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Re-Examining the Burgess Shale a Hundred The American Geological Institute 4220 King Street, Alexandria, VA 22302-1502, U.S.A. 703-379-2480; Fax: 703-379-7563; [email protected] www.earthmagazine.org Re-examining the Burgess Shale David B. Williams EARTH Vol. 54 (No. 8), p. 30 REPRODUCTION: More than one photocopy of an item from EARTH may be made provided that fees are paid directly to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Dr., Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Phone: (978)750-8400. Fax: (978)646-8600. Any other form of reproduction requires special permission from and is subject to fees by EARTH. Information about obtaining reprints of this article or about obtaining permission to reproduce this article in whole or in part can be found by e-mailing [email protected]. EARTH is published monthly for a base subscription rate of $34.50 a year (single copies $4.99) by the American Geological Institute. © 2009 American Geological Institute. Standard mail, nonprofit postage paid at Denver, Colo., and at other mailing offices. Claims for missing issues will be honored only up to six months. Issues undelivered through failure to notify EARTH of address change will not be replaced. www.earthmagazine.org Trends and Innovations Re-examining the Burgess Shale A hundred years after it was discovered, the world’s most famous fossil site still holds surprises David B. Williams bout 505 million years ago, the continent that would become North America straddled the equator. With no terrestrial plants or animals, the land was a bar- ren landscape. The warm, shallow sea bordering Athe continent, however, hosted a carbonated reef teeming with a diverse array of organisms, most of which were relatively small bottom-dwellers. Periodically, the animals would get washed over the reef and deposited at its base, where their bodies accumulated in the muddy sediments. Today, these creatures are beautifully preserved in the Burgess Shale. The Find “The Burgess Shale is arguably the most important fossil site Charles Doolittle Walcott, director of the Smithsonian’s in the world,” says Robert Gaines, a paleoecologist at Pomona National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., College in Claremont, Calif. The site’s unique abundance had been collecting fossils for more than four decades when and diversity, especially of soft-bodied creatures, highlight he discovered the Burgess locality on Aug. 31, 1909. He was one of the most critical events in evolution — the Cambrian on a steep rocky slope, high in the Canadian Rockies in British Explosion (540 million to 525 million years ago), which Gaines Columbia’s Yoho National Park, when he observed numerous calls a fundamental divide in the geologic record. Before the smooth, dark gray rocks dotted with what Walcott recognized divide, the world, or at least the rock record, appears devoid as fossil crustaceans. They were, however, crustaceans unlike of life except for a smattering of microbes. But in Cambrian any he, or any other paleontologist, had ever seen. rocks, paleontologists find a planet “that’s literally teeming He drew three of the fossils in his diary and wrote, “We with animals,” he says. found a remarkable group of Phyllopod Crustaceans. Took This month marks the centennial anniversary of the dis- a large number of fine samples to camp.” Over the next 15 covery of the Burgess Shale. Although scientists have been years, Walcott returned seven times to his quarry site between mining the Burgess Shale for bizarre and unique creatures Wapta Mountain and Mount Field, about 70 kilometers north- for a century, the fossil site — and especially the fossil collec- west of Banff in Alberta, Canada. Collecting was a family tions currently sitting in museum drawers — still have a lot affair, as his wife and several of their children joined him. of surprises for scientists. (Walcott honored his son Sidney by naming the first formally CourtesyBottom: of the Smithsonian Institution; Robert top: Gaines 30 EARTH August 2009 www.earthmagazine.org described fossil from the Burgess The Site Sidneyia inexpectans.) They eventually Once an unknown and isolated collected more than 65,000 specimens, mountainside, the Burgess Shale quar- now housed at the Smithsonian. ries became a UNESCO World Heritage Walcott hoped to write a definitive Site in 1981 to prevent over-collecting of study on his Burgess fossils. He pub- fossils. Located between Mount Field lished his first paper in April 1910 and and Wapta Mountain, Walcott’s original another five over the next decade. He quarry has produced many of the best called these preliminary reports, but he fossils. In 1924, Harvard University pro- never went further. The site remained fessor Percy Raymond opened a second somewhat in anonymity until the 1960s, quarry. Recently, researchers have also when paleontologist Harry Whittington started to find other fossil-bearing sites and two paleontology graduate students on nearby mountains. at Cambridge University in England, The dominant fossils found to date Simon Conway Morris and Derek Briggs, are arthropods, the largest