Talk:Burgess Shale

message: I don't mean to be a narc, but amusing as it is describing a "snout like a vacuum cleaner hose", the tone doesn't sound like an encyclopedia to me. I do really like the line, but does anyone mind if i change it to something less whimsical?Larryisgood (talk) 18:19, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Tone

message: I thought that the Burgess Shale was a UNESCO site in its own right, and not merely by inclusion with the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 17:18, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
:From UNESCO site
The "Burgess Shale" property, which was previously inscribed on the World Heritage List, is part of the "Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks".Qyd(talk)22:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  UNESCO 

message: Since there seem to be so many organisms unique to the Burgess shale, how about giving them their own category? Several entries for the species mentioned in the article seem to be in imprecise or inaccurate categories. You could call it something like: "Category:Burgess shale fossils", "Category:Organisms unique to the Burgess shale", or even just "Category:Burgess shale". It would probably go under :Category:Extinct animals or :Category:Fossils. Or both. Would this be helpful or just dumb? Xastic 02:12, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd vote for helpful over dumb. :) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 23:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category 

message: I thought this page could really use an image; there were two to choose from, both on pages for organisms found in the Shale.  I used the Hallucigenia pic instead of the Anomalocaris pic, as the former is a pic of the actual Shale and the latter is a (very nice) cgi rendition of an Anomalocaris swimming.
I'm still working on my wikilayoutting, so if anyone knows a better way than the one I have the image on the page with, please go ahead and fix it.  In other words, I don't like the way it looks but am at a loss to fix it.
And for the record, I think a 'Burgess Shale fossils' category would be helpful.
--Andymussell 02:56, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would also like a 'Burgess Shale Fossils" category. I do not see one currently, and I would like to try to help with one. Swilk 22:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I started the category. It now has one entry: Hallucigenia. PAR 01:40, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image 

message: I have created articles for the redlinks in the list. Totnesmartin 22:24, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redlinks 

message: This article needs a rewrite. It follows far too closely Gould's interpretation in Wonderful Life. Discoveries since 1990 have made this untenable:
*The Ediacaran biota include a very probable mollusc (Kimberella) and a probable trilobite (Spriggina) and echinoderm (Arkarua)
*Anomalocaris, Opabinia and Hallucigenia are now regarded as lobopodia and close to the ancestors of arthropods.
*Wiwaxia and Halkieria are regarded as lophotrochozoa ("super-phylum" that includes molluscs, brachiopods, annelids) and some scientists regard Wiwaxia as a mollusc or very close to molluscs (it had a radula). Odontogriphus is also probably a lophotrochozoan, and may be close to molluscs.
*A lot of the "wierd wonders" have been found earlier and / or later than the Burgess Shale. Halkieria is very close to Wiwaxia but its fossils range from the very early Cambrian ("small shelly fauna" include many bits of its armor) to mid Cambrian; Anomalocaris and Hallucigenia have been found in the  Chenjiang fauna, 10M yers before the Burgess shale. Orthrozanclus' armor is a combination of that of Halkieria and Wiwaxia, and the known Orthrozanclus specimens date from about 505M years ago (quite late Cambrian).
So the "riot of disparity" was far less radical and far longer-lasting than Gould suggested.Philcha 12:06, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Article outdated, follows Gould too closely

message: I'd like to know which mountain range Mount Burgess is in--Monashee, perhaps? That would tell readers more about the geology. A map would be helpful. Monado (talk) 01:20, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which mountain range? 

message: We haven't even started on a catalogue of the Burgess Shale fossils, and it will be a long article when it happens – which it will, see WP:CEX. I suggest a separate article Burgess Shale fossils should cover the fossils, leaving Burgess Shale to handle location, geology, topography, etc. -- Philcha (talk) 17:13, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Would this be sufficiently different to Burgess shale type fauna? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:03, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for drawing my attention to that. Proposal for separate article withdrawn. I've added "Further information: Burgess shale type fauna" at the top in case I forget again. :-ʃ Philcha (talk) 19:40, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Article title / structure

