New Brunswick·Roadside History
Six hundred and fifty million years ago, during the Precambrian era, Saint John was a much different place.
At first, George Matthew wasn’t sure what he’d found in Red Head Cove, at what is now Dominion Park
Jordan Gill · CBC News
· Posted: Sep 05, 2026 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago
Stromatolite fossils, which began with tiny organisms such as algae that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, were found at Green Head Cove in Saint John. George Matthew was the first to discover them. (Megan Goddard/CBC/New Brunswick Museum)
Six hundred and fifty million years ago, during the Precambrian era, Saint John was a much different place.
First off, no people, animals or trees of any kind.
Second it was much farther south, below the equator.
But there was life here, and we can thank one Saint John man, George Matthew, for proving that there was, even if many don’t recognize his work.
“Although the American geologist Charles Doolittle Walcott is viewed as the founder of Precambrian paleobiology, Matthew deserves acknowledgement for his early recognition of Precambrian life,” Randall Miller, a former curator of paleontology at the New Brunswick Museum wrote in an article about Matthew for Geoscience Canada.
Love of science
Matthew was born in Saint John in 1837.
His day job saw him working in the city’s busy customs office,
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