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PHYS 0106 (Spring, 2001) Earth History Timeline |
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| Phanerozoic Eon: Paleozoic Era: Cambrian Period | |||
Timeline Links Phanerozoic Neoproterozoic Mesoproterozoic Paleoproterozoic Archean Other Links Historical Geology Page Physical Geology Page Mike's Home Page |
Writer/Researcher: Jennifer Daniely Editor: Monica Ribeiro Web Page Builder: Jennifer Daniely The Burgess Shale is a Cambrian aged rock located in Yoho National Park in the Western Canadian Rockies. It is aproximately from the mid cambrian and preserves many of the soft-bodied and widely diverse invertebrate fossils resulting from the Cambrian Explosion. The Cambrian Explosion marks the period when a huge variety of life at the phylum level was produced in a very short period of time. The Burgess Shale fauna is an interesting insight into the early history of animal life on earth.
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Charles D. Walcott of the Smithsonian Institute first discovered the Burgess Shale in 1909. The fossils he excavated were like nothing he had ever seen before and he named the site Burgess Shale after the nearby Mount Burgess. That site is now identified as Walcott's Quarry. Wince Walcott's discovery fossil deposits like Burgess Shale fauna have been found in other places all over the world including China, Greenland, Siberia, Australia, Europe, and the USA.
