Founded in 1886, the Royal British Columbia Museum (sometimes referred to as Royal BC Museum) consists of The Province of British Columbia's natural and human history museum as well as the British Columbia Provincial Archives. The museum is located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The "Royal" title was approved by Queen Elizabeth II and bestowed by HRH Prince Philip in 1987, to coincide with a Royal tour of that year. The museum merged with the British Columbia Provincial Archives in 2003.The Royal BC Museum includes three permanent galleries: Natural History, Becoming BC, and the First Peoples Gallery. The museum's collections comprise approximately 7 million objects, including natural history specimens, artifacts, and archival records. The natural history collections have 750,000 records of specimens almost exclusively from BC and neighbouring states, provinces, or territories. The collections are divided into eight disciplines: Entomology, Botany, Palaeontology, Ichthyology, Invertebrate Zoology, Herpetology, Mammalogy, and Ornithology. The museum also hosts touring exhibitions. Previous exhibitions have included artifacts related to the RMS Titanic, Leonardo da Vinci, Egyptian artifacts, the Vikings, the British Columbia gold rushes and Genghis Khan. The Royal BC Museum partners with and houses the IMAX Victoria theater, which shows educational films as well as commercial entertainment.The museum is beside Victoria's Inner Harbour, between the Empress Hotel and the Legislature Buildings. The museum anchors the Royal BC Museum Cultural Precinct, a surrounding area with historical sites and monuments, including Thunderbird Park. The museum also operates traveling exhibitions which tour the province of BC, as well as international exhibits Guangzhou, China.On March 26, 2012, Jack Lohman was appointed CEO of the Royal BC Museum. Various groups assist with the development, success, and maintenance of the Royal BC Museum. These include volunteers, who number over 500 and outnumber the Royal BC Museum staff 4 to 1; the Royal BC Museum Foundation (formerly Friends of the Royal BC Museum Foundation), a non-profit organization created in 1970 to support the Royal BC Museum financially and to assist its work by forming links within the community; Security Services, responsible for risk management, emergency response, security services, and business continuity expertise; and Property Management and Operations, who focus on sustainability, recycling, and environment control within the museum.
The first Eodichromatidae (Odonata, Cephalozygoptera) specimens from the Ypresian Allenby Formation near Princeton, British Columbia, Canada, are described. They belong to the genus Labandeiraia Petrulevi & ccaron;ius et al. (Eodichromatinae) based on the distinctive distal undulate curvature of the long veins and numerous intercalary veins, as seen in L. americaborealis Petrulevi & ccaron;ius et al. from the coeval Green River Formation of Colorado, United States of America. Labandeiraia burlingameae n. sp. is described based on an almost complete hyaline forewing. It is distinct from L. americaborealis by its colouration and number of postnodal crossveins. A darkly infuscate forewing preserved in close proximity is similar but lacks its basal portion and has poorly preserved crossveins. Its preserved portions agree with both L. burlingameae and L. americaborealis. If this wing belongs to L. burlingameae, its colour difference might result from sexual dimorphism or polyphenism, which are not known in any eodichromatid. If the wing belongs to L. americaborealis, it has a forewing/hind wing colour difference, also not known in any Labandeiraia species, and would be its first known forewing. The specimen might also belong to a third, closely related, undescribed species. These possibilities cannot be distinguished, and we treat the species as Labandeiraia sp. A.
The Ospriocerus (Diptera: Asilidae) fauna of Canada is outlined. Only three species in the genus are known from Canada: Ospriocerus abdominalis (Say, 1824), O. latipennis (Loew, 1866), and O. vallensis Martin, 1968. The former two species inhabit grasslands on the Great Plains; the latter occurs in the Intermontane grasslands of southern British Columbia. The use of the name O. aeacus (Wiedemann, 1828), used frequently instead of O. abdominalis, should be discontinued because it is an unnecessary replacement name. Ospriocerus vallensis is recognised as a species in Canada for the first time; Canadian specimens have been misidentified in collections and the literature as O. abdominalis or O. aeacus. A key is given for the identification of Canadian specimens, and the species are morphologically diagnosed. Whole specimens, antennae, and dissected male genitalia are illustrated. The distributions, habitats, and some behaviours (including the relationship of the genus to the beetle family Meloidae) of the three species are documented.
