![[Nouvelle]](../images/c/ca-qcnou.gif)
image by
Masao Okazaki, 30 January 2021
Last modified: 2021-03-27 by rob raeside
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image by
Masao Okazaki, 30 January 2021
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The municipality of Nouvelle (1,681 inhabitants in 2016; 23,460 ha) is
located in southwestern Gaspésie, on the northern shore of the Bay of Chaleur.
Nouvelle is named, according to a document written by the parish priest
Ferdinand Audet around 1876, for the Jesuit father Henri Nouvel (1621/1624 -
~1702), whose name is sometimes written as Nouvelle. Nouvel landed in Quebec in
1662, moved to Rimouski in 1663 and visited several times the Innu of the
northern shore of river Saint-Lawrence, between 1663 to 1669. From 1671 to 1701,
he managed different missions in the Great Lakes region.
Reginald Day pointed
out that the place was mentioned as La Nouvelle / La Nouvelle de Carleton in the
dairy of the trader Charles Robin in 1787 and in different later documents.
Since Nouvel never visited the region of Nouvelle, which was not inhabited at
his time, Day believes that the place name refers to a new (French, "nouvelle")
settlement depending on the parish of Saint-Joseph-de-Carleton.
http://www.toponymie.gouv.qc.ca/ct/ToposWeb/fiche.aspx?no_seq=44936
Commission de toponymie du Québec
Ivan Sache, 23 February 2021
A 2006 photo of this flag was posted by Vartan Baronian on the FOTW
Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/flagsoftheworld/permalink/4284740424873980
A good photo of the flag appears on the city's Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/municipalitedenouvelle/photos/1257876904369849
The logo used on the flag is explained here:
https://www.nouvellegaspesie.com/municipalite/logo-et-explication/
Masao Okazaki,
30 January 2021
The logo of Nouvelle features the globe and the fossil fish
Eusthenopteron foordi, aka "the Prince of Miguasha", for which the
paleontological site of Miguasha Park is world-renown.
The contrasted shapes
and the receding lines frame and preserve the fossil as a worldwide recognized
treasure.
Carmine red evokes the rocky slopes of the cliffs.
Stone gray is
associated to the rocks of the paleontological site.
https://www.nouvellegaspesie.com/municipalite/logo-et-explication
Municipal website
The Miguasha fossil site in eastern Quebec was among the first major
paleontological localities to have been discovered and excavated in North
America. The discovery of the first fossils at Miguasha was made in 1842 by
Abraham Gesner, the government geologist in New Brunswick, also known for his
work on the distillation of kerosene.
In 1892, the American vertebrate
paleontologist E.D. Cope was the first to recognize that the osteolepiform
Eusthenopteron foordi from Miguasha had a fin anatomy similar to that of
the limbs of stegocephalians, a paraphyletic group acknowledged today to include
stem tetrapods. Following Cope’s publication, Eusthenopteron foordi was
considered a key species in the transition from fishes to tetrapods, thus
promoting the focus of numerous studies on the anatomy of its paired fins,
vertebral column and nostrils.
In the early 1920s, Swedish paleontologists
started to study in great detail the anatomy of fishes from Miguasha,
contributing, in part, to recognition of the famous ‘Swedish School’ of
paleozoology at the Naturhistoriska Riksmusett (National Museum of Natural
History) in Stockholm. Between 1937 and 1998, Erik Jarvik wrote some thirty
scientific articles on Eusthenopteron.
In 1999, the Miguasha
National Park was confirmed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in recognition of
its global status as the best representation of the Devonian ‘Age of Fishes’.
https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/GC/article/view/geocanj.2013.40.008/23635
R. Cloutier. 2013. Great Canadian Lagerstätten 4. The Devonian Miguasha
Biota (Québec): UNESCO World Heritage Site and a Time Capsule in the Early
History of Vertebrates. Geosciences Canada 40, 149-163
The
palaeontological site of Miguasha National Park, in south-eastern Quebec on the
southern coast of the Gaspé peninsula, is considered to be the world's most
outstanding illustration of the Devonian Period known as the 'Age of Fishes'.
Dating from 370 million years ago, the Upper Devonian Escuminac Formation
represented here contains five of the six fossil fish groups associated with
this period. Its significance stems from the discovery there of the highest
number and best-preserved fossil specimens of the lobe-finned fishes that gave
rise to the first four-legged, air-breathing terrestrial vertebrates – the
tetrapods.
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/686
UNESCO World Heritage List
The
first recorded specimen of Eusthenopteron foordi was discovered in
summer 1879 by Ralph Wheelock Ells, from the Canadian Geological Survey. The
description was published in 1881 by the paleontologist Joseph Franklin
Whiteaves (On some remarkable fossil fishes from the Devonian rocks of Scaumenac
Bay, in the Province of Quebec. Academy Magazine of Natural History
5:8, 159-162). The fish was named for the British paleontologist Arthur
Humphreys Foord (1844-1933). The report triggered extensive excavation campaigns
in the Escuminac cliff. Collections of E. foordi are found in different
museums worldwide; more than 2,600 specimens are kept in the Canadian Museum of
Nature of Ottawa.
Specimen P222 of E. Foordi, acquired by the
National Museum of Natural History in Stockholm from the collector Joseph Landry
for 50 Canadian dollars, was shipped to Sweden in 1925 and studied in great
detail by Erik Jarvik (1907-1998).
In 1960, René Bureau, director of the
Geology Museum at Laval University setup the Miguasha Project, aimed at the
establishment of a national park on the paleontological site. A part of the
cliff was acquired in 1972 by the Quebec Ministry of Leisure, Hunting and
fishing for the sake of protection. A visitor's center and research facilities
were inaugurated in June 1978 on the site. Jarvik stressed in 2007 the
significance of E. Foordi as the museum's flagship. Due to the
excellent preservation of the fossils, complete 3-D specimens and skulls
included, the Escuminac Formation was labelled a Konservat-Lagerstätt.
Nicknamed "the Prince of Miguasha", E. Foordi was once believed to be
the missing link between primitive fish and the early terrestrial tetrapods, as
highlighted by the Latin motto of the Miguasha National Park, "Ex aque ad
terram" (From Water to the Land"). The fish could allegedly use its
powerful paired fins as "legs" to leave freshwater during drought periods and
crawl on land to find new aquatic sites. A geological re-interpretation of the
Miguasha site, however, proved that the environment was then brackish, probably
an estuary, without any drought period. Phylogenetical studies have revealed
that another, less-known fish, Elpistostege watsoni would be a better
candidate ancestor of the terrestrial tetrapods, therefore "dethroning" the
Prince of Miguasha.
https://journals.openedition.org/cm/2374
G. Mazé. 2016. Le Prince de
Miguasha au muséec du Parc de Miguasha. Conserveries mémorielles 19.
https://www.sepaq.com/resources/docs/pq/mig/mig_bulletin_2012.pdf
Eusthenopteron foordi: comme un poisson dans l'eau. Miguasha National Park
The logo of Nouvelle appears to feature the emblematic P222 specimen, which
is known today only by replica, since it was cut in small species for the sake
of research by Erik Jarvik.
Photo
http://www.miguasha.ca/mig-fr/erik_jarvik_et_le_prince_de_miguasha.php
Ivan Sache, 23 February 2021
