Thoughts from a random place...: Burgess Shale Sojourn: Breaking trail for Field, BC

Having grown up enamored with the aged and defunct evolutionary tangent of trilobites, the "Fossil Beds" where these, along with the perhaps more interestingly soft-bodied preservation fossils, were found held a special place in my heart and mind. I knew, as a young whipper-snapper, that I would someday hold in my hands a "real" fossil of a trilobite - not one that was purchased, not one from a museum, not one from a display case in a school, but one that I yanked from the ground with my own hands. I knew I had to go west...I knew I would.

The Burgess Shale, trapping within it 500 million year old life - trapped forever by the mineralizing efforts of time - hold secrets, a historical story and a breath of explanation on the evolution of life. It is a fantastic story told and understood by many hands and eyes and pens, none more prosaic that S. J. Gould's "Its a Wonderful Life". The key to these fossils being so important is the sof-body preservation. Anything can become a fossil - I can, you can, a tree can... . But what would fossilize is the key. Bones, teeth...no issue. Perfect fossils if left undisturbed by the savagery of time needed to produce a fossil and then erode the rock to expose it for a discerning eye to study. Skin, tongue, guts...even the food that is within the guts...different story. These things do not fossilize. Scientists can infer skin/feather coatings by fossilized bone strucutre, but rarely if ever do they get a fossil of a soft structure like skin.

But, here in the Rockies there is a story written in the rocks with all the glorifying details. The hard structures, the chitinous and calcareous skeletal and exo-skeletal cases...fossils. The skin and the guts...the last dinner of these critters...fossils. Everything...fossils. Trilobites, early limpit-like organisms....worms...mass graves...all preserved in this one stretch of shale now shunted high above the sea level at which they were laid down through milions of years of tectonics.

There is a story being told high along one craggy ridge in the Canadian Rockies. It is the Burgess Shale, telling its story one fossil at a time. Its a story I wanted to witness...so I did.

First night of the voyage, camping just south of the Athabasca Glacier...with rain, hail and, briefly, snow, accompanying me.

...and then a crow stole my dinner. Fucker.

Peyto Lake in the background...marmot in the forground giving me its best pose. Runway material...runway material... . This, and the ones below, are some wildlife encounters I got as I hiked along the quite amazing Peyto Lake interpretive trail. They all seemed to like my company..perhaps that just my perspective though :)