B.ED. SPECIALIZED SCIENCE IN BIOLOGYTable of ContentsThe Burgess Shale Fauna 3Introduction 3History of Discovery 3Preservation Bias 4Major Fossils 4Concluding Remarks: 7References: 8The Burgess Shale FaunaIntroductionThe Burgess Shale Fauna is a fauna that was constructed on the basis of a group of fossils originally found in the Burgess. Shale zone in the Canadian Rockies (Gould, 1989). This is a very important group of fossils since "modern multicellular animals made their first unprotected appearance in the fossil record about 570 million years ago" (Gould, 1989, p. 24). Additionally, the Burgess Shale is known for preserving the soft parts of animals, which has given us a better understanding of life at the time. History of Discoveries “For decades, ‘Burgess Shale life’ was synonymous with ‘Cambrian life’” (Collins, 2009). This is because Cambrian life was only known from this location. According to Collins (2009), the first descriptions of the Burgess fauna were made by Joseph Whiteaves, a chief paleontologist who made the first descriptions of Burgess Shale trilobites and unusual specimens he called Anomalocaris (Collins, 2009). In 1907, Charles Dolittle Walcott, known for discovering the Burgess Shale fauna, visited the Canadian Rockies for the first time. His interest in fossils arose from an article written by Henry Woodward in which the author claimed that Cambrian fossils had probably been found on Mount Field (in the Canadian Rockies) (Collins 2009). This led Walcott and his family to go there. An incident with his wife's horse led Walcott to make his first discovery of a common Burgess Shale fossil known as Marella. At the time, he did not realize the ...... middle of paper ....... (2011). A new arthropod Jugatacaris agilis n. gen. n. sp. from the Lower Cambrian Chengjiang biota, South China. Journal of Paleonotology, 85(3), 567-586. doi:10.1666/09-173.1 Gould, S. J. (1989). The Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. New York, USA: WW Norton& Company Inc. Han, J., Zhang, ZF and Liu, JN (2008). A preliminary note on the dispersal of Burgess Cambrian-type faunas. Gondwana Research, (1), 269-276. doi:10.1016/j.gr.2007.09.001Morris, S.C. (2009). Walcott, the Burgess Shale and rumors of a post-Darwinian world. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, 19(20). Retrieved from DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.08.046Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (2014). Burgess Shale fossil specimens. Accessed May 2014 from http://paleobiology.si.edu/burgess/burgessSpecimens.html