Burgess Shale
The Burgess Shale is a fossil-bearing deposit exposed in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. It is famous for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of its fossils. At 508 million years old (middle Cambrian), it is one of the earliest fossil beds containing soft-part imprints.
| Burgess Shale | |
|---|---|
| Stratigraphic range: Miaolingian ~ | |
Ottoia, a soft-bodied worm, abundant in the Burgess Shale. (From Smith et al. 2015) | |
| Type | Geological formation |
| Unit of | Stephen Formation |
| Thickness | 161 meters (528 ft) |
| Lithology | |
| Primary | Shale |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 51°26′N 116°28′W |
| Region | Yoho National Park and Kootenay National Park |
| Country | Canada |
| Type section | |
| Named for | Burgess Pass |
| Named by | Charles Doolittle Walcott, 1911 |
Map highlighting Yoho National Park in red | |
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.
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