Editing Burgess Shale (section)

== History and significance ==
{{Main|History of the Burgess Shale}}

[[File:ROM-BurgessShale-CompleteAnomalocarisFossil.png|thumb|left|The first complete ''[[Anomalocaris]]'' fossil found.]]
{{Burgess Shale}}

The Burgess Shale was discovered by [[palaeontologist]] [[Charles Doolittle Walcott|Charles Walcott]] on 30 August 1909,<ref>{{cite web | url=http://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/en/history/discoveries/02-walcott.php | title=Charles Walcott | publisher=[[Royal Ontario Museum]] | access-date=29 August 2013 | archive-date=6 June 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130606080808/http://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/en/history/discoveries/02-walcott.php | url-status=dead }}</ref> towards the end of the season's fieldwork.{{fotbs}} He returned in 1910 with his sons, daughter, and wife, establishing a quarry on the flanks of Fossil Ridge. The significance of soft-bodied preservation, and the range of organisms he recognised as new to science, led him to return to the quarry almost every year until 1924. At that point, aged 74, he had amassed over 65,000 specimens. Describing the fossils was a vast task, pursued by Walcott until his death in 1927.<ref name="fotbs" /> Walcott, led by scientific opinion at the time, attempted to categorise all fossils into living taxa, and as a result, the fossils were regarded as little more than curiosities at the time. It was not until 1962 that a first-hand reinvestigation of the fossils was attempted, by Alberto Simonetta. This led scientists to recognise that Walcott had barely scratched the surface of information available in the Burgess Shale, and also made it clear that the organisms did not fit comfortably into modern groups.

Excavations were resumed at the [[Walcott Quarry]] by the [[Geological Survey of Canada]] under the persuasion of [[trilobite]] expert [[Harry Blackmore Whittington]], and a new quarry, the Raymond, was established about 20 metres higher up Fossil Ridge.<ref name=fotbs /> Whittington, with the help of research students [[Derek Briggs]] and [[Simon Conway Morris]] of the [[University of Cambridge]], began a thorough reassessment of the Burgess Shale, and revealed that the fauna represented were much more diverse and unusual than Walcott had recognized.<ref name=fotbs />  Many of the animals present had bizarre [[body form|anatomical features]] and only the slightest resemblance to other known animals. Examples include ''[[Opabinia]]'', with five eyes and a snout like a vacuum cleaner hose and ''[[Hallucigenia]]'', which was originally reconstructed upside down, walking on bilaterally symmetrical spines.

With [[Parks Canada]] and [[UNESCO]] recognising the significance of the Burgess Shale, collecting fossils became politically more difficult from the mid-1970s.{{clarify|date=October 2022}} Collections continued to be made by the [[Royal Ontario Museum]]. The curator of invertebrate palaeontology, [[Desmond H. Collins|Desmond Collins]], identified a number of additional outcrops, [[stratigraphically]] both higher and lower than the original Walcott quarry.<ref name=fotbs /> These localities continue to yield new organisms faster than they can be studied.

[[Stephen Jay Gould]]'s book ''[[Wonderful Life (book)|Wonderful Life]]'', published in 1989, brought the Burgess Shale fossils to the public's attention. Gould suggests that the extraordinary diversity of the fossils indicates that life forms at the time were much more disparate in body form than those that survive today, and that many of the unique lineages were evolutionary experiments that became extinct. Gould's interpretation of the diversity of Cambrian fauna relied heavily on [[Simon Conway Morris]]'s reinterpretation of Charles Walcott's original publications. However, Conway Morris strongly disagreed with Gould's conclusions, arguing that almost all the Cambrian fauna could be classified into modern day [[Phylum|phyla]].<ref name="crucible">{{cite book|author =Simon Conway Morris|author-link =Simon Conway Morris|title =The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals|publisher =Oxford University Press|year =1998|page =[https://archive.org/details/crucibleofcreati00conw/page/316 316]|isbn =978-0-19-286202-0|url =https://archive.org/details/crucibleofcreati00conw/page/316}}</ref>

The Burgess Shale has attracted the interest of [[Paleoclimatology|paleoclimatologists]] who want to study and predict long-term future changes in Earth's climate. According to [[Peter Ward (paleontologist)|Peter Ward]] and Donald Brownlee in the 2003 book ''[[The Life and Death of Planet Earth]]'',<ref>Ward, Peter Douglas; Brownlee, Donald (2003), The life and death of planet Earth: how the new science of astrobiology charts the ultimate fate of our world, Macmillan, {{ISBN|0-8050-7512-7}}</ref> climatologists study the fossil records in the Burgess Shale to understand the climate of the [[Cambrian explosion]]. It can be used to predict what Earth's climate would look like 500 million years in the future as a warming and expanding Sun, combined with declining [[Carbon dioxide|CO<sub>2</sub>]] and oxygen levels, eventually heat the Earth toward temperatures not seen since the [[Archean]] Eon 3 billion years ago (before the first plants and animals appeared). This in turn furthers understanding of how and when the last living things on Earth could potentially die out. See also [[Future of the Earth]].

After the Burgess Shale site was registered as a [[World Heritage Site]] in 1980, it was included in the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks WHS designation in 1984.

In 2012, the discovery was announced of another Burgess Shale outcrop in [[Kootenay National Park]] to the south. In just 15 days of field collecting in 2013, 50 animal species were unearthed at the new site.<ref>{{cite news |date=11 Feb 2014 |title=New fossil bed found by scientists hailed as 'motherlode' |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/new-fossil-bed-found-by-scientists-hailed-as-motherlode-1.2531990 |url-status=live |location=Canada |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230802083736/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/new-fossil-bed-found-by-scientists-hailed-as-motherlode-1.2531990 |archive-date=2 August 2023 |access-date=2 August 2023}}
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===IUGS geological heritage site===
In respect of the site being "characterized by exceptional soft-tissue preservation, [and containing] the most complete fossil record of Cambrian ([[Wuliuan]]) marine ecosystems", the [[International Union of Geological Sciences]] (IUGS) included the "Burgess Shale Cambrian Paleontological Record" in its assemblage of 100 "geological heritage sites" around the world in a listing published in October 2022. The organisation defines an "IUGS Geological Heritage Site" as "a key place with geological elements and/or processes of international scientific relevance, used as a reference, and/or with a substantial contribution to the development of geological sciences through history."<ref>{{cite web |title=The First 100 IUGS Geological Heritage Sites |url=https://iugs-geoheritage.org/videos-pdfs/iugs_first_100_book_v2.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221027114156/https://iugs-geoheritage.org/videos-pdfs/iugs_first_100_book_v2.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-27 |url-status=live |website=IUGS International Commission on Geoheritage |publisher=IUGS |access-date=13 November 2022}}</ref>