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A Geoscience Guide to The Burgess Shale. Geology

and Paleontology in Yoho National Park

Book · June 2006

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A Geoscience Guide to

The
Burgess
Shale

Geology and Paleontology

in Yoho National Park
Murray Coppold and Wayne Powell

The Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation

 A Geoscience Guide to
THE BURGESS SHALE
The Story of Life’s Beginnings
Centred on the world’s most important animal fossils, this book weaves plate
tectonics, mountain building, evolution, soft-bodied fossils and trilobites into
a story of life’s beginnings half a billion years ago, and its preservation in the
Burgess Shale deposit in Yoho National Park.

The second edition of this popular book adds new fossil images and
nce Gu
ide to artwork in an expanded presentation, and incorporates new information on
Geoscie
A paleontology and climate change. The guide is written in accessible style for
The s
students, teachers and the interested public. Geoscience professionals will

Burges appreciate its synthesis of up-to-date research.

Shale
“… packed with useful information, as well as being interesting,
accessible, and well illustrated and designed.”
leonto
logy — Prof. Derek E.G. Briggs, Yale University, U.S.A.
and Pa rk
Geology National Pa
in Yoho Powell
ne
d Way
old an dation

Th
Murra

e Bu
y Copp

rgess Sh
al e Ge oscien
ce Foun
“The ‘must-have’ pocket guide for the hike.”
— Barry & Gillian Mapstone, The Linnean Society of London
(Comments on the first edition)

Topics:
Yoho National Park
Wiwaxia (Phylum not assigned)
Wiwaxia is a slug-like creature whose top surface was covered with
leaf-shape ribbed plates (sclerites) and two rows of longer spines.

The Meaning of World Heritage These are often preserved as a flattened mass of armour, as in
the illustration at right, which hides the details of the soft tissue.
Occasionally a radula bearing two rows of teeth is seen at the

About Time anterior (head) end of the organism. Wiwaxia has been considered a
polychaete (bristle worm), but this
interpretation is controversial. It

The Rise of the Rockies crawled along the sea floor, feeding
on organic detritus.

The Cambrian World

© Smithsonian Institution. Mary Parrish. All rights reserved.

Opabinia (Phylum Arthropoda,

© Royal Ontario Museum. J-B Caron. All rights reserved.

Class Dinocarida)

At the Edge of an Ancient Continent

Opabinia

Evolution and the Burgess Shale is one of the

strangest Burgess

The Burgess Shale Quarries

Shale fossils. Its side
flaps and finned tail
2 cm indicate it was a swimmer.

Fossils of the Burgess Shale

Its two most remarkable
features are the frontal
appendage which ended in a

Trilobites Nectocaris (Phylum not assigned)

Nectocaris is extremely rare in the Burgess Shale which, together with
its streamlined body, suggests it was a swimmer unlikely to have been
grasping claw, and its five stalked eyes. In the artist’s painting (above)
Opabinia is seen capturing the priapulid worm Ottoia.

Trilobite Lifestyles caught in mudflows. Its head is protected by a pair of oval shields.
With large eyes and a pair of frontal appendages, Nectocaris was
probably a swift-moving

Trilobites of the Burgess Shale Formation predator.

Climate Change
Weathering the Mountains 5 mm 1 cm

References 42 43

Over 100 illustrations in 76 pages!

$
15.95 Coppold, Murray and Wayne Powell, 2006. A Geoscience Guide to the Burgess Shale. The Burgess
Shale Geoscience Foundation, Field, B.C., Second edition, soft cover, iv + 76 p., colour illustr.
ISBN 0-9780132-0-4

plus tax and postage

Ordering information
In Canada and the US call 1-800-343-3006
Worldwide contact The Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation
P.O. Box 148, Field BC V0A 1G0, Canada
www.burgess-shale.bc.ca

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