Yesterday it was 30 degrees and sunny, leading to violent thunder storms, torrential rain, and today’s wet drizzle. This demonstration of the changeable weather in Canada’s Rockies gives me a new appreciation for the early explorers of these mountains. In some ways they had it easier than today’s field geologists and paleontologists, in that they had pack horses to carry their gear (several participants at today’s conference have lamented not having their own pack horses). But clearly it was not easy, negotiating up scree slopes of shale, through dense forest, in at times horrendous conditions.

When Charles Doolittle Walcott arrived on the scene in 1909 (the event which this conference is commemorating) he had his family with him – including his wife, in full skirt, and some of his children. How they managed I’ll never know.

Desmond Collins opened today’s talks with an historical account of Walcott’s adventures – a version of which will appear, with further details and a more modern take on the shale’s significance – in an essay in the 20 August edition of Nature (closer to the actual date of Walcott’s discovery of Burgess Shale fossils, which was 31 August 1909).

But though history looms large at this conference, which is held close to Walcott’s Burgess Shale discovery, the science being presented here is on a broader topic: the Cambrian explosion – the eruption of a vast number of new forms of life, including most animal groups alive today, starting some 530 million years ago.

Posted on behalf of Nicola Jones