The tides at the closed end of the Bay of Fundy are the highest in the world, rising and falling more than 50 feet every day. For the two fossil hunters clambering over the bordering cliffs near Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, last summer, that presented a special problem. Timing their forays with the mighty ebb and flow, they often found themselves on isolated cliff faces, cut off by the surging water.
Their risky efforts paid off. The cliffs, part of a stratum of sedimentary shale and sandstone interleaved with volcanic basalt, date from between 225 million and 175 million years ago. The...