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Miguasha National Park is considered to be the world's greatest palaeontological record of fossils from the Devonian Period, known as the 'Age of Fishes'.
Five of the six main fossil fish groups from this period (dating from 370 million years) can be found here. A great quantity of some of the best-preserved fossil specimens of lobe-finned fish, ancestors to the tetrapods (believed to be the first four-legged air-breathing terrestrial vertebrates), were found here.
These coastal cliffs are made up of grey sedimentary rock (composed of alternating layers of sandstone and shale) which are 350-375 million years old. The area supports mainly birch, aspen and fir forests. Some of the fish, fauna and spore fossils found at Miguasha are rare and ancient species. For example, Spermasposita is thought to be one of the oldest flowering plant species on earth.
The fossil site was first discovered in 1842, by Abraham Gesner (1797-1864), a geologist and medical doctor, and a pioneer in the petroleum industry. To date, over 5,000 fossils from this one site have been identified and categorized.