In addition to his own discoveries, Mathieu Tremblay has also enriched his collection of artefacts from around the world through purchases and exchanges with other amateur paleontologists.
Among his greatest pride, a perfectly preserved tooth of Carcharodontosaurus, a genus of theropod dinosaurs extinct for about 95 million years. The tooth was found in Morocco.
It also has stromatolites (fossilized bacteria in sedimentary layers), the oldest traces of life on earth. Its sample is 1.8 billion years old.
This is rather young when compared to the 4.5 billion years of one of Mathieu Tremblay’s meteorites, which would have come from the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter and would have crashed in Argentina nearly 5 000 years.
Community
According to Mathieu Tremblay, mutual aid is an eminently important dimension in the world of paleontology. He himself received invaluable support from several amateur paleontologists from across Quebec.
“They answered all my questions, and questions, I had hundreds. They devoted dozens of hours to me. “, he says, mentioning in particular the names of Jean-Marc Ethier and Marc R. Hansël.
“To be effective, it takes good search techniques. You also need to have methods to know what you see exactly, what part, of what animal. It’s during this time that you can make really interesting discoveries,” adds Mathieu Tremblay, pointing out that his progress in paleontology was largely dependent on the teachings he received.
He also addresses his thanks to Bobby Jo Sansfaçons, David Leblanc, Daniel Martin, Giovanni Tremblay and François Côté.
Share knowledge
Remembering the history surrounding each artefact in his collection, Mathieu Tremblay makes it his duty.
“An object without context, he says, especially in archeology, is like a simple insignificant rock. »
Just as others have done with him, Mathieu Tremblay now wishes to share his knowledge. Over the past few months, he has visited the Curé-Hébert school and the Wilbrod-Dufour Pavilion to exhibit parts of his collection and answer questions from curious young people.
He also plans to repeat the experience soon, this time in elementary school classes.
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