When the cod fishery collapsed in Newfoundland in the early 1990s, the hopes of the local fish harvesters collapsed with it. Hundreds of Newfoundlanders moved away and businesses that depended on the cod fishery closed. But retired schoolteacher Kit Ward of Portugal Cove South wasn’t content to watch her community vanish. She and some friends found a solution that was right under their feet, in the reddish rocks of Mistaken Point. In this episode of the Encyclopedia of Life podcast, One Species at a Time, reporter Ari Daniel Shapiro introduces us to one of the marine fossils that's helping revitalize Ward's community. The frond fossil Trepassia wardae lived on the ocean floor 580 million years ago, now it's part of the Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve.

This podcast was funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute .