COURTENAY, B.C.—Russell Ball was taking one of his usual walks along Vancouver Island’s Puntledge River on a cool, grey day in January when he noticed something out of the ordinary. As he knelt down and began chipping away around the patch of brown, he felt a familiar feeling as it grew bigger and bigger. There’s a glee that comes when you think you’ve found a new fossil, or are about to break open a concretion, the compact mass that forms around fossilized materials, he said. “Every single time I do that, it’s the same fun as opening a gift. You don’t know what’s going to be inside there,” he said in an interview while at the same river outside Courtenay, B.C. “And when you find a fossil, you’re the only person in the history of humans to have ever seen that creature.” Although the retired military expert in explosives disposal …