Name: Burgess
Shale
Location: British Columbia
Age: Middle Cambrian (505 Ma) |
 |
The Burgess Shale
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- Plate 1. A life reconstruction of various
Burgess Shale organisms. Reprinted from The Crucible of Creation,
Conway Morris, S. (1998).
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- The Burgess Shale is probably the most spectacular
and scientifically significant site of fossil preservation in
the world. It is located in British Columbia, Canada, and dates
from the Middle Cambrian approximately 505 million years
ago, around a time when groups of animals began to rapidly diversify
in body plans or major anatomical features in an event known
as the Cambrian
Explosion. These large-scale features make groups of animals,
or phyla, unique.
What makes this site so important for palaeontologists is that
it is a rare example of a 'taphonomic window', a historical
snapshot in the diversity of ancient life. Most fossil sites
of this age yield only groups of animals with hard skeletons,
such as the more common trilobites and brachiopods. These taxa
are well preserved since their hard, calcified skeletons resist
decay.
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- But the Burgess Shale shows a less biased picture
of Cambrian biological diversity because soft-bodied animals
and other organisms that would not have been normally preserved
are found in exquisite detail. Indeed, our view on the early
evolution of animals would have been slanted towards groups that
have hard parts if it were not for the Burgess Shale.
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- Location
- Geological Setting
and Age
- Flora and Fauna
- Taphonomy
- References and
Links
Return to Lagerstätten home page
Section author: Alexei A. Rivera
This section is part of a Fossil Lagerstätten
web site which has been built up as a result of the efforts of
the 2002-3 MSc
Palaeobiology class in the Department of Earth Sciences at
University of Bristol, as part of a course in Scientific Communication.
Department of Earth Sciences
University of Bristol
Wills Memorial Building
Queen's Road
BRISTOL
BS8 1RJ
http://www.gly.bris.ac.uk