| Cathedral Formation | |
|---|---|
| Stratigraphic range: Middle Cambrian ~ | |
 The Cathedral Formation and Cathedral Escarpment form the grey mountain in the distance, with the Burgess Shale and Walcott Quarry in the foreground. | |
| Type | Formation |
| Underlies | Stephen Formation |
| Overlies | Mount Whyte Formation, Naiset Formation |
| Thickness | Up to 610 metres (2000 ft)[1] |
| Lithology | |
| Primary | Limestone, Dolomite |
| Other | Calcareous mudstone |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 51°23′47″N 116°23′25″W / 51.39639°N 116.39028°W |
| Region | Canadian Rockies |
| Country |  Canada |
| Type section | |
| Named for | Cathedral Mountain |
| Named by | Charles Doolittle Walcott, 1908[2] |
| Part of a series on |
| The Burgess Shale |
|---|
 |
The Cathedral Formation is a stratigraphic unit in the southern Canadian Rockies of Alberta and British Columbia, on the western edge of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. It is a thick sequence of carbonate rocks of Middle Cambrian age. It was named for Cathedral Mountain in Yoho National Park by Charles Doolittle Walcott, the discoverer of the Burgess shale fossils.[1][3]
The Cathedral Formation includes fossil stromatolites, oncolites, and other algal remains, as well as a few shale beds with trilobites.[1] The Cathedral escarpment on its westernmost edge is thought to have played a major role in the deposition and preservation of the Burgess shale fossils.[4]
- ^ a b c Glass, D.J. (editor) 1997. Lexicon of Canadian Stratigraphy, vol. 4, Western Canada including eastern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and southern Manitoba. Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, Calgary, 1423 p. on CD-ROM. ISBN 0-920230-23-7.
- ^ Walcott, C.D. 1908. Nomenclature of some Cambrian Cordilleran formations. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 53, no. 1, 14 pp.
- ^ Slind, O.L., Andrews, G.D., Murray, D.L., Norford, B.S., Paterson, D.F., Salas, C.J., and Tawadros, E.E., Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists and Alberta Geological Survey (1994). "The Geological Atlas of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (Mossop, G.D. and Shetsen, I., compilers), Chapter 8: Middle Cambrian and Early Ordovician Strata of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin". Archived from the original on 2016-07-01. Retrieved 2018-07-13.
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