Burgess Shale
Sign in to savefossil-bearing rock formation in the Canadian Rockies
In the Vinony graph
Burgess Shale is indexed among the 3,384 entries in Vinony's UNESCO World Heritage collection.
Within Vinony's link graph, Burgess Shale is referenced by 433 other articles, and connects out to Precambrian, body plan and Radiodonta.
The entry is geolocated on the map in BC.
It sits within the topics Burgess Shale, Burgess Shale fossils and Cambrian British Columbia.
Key facts
- Type
- Geological formation
- Unit of
- Stephen Formation
- Thickness
- 161 meters (528 ft)
- Primary
- Shale
- Coordinates
- 51°26′N 116°28′W / 51.433°N 116.467°W / 51.433; -116.467
- Region
- Yoho National Park and Kootenay National Park
- Country
- Canada
- Named for
- Burgess Pass
- Named by
- Charles Doolittle Walcott , 1911
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- lagerstätte
- Named after
- Mount Burgess
- Country
- Canada
- Located in
- Columbia-Shuswap Regional District
- Material used
- shale
- Location
- Kootenay National Park
- Image
- WalcottQuarry080509.jpg
Show 5 more facts
- topic's main category
- Category:Burgess Shale
- temporal range start
- Miaolingian
- temporal range end
- Miaolingian
- located in protected area
- Yoho National Park
- Commons category
- Burgess Shale
via Wikidata · CC0
~13 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Burgess Shale is a fossil-bearing deposit exposed in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. It is famous for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of its fossils. At c.505 million years old (middle Cambrian), it is one of the earliest fossil beds containing soft-part imprints.
The rock unit is a black shale and crops out at several localities near the town of Field in Yoho National Park and the Kicking Horse Pass. Another outcrop is in Kootenay National Park 42 km to the south.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Burgess Shale” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.