message: This article starts Burgess Shale Formation, yet a wikilink to Burgess Shale Formation redirects to Stephen Formation. I'm out of my depth in this topic area to sort this confusion out, but it seems to me that either these two articles be merged, or that the heirarchy is clarified.  Derek Andrews (talk) 13:39, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I've switched the redirect back to Burgess Shale. -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 22:53, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

text: The Burgess Shale Member was originally considered to be part of the Stephen Formation (and still is by the Canadian Survey according to their lexicon of geologic units ). More recent work has suggested that the Burgess Shale Formation should be distinguished from the Stephen Formation, as contemporaneous, but different sedimentary facies developments. Mikenorton (talk) 23:05, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusion 

message: I love the topic and will help you (please use my Talk page). But I've see that a GA review is hard, as it needs the same thoroughness but faster, and I have a handicap.
Points to consider:
* Use only 2, with attribution required. Use your own mode where OK.
* discovered by palaeontologist Charles Walcott in 1909
* "significance of soft-bodied preservation" (if quote, attribution required)
* Alberto Simonetta led scientists to recognise that Walcott had barely scratched the surface. If quote, attribution required.
* the Geological Survey of Canada under the persuasion of trilobite expert Harry Blackmore Whittington, and a new quarry, the Raymond, was established about 20 metres higher up Fossil Ridge. Whittington, with the help of research students Derek Briggs and Simon Conway Morris of the University of Cambridge, began a thorough reassessment of the Burgess Shale, and revealed that the fauna represented were much more diverse and unusual than Walcott had recognized first-hand reinvestigation of the fossils was attempted, by Alberto Simonetta. This led scientists to recognise that Walcott had barely scratched the surface of information available in the Burgess Shale, and also made it clear that the organisms did not fit comfortably into modern groups. If quote, attribution required.
* Excavations were resumed at the Walcott Quarry by the Geological Survey of Canada under the persuasion of trilobite expert Harry Blackmore Whittington, and a new quarry, the Raymond, was established about 20 metres higher up Fossil Ridge.[5] Whittington, with the help of research students Derek Briggs and Simon Conway Morris of the University of Cambridge, began a thorough reassessment of the Burgess Shale, and revealed that the fauna represented were much more diverse and unusual than Walcott had recognized.[5] Indeed, many of the animals present had bizarre anatomical features and only the slightest resemblance to other known animals. Examples include Opabinia, with five eyes and a snout like a vacuum cleaner hose and Hallucigenia, which was originally reconstructed upside down, walking on bilaterally symmetrical spines. If quote, attribution required.
* With Parks Canada and UNESCO recognising the significance of the Burgess Shale, collecting fossils became politically more difficult from the mid-1970s. Collections continued to be made by the Royal Ontario Museum. The curator of invertebrate palaeontology, Desmond Collins, identified a number of additional outcrops, stratigraphically both higher and lower than the original Walcott quarry.[5] These localities continue to yield new organisms faster than they can be studied. If quote, attribution required.
* Stephen Jay Gould's book Wonderful Life, published in 1989, brought the Burgess Shale fossils to the public's attention. Gould suggests that the extraordinary diversity of the fossils indicate that life forms at the time were much more diverse than those that survive today, and that many of the unique lineages were evolutionary experiments that became extinct. Gould's interpretation of the diversity of Cambrian fauna relied heavily on Simon Conway Morris' reinterpretation of Charles Walcott's original publications. However, Conway Morris strongly disagreed with Gould's conclusions, arguing that almost all the Cambrian fauna could be classified into mode. If quote, attribution required.  --Philcha (talk) 14:36, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  GA ? 

message: Would it be possible to have 'an equivalent of' the Marine habitats map of Oceanic zone to show where the Burgess shale was in relation to the Cathedral escarpment and the ocean surface.
Were the creatures of the Burgess Shale area confined to that depth of the ocean, or would they have been existing at other levels (in conditions which were not conducive to preservation of their remains)? Jackiespeel (talk) 17:16, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: General questions

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: We have pages for Burgess Shale, Stephen Formation, Burgess Shale type fauna, History of the Burgess Shale and Fossils of the Burgess Shale. I have never combined pages before but there seems like there could be some better re-directs for such an important topic --Akrasia25 (talk) 20:59, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Burgess Shale]] combining