Burgess Shale

Burgess Shale
Stratigraphic range:
Miaolingian
~508 Ma
Ottoia, a soft-bodied worm, abundant in the Burgess Shale. (From Smith et al. 2015)
TypeGeological formation
Unit ofStephen Formation
Thickness161 meters (528 ft)[1]
Lithology
PrimaryShale
Location
Coordinates51°26′N 116°28′W / 51.433°N 116.467°W / 51.433; -116.467
RegionYoho National Park and Kootenay National Park
CountryCanada
Type section
Named forBurgess Pass
Named byCharles 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.

  1. ^ Lexicon of Canadian Geological Units. "Burgess Shale". Archived from the original on 11 January 2013. Retrieved 6 February 2009.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ Clements, T.; Gabbott, S. (2022). "Exceptional Preservation of Fossil Soft Tissues". eLS. 2 (12): 1–10. doi:10.1002/9780470015902.a0029468.
  4. ^ 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.