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The Burgess Shale is a fossil-bearing deposit exposed in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. [2] [3] It is famous for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of its fossils. At old (middle Cambrian), [4] it is one of the earliest fossil beds containing soft-part imprints.
Discover the Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park, which preserves one of the world’s first complex marine ecosystems and is part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site.
More than half a billion years old, the fossils of the Burgess Shale preserve an intriguing glimpse of early life on Earth. They were first discovered in 1909 by Charles D. Walcott, then Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
Nestled high in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, the Burgess Shale is a record of one of the earliest marine ecosystems, giving a tantalizing glimpse of life as it was over 500 million years ago. The Burgess Shale is located in Yoho National Park, near the town of Field, BC.
Burgess Shale, fossil formation containing remarkably detailed traces of soft-bodied biota of the Middle Cambrian Epoch (520 to 512 million years ago). Collected from a fossil bed in the Burgess Pass of the Canadian Rockies, the Burgess Shale is one of the best preserved and most important fossil.
The Burgess Shale is found in an area of the Canadian Rocky Mountains known as the Burgess Pass, and is located in British Columbia's Yoho National Park. Part of the ancient landmass called Laurentia, centered in Hudson Bay, the Burgess Shale represents one of the most diverse and well-preserved fossil localities in the world.
The fossils of the Burgess Shale, like the Burgess Shale itself, are fossils that formed around 505 million years ago in the mid-Cambrian period. They were discovered in Canada in 1886, and Charles Doolittle Walcott collected over 65,000 specimens in a series of field trips up to the alpine site from 1909 to 1924.
Today, Burgess Shale fossils are found high in the mountains pressed into shale-y rock beds, evidence of a diverse marine ecosystem that lived over 500 million years ago. These fossils are famous for how well-preserved they are, showing details, like eyeballs, brains and more.
High on a mountain ridge in Canada’s spectacular Yoho National Park in British Columbia is one of Earth’s most important fossil deposits: the Burgess Shale. Preserved with exquisite detail within the rock layers for the last half-billion years are the remains of soft-bodied and often bizarre animals and algae dating from the Cambrian period.
May 30, 2019 · The Burgess Shale is a record of the end of the Cambrian Explosion and is unique in its preservation of soft-bodied fossils that are under-represented in other parts of the geologic record (e.g., carbonates).
