Essay --

With its abundance of genera, the bourgeois Shale is one of the worlds nearly important fossil fields. Its discoery in 1909 led to over 100 years of paleontological study in the Canadian Rockies, a majority of which has been carried out in two quarries known as the Walcott and Raymond quarries (Hagadorn, 2002). though he was passkeyly in search of trilobites in the Burgess Shale Formation, palaeontologist Charles Walcott also notice a diverse group of soft- and hard-bodied fossils, from algae and sponges to chordates and cirripeds (Hagadorn, 2002). Soft-bodied fossils atomic number 18 incredibly rare due to their delicate structure and susceptibility to decay, so it is hard-bodied fossils that more regularly occur in fossil findings. However over 75,000 soft-bodied specimens have been found in the Burgess Shale governing body (Hagadorn, 2002). These specimens are preserve in layers of shale formed from deposits of fine mud. One of the most significant species discovere d is the Pikaia gracilens. Believed to be an early chordate, the Pikaia gracilens existed very close to the beginning of the evolutionary street that ultimately lead to humans (McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia, 2006).The Burgess Shale formation is characteristically illuminating of significant events in the evolutionary path of multiple organisms. Its abundance of fine preserved Lagersttte has inspired paleontologists to refer to this mode of conservation as Burgess Shale-type (Williams, 2009). The Burgess Shale is located in British Columbias Yoho national Park Part of the ancient landmass called Laurentia (Scott, et al., 2000). Fossils found within the formation dating back 545-525 million years ago represent original species from the Cambrian explosion, a relativel... ...deposition and blanket of sediment kept the organisms compressed with unforesightful exposure to oxygen for decay. If life was predominately terrestrial during the Cambrian, the organisms predictably would ha ve been go away untouched after death long enough to decay, preventing the fine preservation of many soft-bodied organisms. Fortunately enough, it was marine life that dominated the Cambrian (Scott, et al., 2000). over the past century, the Burgess Shale has revealed important information about the development of undercoats history. The excavation of the Burgess Shale formation provided evidence for what was once dear a theory in evolution. The taphonomic findings of the Burgess Shale have played a significant role in understanding the large diversity that resulted from the Cambrian explosion, advancing the study of evolutionary assemblages for Paleontologists worldwide.