animal phy- began working on the site. lum, which includes insects, spiders and Top left: Burgess Shale discovery site in the Canadian Rockies today. Left and below: Charles Walcott and his crew as they discovered the Burgess Shale in 1909. Top: Burgessia bella, a Middle Cambrian arthropod found in the Burgess Shale, lived about 505 million years ago. Above: Jean-Bernard Caron at the Burgess Shale site in 2007. Below: Caron at the site in 2008. Bottom left: Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution; bottom right: Robert Gaines; top and middle right: With permission of Parks Canada © Royal Ontario Museum 2008. Photo Credit: J.B. Caron. All rights reserved. All Caron. J.B. Credit: Ontario Museum 2008. Photo © Royal Canada left:permissionBottom of Parks CourtesyWith of the Smithsonian Institution; right: Robert bottom Gaines; and middle right: top www.earthmagazine.org EARTH August 2009 31 Trends and Innovations Right: Reconstruction of Hurdia victoria. Below: The most well-preserved fossil specimen of Hurdia victoria, which was collected by Charles Walcott. The fossil was rediscovered in the drawers of the Royal Ontario Museum and re-examined a couple years ago. crustaceans, as well as extinct groups must have been suppressed; otherwise Gould’s landmark book on the Burgess such as trilobites. But sponges, worms, tissues would have broken down in Shale, “Wonderful Life.” sea pens and one chordate (perhaps weeks and not been preserved. Initially, When Walcott studied his fossils, he our earliest ancestor, Pikaia), have also Gaines suggests, an event such as a placed, or as some say, “shoehorned,” been found in abundance, along with muddy, swirling turbidity current or a most of them into established groups of the single-celled organisms cyanobac- landslide carried the animals deep into fossil lineages. To Gould, Walcott “mis- teria, bacteria and dinoflagellates. Part the ocean and entombed them under interpreted these fossils in a comprehen- of what makes the Burgess so valuable beds of clay-sized particles. Secondarily, sive and thoroughly consistent manner to science is that more than 85 percent a chemical cement of inorganic carbon- arising directly from his conventional of the preserved fauna are soft-bodied, ates developed atop the fossils, which view of life.” Gould proposed that many an unprecedented level of preservation. sealed them from microbial decompos- of the animals seen in the Burgess were In fact, such preservation is so rare that ers. “Several processes contributed to from groups that no longer existed and paleontologists now refer to this mode the chemical deposition of the carbon- had not existed since the Cambrian. In of preservation as Burgess Shale-type ates, most of which no longer occur his view, the Burgess Shale represented fossilization. in today’s ocean,” he says. “It led to a a time of evolutionary experimentation, Nine high-quality Burgess Shale-type type of preservation unique in the fos- which led to many failed body plans. sites occur throughout the world — two sil record.” Gould’s conclusion upset many people, in Canada, three in China, three in Utah in part because of the way he treated and one in Greenland — with another 40 Evolution Walcott, and in part by upsetting the or so containing a minor component of Biologists since at least Charles Darwin paradigm of a continuously and gradu- Burgess Shale-type fossilization. In each have debated how ancient branches of ally branching tree of life. locality, dark-colored films preserve the evolution connect, but the discovery of More recently, paleontologists have biota as two-dimensional compression the complete and well-preserved record gotten better insights into these long-sim- fossils. “What we are seeing are guts, of Cambrian life in the Burgess Shale has mering questions, prompted by discover- eyes and gills preserved as carbon. It’s a led to even more fundamental questions ies of other Burgess Shale-type deposits, singular type of process,” Gaines says. in evolution: Did some change in the primarily the older Chengjiang fossils in “Two central questions of the Burgess environment 540 million years ago allow China. New work on the Burgess itself — are ‘Why were these fossils preserved for the preservation of unusual biota that both fieldwork and new investigations this way?’ and ‘Why does it not happen had only recently evolved, or were long- of museum collections that haven’t been again?’” he says. Gaines has recently evolved biota finally preserved in an thoroughly examined in years — has also proposed a new mechanism for Burgess unusual environment? What is the rela- produced new insights. Shale-type fossilization, based on 53 fos- tionship between the Burgess biota and Jean-Bernard Caron, associate curator sils from 11 sites. modern animals? The discussion took an of invertebrate paleontology at the Royal Central to his argument is that the nor- intense upturn in the late 1980s, particu- Ontario Museum in Canada, which mal means of decay in marine sediments larly after the publication of Stephen Jay houses the largest collection of Burgess (2008).
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