The Burgess Shale is an area in Canada very well known in the world of paleontology because it represents an extraordinary reservoir of fossils from the Middle Cambrian, which is about five hundred million years ago. In 2012, in Kootenay National Park, about 40 km from the original site, a new deposit of fossils was discovered described in a paper just published in the journal “Nature Communications”.

Kootenay National Park is located in the Canadian Rockies, specifically in British Columbia. Near Marble Canyon some fossils were found so a group of paleontologists of the Royal Ontario Museum led by Dr. Jean-Bernard Caron organized a search in the area, along with colleagues from the University of Toronto, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Uppsala.

The expedition, carried out in the summer of 2012, proved to be immediately successful. The examination of pieces of rock broken off from the mountains immediately showed the presence of fossils. Among the first discovered there was a specimen of Marrella splendens, a species found in abundance in the original Burgess Shale site as well.

Within 15 days the scientists found specimens belonging to over 50 species of animals of the Cambrian period, some of which unknown. For comparison, in the original site in Yoho National Park about 200 species of animals were found in the course of a century.

Subsequent studies on the fossils found in Marble Canyon confirmed that those are extraordinary discoveries. The study of life in the Cambrian, a truly exceptional period in the history of life on Earth for the huge amount of species emerged in period that was very short from the geological point of view, is difficult. There are just a few fossils and geological and paleoclimatic traces are limited. These new findings could be of great help for scientists to understand the evolution of life in that distant period.

Several among the new fossils found are excellent from the point of view of quality. This allowed for example to confirm that pikaia, previously found only at the Yoho National Park site, is the most primitive vertebrate known. This is important because it’s the ancestor of all vertebrates existed later, including mammalian and therefore humans.

Some species found in Kootenay National Park had been found at the Chinese Chengjiang site, whose fossils are about 10 million years older. This suggests that the worldwide distribution of the animals in the Cambrian and their longevity had been underestimated.

The study of these new fossils goes on and Dr. Jean -Bernard Caron announced a new expedition this summer to look for more. We can be sure that other important information will be revealed about a crucial period in the history of life on Earth.

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