COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: A Remarkable New Fossil Assemblage from the Burgess Shale at Marble Canyon, Kootenay National Park

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The Cambrian ?explosion? was a singular event in the history of life on Earth. This episode, which saw the origin and rapid diversification of almost all major groups of animals (phyla), serves to divide the entire geologic record into two parts, the Precambrian and Phanerozoic Eons. By far, the best records of this event come from a handful of exceptional fossil deposits that preserve the ?soft?, non-biomineralized tissues of organisms that normally leave no trace in the fossil record. Such deposits offer not only a remarkable view of the early patterns of evolution, but have helped to reveal the basic structure of the animal family tree. Recently, the most important Cambrian fossil assemblage discovered in decades was reported from the Burgess Shale near Marble Canyon. This project seeks to provide baseline characterization of the new fossil assemblage and its geological and geochemical context though a multi-disciplinary approach, which will provide hands on training for undergraduates and a postdoctoral scholar. The goals of the project are: 1. to document the geographic extent and composition of the new fossil fauna by exploration and quarrying; 2. to use geochemical and sedimentologic methods to reconstruct the nature of ancient environments in which these fossil assemblages thrived; 3. to develop a strontium isotope chronology linking all Burgess Shale localities in relative time, and; 4. to determine the origin of the Cathedral Escarpment, an enigmatic topographic feature that is central to the Geologic history of the Burgess Shale.