The Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation is a non-profit organization located in British Columbia in the town of Field. Its goals are educational as well as charitable. The Foundation was started in 1989 with the intent to make the public aware of Earth Sciences and generate more interest in the fields of Paleontology and Geology. Their goal is also to help the public understand the geology that results from the mountain national parks so Earth Sciences can be effectively taught in schools as well as help the public learn more about using our national resource, its technology and what effect this all has on our environment.
Burgess Shale is in southeastern British Columbia in the Canadian Rockies. It rests between two mountains 90 km west of a resort town called Banff. It will take about 3 hours to get to the Walcott quarry by way of a scenic trail. The beautiful scenery of Takakkaw Falls, Emerald Lake and
Yoho National Park will keep you busy and you won't notice the distance.
The site was named after Charles Walcott, the man that first discovered the fossils at Burgess Shale on Fossil Ridge in 1909. Over the next 15 years, he collected more than 65,000 additional specimens. The name 'Burgess Shale' is the term that Walcott gave to these fossil-bearing units. The fossils appear as film on the shale. They are different parts of animals that existed many years ago, in the Cambrian period, which is over 505 million years ago.
Their importance is that they are parts of animals that may be extinct but also animals that exist today. Studies of these fossils help teach us about evolution and show us what the animals were like then and how they survived. This is the entire purpose of the Foundation-to encourage the study of these extinct beings.
