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Belcher Islands

The Belcher Islands are located in the southeast part of Hudson Bay in Nunavut. The Belcher Islands (Inuktitut: ᓴᓪᓚᔪᒐᐃᑦ) comprise an archipelago of hundreds of islands, only a handful of which we have visited for our research. The islands contain remarkable geology that is unique in its exceptional preservation of sedimentary structures, as well as the preservation of microfossils including the oldest known occurrence of cyanobacteria in the geological record, Eoentophysalis belcherensis.

What makes this region unique?

The Belcher Group provides a window into the past, where ancient oceans were dominated by single-celled organisms such as cyanobacteria, contrasting with the diversity of multi-cellular invertebrate and vertebrate animals we see in the oceans today. In fact, the oldest cyanobacteria microfossils in the world occur in rocks of the Belcher Islands. The oceans of two billion years ago had a different chemical composition than they do today; whereas today's oceans are well-oxygenated (equilibrated with our atmosphere that has ~21% O₂) and contain many elements that provide important nutrients. By contrast, the oceans in which the Belcher Group was deposited lacked many of these characteristics and was likely poorly oxygenated. The chemistry of ambient seawater conditions of this time are an area of active research investigation.