Burgess Shale fossils from Marble Canyon (Canadian Rockies) and the early diversification of animals

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Discovered in 1909, the Burgess Shale of British Columbia is critical to our understanding of the early diversification of animals during the famous “Cambrian Explosion” that occurred about half a billion years ago. The 2012 discovery by a Royal Ontario Museum-led expedition of a new Burgess Shale locality near Marble Canyon in Kootenay National Park, 40 km southeast of the original site, adds a dramatic new chapter to our understanding of this key episode in Earth's history. Among the treasures from Marble Canyon is Metaspriggina, the most complete primitive fossil fish in the world (Conway Morris s. These exceptionally preserved fossils will offer critical insights into the early evolution, diversity and variety of body shapes of these groups of organisms. We will develop new tools to look beyond the surface of fossil specimens, including the use of cyclotron technology to detect structures still embedded in rocks and which are too thin or fragile to be exposed with mechanical tools. *** The second objective involves unearthing new fossils through targeted fieldwork at various locations in the Canadian Rockies Mountain Parks, to determine the extent of the fossil deposits within the Stephen Shale Formation (the geological unit yielding Burgess Shale fossils) how spread out they are and the stratigraphic relationships of the different fossil assemblages within that formation. We will study how these fossil animals were related to each other, as well as variations in the organisms making up these ancient communities and variations in their environments.