Quebec’s Anticosti Island recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site

Sep 19, 2023 | 8:34 AM

MONTREAL — Quebec’s Anticosti Island has been added to the list of UNESCO world heritage sites. 

The agency’s world heritage committee announced today that the island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is being formally recognized on the United Nations’s list of places with outstanding universal value to humanity.

According to UNESCO’s website, Quebec’s largest island is the most complete and best-preserved paleontological record of the first mass extinction of animal life — 447 million to 437 million years ago.

It says the island will allow world-class scientists to study the best-preserved fossil record of marine life covering 10 million years of Earth history.