New fossil site discovered

[FFed]

Discovered close to the Burgess Shale. Steven Jay Gould would have been very excited.

http://globalnews.ca/news/1141642/new-bc-fossil-site-could-be-worlds-most-important/


"A new fossil site discovered in Kootenay National Park may be one of the world’s most important, according to researchers.

A century after the discovery of Yoho National Park’s 505 million-year-old Burgess Shale, officials say a new fossil site has been located just 42 kilometres away.

The new Marble Canyon fossil bed was found by an expedition team from the Royal Ontario Museum who made the trek to the Canadian Rockies.

It was actually a hunch that led the expedition team to the area of Marble Canyon, where they discovered a startling variety of fossils.

They pinpointed the source of the fossils to higher up on the mountain slopes and began to excavate the fossils layer-by-layer.

In a little over two weeks, the researchers collected thousands of specimens representing more than 50 animal species, several of which were new to science.

Researchers say it could turn out to be one of the most important discoveries of this generation."

 

[fuelair]

Wonderful!!!!! Hopefully publications in the reasonable future!!!

 

[Dinwar]

I wonder how it compres to the Chinese lagerstattens they've found. Surprisingly, such sites aren't really rare--or, rather, they're not as rare as people think.

That said, having a nearby site provides some useful information. A lot of modern species are very geographically constrained, and it'll be interesting to see if that holds true here. The really exciting thing about that is that these Cambrian species could have evolved into whole new classes and orders, meaning that even subtle shifts in the species could produce radical shifts in our understanding of the history of the phyla.

 

[Soapy Sam]

...and the geographical distribution / isolation of same may yield information about plate / continent/ ocean positions at the time.
...as well as indicating whether irreducible complexity / intelligent design is a neo-catastrophist theory or a uniformitarian one.

 

[Dinwar]

...and the geographical distribution / isolation of same may yield information about plate / continent/ ocean positions at the time.

Well, potentially; however, usually it's the other way 'round. The stratigraphy informs us about the geography, and the biology is interpreted through that lense. Unless there are plants, or cold-weather species, it's difficult to determine continental position via marine biology.

...as well as indicating whether irreducible complexity / intelligent design is a neo-catastrophist theory or a uniformitarian one.

Well, by definition Intelligent Design is a Catastraphist theory (NOT a Neocatastraphist one--Neocatastraphism holds that low-amplitude, high-frequency events occur but are typically over-written in the fossil record by high-amplitude, low-frequency events). The fossils really don't have much to say on that count; the only question is whether Catastraphism is right, and that was answered 150-200 years ago.