A fishing crew from St. Mary’s First Nation who hauled up something unusual from the Bay of Fundy couldn’t have expected that their find would turn out to be 10,000-year-old walrus remains from the last Ice age—and they couldn’t have expected it would happen again a few years later.
These rare fossils required innovative conservation techniques—from salt removal to digital preservation—to save them from rapid deterioration. The preservation effort combines traditional conservation with cutting-edge 3D modeling to ensure these ancient treasures can be studied for generations to come.
For a year, New Brunswick Museum Conservator Dee Stubbs-Lee has been working to preserve the semi-fossilized bones of two walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) from the Bay of Fundy; a partial skull and a single tusk from a second individual. These ice-age fossils are roughly 10,000 years old! Both were dredged up by the St. Mary’s fishing crew and donated to the New Brunswick Museum. Image 1 shows the wet specimens upon arrival at the conservation lab, still saturated with seawater.
To prevent the crystallization of salts in seawater from destroying the fossils, a months-long process of gradually removing salt by immersing them in freshwater was undertaken. Following this, the specimens underwent a controlled drying process, also lasting several months. Image 2 illustrates the specialized setup used for this slow moisture removal, crucial for preserving the delicate fossils.
Despite these careful measures, both specimens began to rapidly deteriorate due to the absence of climate control in the Douglas Avenue Collections and Research building, a facility dating back to the 1930s. Decisions around the care and conservation of New Brunswick Museum collections always consider both long term preservation and any future scientific testing. Stubbs-Lee therefore used a special conservation adhesive to coat the fossils, preventing further deterioration. Image 3 shows Dee performing surface consolidation and repair work on one of the fossils, carefully applying the conservation adhesive to stabilize the structure.
Assistant Curator of Paleontology, Matt Stimson, and Saint Mary’s University palaeontologist Dr. Andrew MacRae, created a 3D computer model of the walrus skull. The technique, called photogrammetry, uses hundreds of overlapping photos to record the fossil’s size and shape. The digital model can be viewed and studied in 3D using specialized computer software or even printed on a 3D printer.
Image 4 features a screenshot of the 3D point cloud. Each blue square represents the position of a camera photo of the skull, showing the comprehensive nature of this digital preservation technique. Image 5 shows a screenshot of the 3D model with a messy background, while Image 6 displays the 3D model before the background is removed. Image 7 presents a clean version of the 3D model after removing the background, revealing the detailed digital preservation of the walrus skull.
Additional documentation of the fossils is shown in Image 8 and Image 9, which provide detailed photographs of the specimens from different angles. Image 10 features a video generated from the 3D photogrammetry model, allowing viewers to experience a virtual examination of this Ice Age specimen.
This innovative combination of traditional conservation methods and cutting-edge digital technology ensures that these rare Ice Age fossils will be preserved both physically and virtually for future generations of researchers and the public.
