Joggins Fossil Cliffs

Cool place to visit. We went with local friends. It was post hurricane so a bit cooler and windy on the beach but we had a great time. Very educational.

A fascinating place, brought to life expertly by our guide Jordan, who explained so many intriguing aspects of the cliffs and the fossils they have offered up to the world. Not to be missed!

Main visitor center wasn't open. They seem to have limited hours. The beach is open and they have the tide chart listed so you can walk the beach with confidence that the tide won't get you! Nice walk, but I didn't see any fossils. Also, the walk on the beach is free.

An amazing location well worth a visit! It's a national treasure 300 million years in the making!

Make sure to check the tide times. Would recommend taking the tour and going through the exhibition inside. Very interesting and friendly guide.

A wealth of fossils. With every tide the fossils change. If you are lucky you get to see a huge coniferous stem.

A wonderful place to spend a morning or afternoon (check the tide schedule to see when it's out!). We took a thirty minute guided tour which I'd recommend, then plan to give yourself time to comb the beach on your own, and spend some time in the interpretive center. Very nice green certified building with a little cafe and good washrooms.

Awesome Spot.seen a waterfall.many rock formations.tide was in but still Incredible to be there.lots of rocks to look at and explore.beautiful scenery.lots to learn and see. Clean washrooms. Binoculars $1 to look through. Pic nic tables to eat at.even found a few geocaches there.awesome day even left a few of my painted rocks behind for others to find.

What an amazing place to visit, definitely a place to visit if you are coming from out of province or exploring your own province as a staycation. Remember to pay close attention to the tides and make sure you are coming for low tide, or you'll misout on the exploration of the cliffs and coast line. Bring water and sun screen! Don't get burnt like I did.

First time back since Covid, and still a delight. Far fewer visitors and large tours currently not held; you can still have a smaller, guided experience. I do recommend that for first time visitors as there is so much you miss out on from lack of knowledge; these cliffs and the area are fascinating from the historic standpoints of both centuries AND eons ago. The ocean floor is different from Burntcoat Head - still very red overall, but much more stones and less silt. More rocky yet very different from Hopewell Rocks ocean floor, too. Fascinating seepage out of the Cliffs that in several areas forms a respectable stream out to the receeded tide waters. There's also an interesting point quite near the stairs where a clearly visible vein of rock angles down the side of the cliff and can be seen to continue in a sliced line well along the ocean floor. Another place right by the stairs shows the undulated rock created by immense pressures during formation eons ago. The ocean floor here is largely rocky, and the surf sounds nearly unvaried; a constant white noise of impressive consistency. Those who cannot manage steps will still enjoy the sight from the top area. The museum is fascinating. Outdoors there is a lovely lawn with picnic tables, a play area for young explorers and a labyrinth for those wanting to walk and unable to climb (a lot!) of stairs.

Love this place. I have been here several times and it is always a delight. The grounds are spectacular and the museum is great. The staff is helpful and very knowledgeable. You can view the footprints of creatures frozen where they once walked. They have a great record of plant, invertebrate and vertebrate life within fossils.

Very cool area, can't help but feel the place really has failed to monetize their assets. The beach access is free, tours are scheduled with tides, but that isn't clear before you visit. Website for tours was booked, but spots were open when we got there. So we miss that because of timing.

After being on the beach we just didn't want to visit their museum area, and there was little else available to spend money on if we tried.

The 30 minute guided tour should focus more on the fossils rather then the history of the coal seam and sustainability of the building.

Amazing place! If you are into fossils at all, this place could be rated ten stars out of 5. It's that good. Do the tour!

If you like rocks or fossils or history from 312 million years ago - this is the beach for you!
Highly recommend the tour - very knowledgeable & personable. The kids on our tour had a great time. Excellent for all ages.

A truly magical spot, the landscape gives a feeling of going tens of millions of years back in time. Great to spark the imagination, and a real natural treasure.

Beautiful spot well worth the trip. The guide from the visitors center opened the doors again after they closed to let my two and six year old in to go pee. So nice!

Overpriced, underwhelming and a massive waste of time. I'm a big science nerd and it broke my heart just how pathetic this place was that I was so excited to visit on our vacation. You don't need to take my word for it though, look through the pictures people have uploaded. You'll notice there's not a single picture of a fossil in a cliff and almost none of the fossils inside. Anyway, my review.

There's two distinct experiences at Joggins. The museum and the cliff walk. Both very different, both equally disappointing.

The museum features maybe a few dozen small fossils of mostly plants. The majority of the more interesting ones are either casts of fossils not present or on loan from other places and not even from there. The museum side of the building is mostly a single large open room and takes about 50% of the building, the other 50% being devoted to a very large overflowing gift shop and kitchen/cafeteria area. There's fancy glass windows on the floor looking into rock terrariums, perhaps to draw your attention from all the empty spaces along the walls where fossils should be. It is abundantly clear they spent the majority of their time and money on the building itself and selling you things and not curating the exhibits whatsoever.

The beach tour is $10 a person, 30 minutes long (five minutes to get to the beach area and five minutes back so really a 20 minute tour) and focused largely on a haphazard stack of four fossilized tree stump sections piled onto each other on the beach and then the guide reads some geology facts from a flip book. Throw in a five minute speech about coal mining and you're done, thanks for your money.

The cliffs are impressive, you can clearly see the angled layers of strata from the different geological time periods, but they're completely devoid of visible fossils. The beach is littered everywhere with big pieces of cut rock covered in graph marking lines where they've harvested fossils from.

All in all, you're paying $15 dollars for yourself or $45 for a family of three like we did, to go see a place where fossils used to be and to look at some mostly unimpressive partial plant fossils from other places. It's utterly pathetic that this is what we've developed to showcase a Canadian UNESCO site. Do yourself a favour and just go and sit at a nice spot along the bay of Fundy and have a picnic, you'll get the same experience and save yourself $50.

The beach was more fun than the museum.
In the museum, you can find some fossils of the same thing several times so, personally, it's not worth the 25$ for a family for that.

Always amazing! A joy to go and discover the beach any time of the year! There is no Beach access from the fossil center during winter, you must travel north about 5 minutes.

Good luck, have fun!

Interesting spot if you enjoy fossils.well laid out with opportunity to go to beach and do some fossil hunting (following rules) good idea to go at low tide.

Super interesting recommend going at lowest tide, got to see a few fossilized trees and a bunch of hermit crabs on the beach.