Burgess Shale

The Burgess Shale is one of the earliest fossil beds with imprints of soft-parts located in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia. It is made up of black shale. The importance of this area of land is great for scientists because it gives evidence of earlier species and how they evolved to the organisms we have today. Over 60,000 unique fossils have been found with arthropods being the most predominate. Worms, crinoids, sea cucumbers, chordates, and others with no shell. It is difficult to preserve soft-bodied organisms so the importance of the Burgess Shale is great. There seems to be an explosion of species all at once which would go against the slow evolution of species that Darwin had concluded. The phyla of species we have today almost all can be traced to the sudden emergence of species during the Cambrian period. Thus this gives evidence to refute the theory of all animals be connected to one another and gradually forming a variety of species from one organism over time. Some even find this as evidence for a supernatural being having created and placed fully formed organisms on the Earth.