Genetic stratigraphy and lithostratigraphy are generally unsuitable for resolving forearc basin depositional histories because forearcs are characterized by deep-water deposition, syn-sedimentary deformation, and along-strike variance. We employed a novel hybrid stratigraphic approach to construct an informal chronostratigraphic scheme for the Nanaimo Group, the upper Cretaceous to Paleocene succession that forms the basal fill of the forearc Georgia Basin in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington, USA. We integrate recent geological mapping and stratigraphic reconstructions with biostratigraphic, magnetostratigraphic, and detrital zircon geochronology. Strata are first subdivided using lithostratigraphy; coarse-grained turbidite strata are further subdivided into informal “turbidite units.” Barring deep-water mudstones, strata sharing a stratigraphic unit are similar in age, location, and depositional environment and lack major internal disconformities. Three outcrop areas (OAs) with differing depositional histories are defined: Comox, Nanaimo, and Cowichan−Gulf Islands. Widespread subsidence and sedimentation began in late Coniacian time, with mainly continental to shallow-marine systems in the Comox OA and deeper-water systems elsewhere. In early Campanian time, uplift of a large basement structure (Nanoose High) in the Nanaimo OA resedimented previously deposited strata into continental to shallow-marine systems around the Nanoose High. The Nanoose High drowned in middle Campanian time, after which all OAs were dominated by deep-marine mudstone deposition and coarse-grained turbidite incision-and-fill cycles. Our hybrid stratigraphic approach is suitable for the chronostratigraphic subdivision of basins dominated by deep-water facies, such as forearcs. Detrital zircon maximum depositional ages (DZ MDAs) generally agree with independent age constraints, validating the careful use of DZ MDAs to approximate depositional ages in forearc settings.
Oiling risk from vessel traffic is an increasing threat to marine birds in the Pacific region of Canada. We defined exposure risk as the joint likelihood that oil pollution and sensitive marine birds occur in the same area at the same time. We developed and applied two standardized overlap metrics-the Utilization Distribution Overlap Index (UDOI) and Intersect Intensity (II)-to identify where and when marine birds are most exposed to oil pollution within the Canadian Pacific Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). We used Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) based on at-sea transect and coastal swath/point-count data (compiled from 2000 to 2022) to estimate seasonal (winter: Oct-Mar; summer: Apr-Sep) relative distributions for six alcid species: Ancient Murrelet (ANMU), Marbled Murrelet (MAMU), Cassin's Auklet (CAAU), Common Murre (COMU), Rhinoceros Auklet (RHAU), and Pigeon Guillemot (PIGU), accounting for spatially and temporally heterogeneous effort. We also used KDEs based on AIS-based vessel traffic, maritime infrastructure, and shipwreck location data to estimate relative likelihood of oil pollution. UDOI results showed that vessel traffic is the dominant source of exposure risk for alcids, with strong seasonal and species-specific variation. Exposure was consistently high for COMU and MAMU in both seasons, and consistently low for CAAU. Risk was elevated in winter for ANMU, COMU, and MAMU, and in summer for RHAU and PIGU, largely due to seasonal range contraction into the Salish Sea, where vessel traffic and coastal infrastructure are concentrated. II maps revealed persistent hotspots in the Salish Sea, particularly Haro Strait and eastern Juan de Fuca Strait, for most species in both seasons. Western Juan de Fuca and Georgia Straits, and Queen Charlotte and Johnstone Straits, were also identified as important seasonal hotspots, especially during summer.
