| Burgess Shale | |
|---|---|
| Stratigraphic range: Miaolingian ~ | |
 Ottoia, a soft-bodied worm, abundant in the Burgess Shale. (From Smith et al. 2015) | |
| Type | Geological formation |
| Unit of | Stephen Formation |
| Thickness | 161 meters (528 ft)[1] |
| Lithology | |
| Primary | Shale |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 51°26′N 116°28′W / 51.433°N 116.467°W |
| Region | Yoho National Park and Kootenay National Park |
| Country | Canada |
| Type section | |
| Named for | Burgess Pass |
| Named by | Charles Doolittle Walcott, 1911 |
 Map highlighting Yoho National Park in red | |
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 508 million years old (middle Cambrian),[4] it is one of the earliest fossil beds containing soft-part imprints.
The rock unit is a black shale and crops out at a number of localities near the town of Field in Yoho National Park and the Kicking Horse Pass. Another outcrop is in Kootenay National Park 42 km to the south.
- ^ Lexicon of Canadian Geological Units. "Burgess Shale". Archived from the original on 11 January 2013. Retrieved 6 February 2009.
- ^ Butterfield, N. J. (1 February 2003). "Exceptional Fossil Preservation and the Cambrian Explosion". Integrative and Comparative Biology. 43 (1): 166–177. doi:10.1093/icb/43.1.166. ISSN 1540-7063. PMID 21680421.
- ^ Clements, T.; Gabbott, S. (2022). "Exceptional Preservation of Fossil Soft Tissues". eLS. 2 (12): 1–10. doi:10.1002/9780470015902.a0029468.
- ^ Butterfield, N.J. (2006). "Hooking some stem-group" worms": fossil lophotrochozoans in the Burgess Shale". BioEssays. 28 (12): 1161–1166. doi:10.1002/bies.20507. PMID 17120226. S2CID 29130876.