Burgess Shale

The Burgess Shale was discovered in 1909 by Charles Walcott after he became head of the Smithsonian Institution. The discovery gave scientists a look into the Cambrian Period sea life, and most of what they found where animals that had no evolutionary history. The Burgess Shale is located in the Canadian Rocky Mountains in a spot known as the Burgess Pass in British Columbia's Yoho National Park. The Burgess Shale represents the most diverse and well-preserved fossil localities in the world. The fossils found there where of animals, like those in the pictures below, who were previously unknown in the world because no other fossils existed because they were soft bodied animals. These fossils from the Cambrian Period were an evolutionary burst that dates about 545 to 525 million years ago. It is believed that these animals were preserved so well because of a large landslide that captured the animals and fossilized them before they could decompose, as most soft bodied animals would do--which would leave no trace of their existence. Scientists also believe that the period it took for theses animals to develop is about 10 million years. If you want to put that in a 24 span of time, that's about two minutes--this also means that for three-fourths of the day everything was the exact same and in two minutes time, evolution changed forever.

AnomalocarisWiwaxia

HallucigeniaOpabinia

WaptiaMarella