The soft-bodied fossils from the Burgess Shale (Middle Cambrian, Bathyuriscus-Elrathina Zone) are among the most exquisitely preserved in the fossil record. Recognizable muscles, gut, and nerve cord are preserved in some specimens. The Shale was discovered by C. D. Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in 1910 on the W side of the ridge connecting Mt Field and Wapta Mtn, southern British Columbia (Fig. 1), following the discovery the previous year of a detached block containing soft-bodied fossils. Exploitation by quarrying, over a number of years, of a stratum near the base of the Shale, the 7′7″ (2.31 m) thick Phyllopod bed, as well as another unit 65′ (19.8 m) higher now known as Raymond's quarry, yielded over 50,000 fossils. The collection is in the National Museum of Natural History, formerly the U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C., from which Walcott issued a series of preliminary publications on much of the biota. In 1966 and 1967 a Geological Survey of Canada...
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Morris, S.C. (1979). Burgess shale . In: Paleontology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31078-9_26
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