Burgess Shale Centenary meeting
100 years ago this month, the fantastically-named geologist Charles Doolittle Walcott wandered up into the Canadian Rockies and stumbled on one of the world's most amazing fossil beds - the Burgess Shale. In those rocks, Walcott and those following him found a stunning collection of preserved soft-bodied animals from 505 million years ago, from worms to jellyfish to things unknown on modern Earth. For decades, it stood as essentially the only showcase of animals from the Cambrian - a time when life exploded into many different (and often odd) lifeforms.
I'm in Banff, Canada, this week for the commemorative conference of this event (from 4-7 August), blogging talks on everything from water column-chemistry to modern fossil finds. Simon Conway Morris will be there, as well as other big names in this field. I'm keen to see what they have to say. And, to top it all off, I'll be heading out on a hike to the Burgess Shale itself (weather permitting), so will hopefully have some photos for you of that. If I'm lucky I'll stumble on something even stranger than what Walcott found... but no hammers are allowed, and I won't be bringing any fossils home with me.
Posted on behalf of Nicola Jones
