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One of paleontology's most revered fossil sites now has a baby brother. Scientists have discovered a group of astonishing fossils high in the Canadian Rockies, just 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the famous Burgess Shale location.
A paper describing the find appears in the September issue of Geology.
Since its discovery in 1909, the Burgess Shale has yielded many thousands of fossils dating to 505 million years ago -- a period often called "evolution's big bang," when animals were exploding in diverse body plans. These soft-bodied critters scurried around on the sea floor, then were buried in mudslides and exquisitely preserved.
Burgess fossils appear in several outcrops, all within about 60 kilometers (37 miles) of Field, British Columbia, and all occurring in shale deposits of the Stephen Formation that are 270 to 370 meters (886 to 1,214 feet) thick. Now, a team led by paleontologist Jean-Bernard Caron of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto reports finding Burgess-like fossils in the valley of the Stanley Glacier in Kootenay National Park, where a much thinner part of the Stephen Formation that ranges from 16 to 160 meters (52 to 520 feet) thick is exposed.
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