The Burgess Shale is a fossil-bearing deposit exposed in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. Journey back through time with an experienced guide and discover the history and the natural wonders of the Burgess Shale and Yoho National Park. WebBurgess Shale Geoscience Foundation Guided Hikes Earth science specialists lead participants on these hikes sharing their geology and palaeontology expertise along the way. describe the theory of transformation from the sinonyx, a … difference between religious fundamentalism and extremism This is likely d ue to the ocean and mud having an unusual geochemistry at the time – or in slightly simpler language, the mud and water in the ocean had a different chemistry during the Cambrian.Webwhales with legs, toes, pelvis. Usually after an organism dies, animal scavengers consume its soft tissues and then b acteria and other microbes decompose whatever remains However, scientist have interpreted the Burgess Shale fossils to be relatively free of microbial decay. Most of us would way-rather eat the inside of a lobster than its shell – this is true for most animals.

This is because these hard tissues are more resistant to decay and erosion are more chemically and physically stable and are less likely to be consumed, then the soft tissues. The animal fossil record mostly consists of the hard parts of organisms (biomineralized structures or mineralized tissues), such as teeth, bones, exoskeltons, and shells while soft (labile) tissues are rarely preserved long enough to become a fossil. The Burgess Shale fossils are some of the best preserved animal fossils on the planet. In summary the Burgess Shale fossils have helped humanity to understand how all living animals are interelated and with a precision that was lacking prior to the the discovery of the fossils. Paleontologists can then look at Cambrian fossils, like the Burgess Shale fossils, and can try to find that last common ancestor! Typically they look for an ancestor that has a combination of the traits (physical characteristics) from both of the current living organisms. Sometimes molecular clocks indicate that two disparate organisms last shared a common ancestor in the Cambrian. Paleontolgists can use a technique called Molecular Clocks to deduce the last time that two disparate organisms had a common ancestor or in other words the last time that two living creatures, that do not look alike, shared great-great…great-great…(add in a few hundred ‘great-great’)…grandparents. As a result of this fact, and because the fossils are well preserved, Paleontologists studying the Burgess Shale fossils can deduce a great deal about the ancestory of animal lineages. The first fossil occurence of most animal lineages (at the phylum and class levels) occur in the Cambrian. The Burgess Shale organisms lived 508 million years ago in a time period that Geologists call the Cambrian, which began at 541 Ma (million years ago) and ended by 485.4 Ma.

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