-finned fishes are represented by the coelacanth Whiteia.

Wapiti Lake is about as isolated as any location in the Rocky Mountains. Nonetheless, other collectors must have surreptitiously visited the site. In the 1970s, specimens of large Triassic fishes, obviously obtained from the Wapiti Lake site, began to be offered for sale by commercial fossil dealers. When RCMP officers at the Vancouver International Airport confiscated a superb specimen of the coelacanth Whiteia from Wapiti Lake destined for an overseas collector, the provincial government finally decided it was time to protect this site. It established the first Paleontological Reserve in the province for the area around Wapiti Lake to ensure that this important Triassic fossil site is protected.

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