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Hallucigenia is a genus of Cambrian animal resembling worms, known from articulated fossils in Burgess Shale-type deposits in Canada and China, and from isolated spines around the world. The generic name reflects the type species' unusual appearance and eccentric history of study; when it was erected as a genus, H. sparsa was reconstructed as an enigmatic animal upside down and back to front. Hallucigenia is later recognized as part of lobopodians, a grade of Paleozoic panarthropods where the velvet worms, water bears, and arthropods arose.
Marrella is an extinct genus of arthropod known from the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia. It is the most common animal represented in the Burgess Shale.
Yoho National Park is a national park of Canada. It is located within the Rocky Mountains along the western slope of the Continental Divide of the Americas in southeastern British Columbia, bordered by Kootenay National Park to the south and Banff National Park to the east in Alberta. The word Yoho is a Cree expression of amazement or awe, and it is an apt description for the park's spectacular landscape of massive ice fields and mountain peaks, which rank among the highest in the Canadian Rockies.
Field is an unincorporated community of approximately 169 people located in the Kicking Horse River valley of southeastern British Columbia, Canada, within the confines of Yoho National Park. At an elevation of 1,256 m (4,121 ft), it is 27 km (17 mi) west of Lake Louise along the Trans-Canada Highway, which provides the only road access to the town. The community is named for Cyrus West Field of Transatlantic telegraph cable fame, who visited the area in 1884.
Kootenia is a genus of trilobites of the family Dorypygidae. 118 specimens of Kootenia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 0.22% of the community. Its major characteristics are that of the closely related Olenoides, including medium size, a large glabella, and a medium-sized pygidium, but also a lack of the strong interpleural furrows on the pygidium that Olenoides has.
Olenoides was a trilobite from the Cambrian period. Its fossils are found well-preserved in the Burgess Shale in Canada. It grew up to 10 cm long.
Ogygopsis is a genus of trilobite from the Cambrian of Antarctica and North America, specifically the Burgess Shale. It is the most common fossil in the Mt. Stephen fossil beds there, but rare in other Cambrian faunas. Its major characteristics are a prominent glabella with eye ridges, lack of pleural spines, a large spineless pygidium about as long as the thorax or cephalon, and its length: up to 12 cm.
Crumillospongia is a genus of middle Cambrian sponges known from the Burgess Shale and other localities from the Lower and Middle Cambrian. Its name is derived from the Latin crumilla and spongia ("sponge"), a reflection of its similarity to a small leathery money purse. That is, it has a saclike shape, and its wall has holes of two sizes, with a well-developed internal canal system. 49 specimens of Crumillospongia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 0.1% of the community.
Sarotrocercus is a small Cambrian arthropod known from Burgess shale, reaching a centimetre or two in length (0.39–0.79 in). 28 specimens of Sarotrocercus are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise < 0.1% of the community. It may lie in the arthropod crown group, and a recent study has revised some points of its original description.
The Burgess Shale, a series of fossil beds in the Canadian Rockies, was first noticed in 1886 by Richard McConnell of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC). His and subsequent finds, all from the Mount Stephen area, came to the attention of palaeontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott, who in 1907 found time to reconnoitre the area. He opened a quarry in 1910 and in a series of field trips brought back 65,000 specimens, which he identified as Middle Cambrian in age. Due to the quantity of fossils and the pressures of his other duties at the Smithsonian Institution, Walcott was only able to publish a series of "preliminary" papers, in which he classified the fossils within taxa that were already established. In a series of visits beginning in 1924, Harvard University professor Percy Raymond collected further fossils from Walcott's quarry and higher up on Fossil Ridge, where slightly different fossils were preserved.
Ehmaniella is a genus of trilobite known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. 392 specimens of Ehmaniella are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 0.74% of the community.
Molaria is a genus of Cambrian arthropod, the type species M. spinifera is known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. 144 specimens of Molaria are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 0.27% of the community. A second species M. steini was described from the Sirius Passet in Greenland in 2017.
Pagetia Walcott, 1916. is a small genus of trilobite, assigned to the Eodiscinid family Pagetiidae and which had global distribution during the Middle Cambrian. The genus contains 55 currently recognized species, each with limited spatial and temporal ranges.
Oryctocephalus is a genus of trilobite known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. 24 specimens of Oryctocephalus are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 0.42% of the community. This small- to medium-sized trilobite's major characteristics are prominent eye ridges, pleural spines, long genal spines, spines on the pygidium, and notably four furrows connecting pairs of pits on its glabella. Juvenile specimens have been found with only 5 or 6 thoracic segments and about one eighth of adult size, as well as about 2 mm wide.
The Mount Stephen trilobite beds are a series of fossil strata on Mount Stephen, British Columbia that contain exceptionally preserved fossil material. Part of the same stratigraphic unit as the Burgess Shale deposit, many non-mineralized parts are preserved; in addition, a high density of trilobite fossils is present.
Ptychagnostus is a member of the agnostida that lived during the Cambrian period. Ptychagnostidae generally do not exceed one centimetre in length. Their remains are rarely found in empty tubes of the polychaete worm Selkirkia. The genus probably ranged throughout the water column. It has two glabellar lobes, and three pygidial lobes.
Alokistocaridae is a family of ptychopariid trilobites that lived from the Botomian epoch of the Early Cambrian until the Late Cambrian. Alokistocarids were particle feeders and left small furrows which are occasionally preserved. Their remains are found worldwide. Elrathia kingii, one of the most collected trilobites in the world, is a typical alokistocarid.
Zacanthoides is an extinct Cambrian genus of corynexochid trilobite. It was a nektobenthic predatory carnivore. Its remains have been found in Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and the United States. Its major characteristics are a slender exoskeleton with 9 thoracic segments, pleurae with long spines, additional spines on the axial rings, and a pygidium that is considerably smaller than its cephalon.
Bathyuriscus is an extinct genus of Cambrian trilobite. It was a nektobenthic predatory carnivore. The genus Bathyuriscus is endemic to the shallow seas that surrounded Laurentia. Its major characteristics are a large forward-reaching glabella, pointed pleurae or pleurae with very short spines, and a medium pygidium with well-impressed furrows. Complete specimens have never reached the size of 7 cm predicted by the largest pygidium found. Bathyuriscus is often found with the free cheeks shed, indicating a moulted exoskeleton. An average specimen will in addition have a furrowed glabella, crescent-shaped eyes, be semi-circular in overall body shape, have 7 to 9 thoracic segments, and a length of about 1.5 inches.
The Cathedral Formation is a stratigraphic unit in the southern Canadian Rockies of Alberta and British Columbia, on the western edge of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. It is a thick sequence of carbonate rocks of Middle Cambrian age. It was named for Cathedral Mountain in Yoho National Park by Charles Doolittle Walcott, the discoverer of the Burgess shale fossils.
References
- ↑ Paleobiology Database. "Chancia", accessed March 27, 2011.
- ↑ Coppold, Murray and Wayne Powell (2006). A Geoscience Guide to the Burgess Shale, p.57. The Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation, Field, British Columbia. ISBN 0-9780132-0-4.
