| Administrative History | Charles Doolittle Walcott discovered the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies in 1909. The Burgess Shale contains the fossils of marine creatures which lived on the muddy sea floor during the mid-Cambrian period (530 Ma), but which were suddenly buried in an oxygen poor environment. It gives a snapshot of the biodiversity of marine life in the Cambrian as amongst the fossils are included soft bodied creatures which would have ordinarily decayed before fossilisation. |