Burgess Shale

The Burgess Shale is a fossil deposit in British Columbia preserving diverse Cambrian animals, including soft-bodied organisms rarely recorded elsewhere.

Opabinia: A small Cambrian animal with five eyes and a flexible frontal proboscis ending in a grasping claw. Its unusual anatomy became an emblem of the Burgess Shale’s unfamiliar fauna.
Burgess Shale-type preservation: A mode of fossil preservation in which carbon-rich films record soft tissues in fine detail. It describes the preservation process shared by the Burgess Shale and comparable deposits.
Mount Stephen: A mountain in British Columbia near the original fossil localities of the Burgess Shale. Early collecting near Mount Stephen helped bring Cambrian fossils in the region to scientific attention.
Cambrian explosion: A geologically rapid diversification of animal groups beginning around 539 million years ago. The deposit offers an unusually detailed record of animals living during this diversification.
Anomalocaris: A large Cambrian predator with frontal appendages, a circular mouth, and a streamlined body. Its fossils show that the deposit preserves major predators as well as small animals.
Turbidity current: A fast-moving underwater flow of sediment and water driven by gravity. Sediment flows rapidly buried organisms on the ancient sea floor.
Walcott Quarry: The principal Burgess Shale fossil quarry in Yoho National Park, excavated by Charles Doolittle Walcott. It yielded the extensive collection on which early interpretations of the deposit were based.
Stephen Jay Gould: An American evolutionary biologist and historian of science who wrote about the Burgess Shale’s significance. His book brought the deposit’s unusual fauna and evolutionary implications to a broad audience.
Hallucigenia: A Cambrian animal with a wormlike body, paired spines, and tentacle-like appendages. Its changing interpretation illustrates how Burgess Shale fossils challenged assumptions about animal forms.
Anoxic water: Water containing little or no dissolved oxygen. Oxygen-poor conditions helped limit decay and disturbance after burial.

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