Researchers discover 'epic' new Burgess Shale site in Canada's Kootenay National Park

Massive deposit may be world's most important animal fossil discovery in decades

2014-02-11

(Press-News.org) February 11, 2014 Kootenay National Park, British Columbia -- Yoho National Park's 505-million-year-old Burgess Shale – home to some of the planet's earliest animals, including a very primitive human relative – is one of the world's most important fossil sites. Now, more than a century after its discovery, a compelling sequel has been unearthed: 42 kilometres away in Kootenay National Park, a new Burgess Shale fossil site has been located that appears to equal the importance of the original discovery, and may one day even surpass it.

The find was made in the summer of 2012 by a team from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM, Jean-Bernard Caron), Pomona College (Robert Gaines), the University of Toronto (Jean-Bernard Caron, Cédric Aria), the University of Saskatchewan (Gabriela Mángano) and Uppsala University (Michael Streng).

A paper published today in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communications describes Kootenay National Park's new 'Marble Canyon' fossil beds for the first time. The authors suggest that the area and its extraordinary fossils will greatly further our understanding of the sudden explosion of animal life during the Cambrian Period.

The new fossil site is protected by Parks Canada, with the exact location remaining confidential to protect its integrity, though future visitor opportunities have not been ruled out. The ROM is especially proud of this discovery as it comes in a year the organization celebrates its 100th anniversary.

Quick Facts

This new finding is the latest in a recent string of Burgess Shale discoveries, including confirmation that Pikaia, found only in Yoho National Park, is the most primitive known vertebrate and therefore the ancestor of all descendant vertebrates, including humans.

In over 100 years of research, approximately 200 animal species have been identified at the original Burgess Shale discovery in Yoho National Park in over 600 field days. In just 15 days of field collecting, 50 animal species have already been unearthed at the new Kootenay National Park site.

Some species found at the new Kootenay site are also found in China's famous Chengjiang fossil beds, which are 10 million years older. This contributes to the pool of evidence suggesting that the local and worldwide distribution of Cambrian animals, as well as their longevity, might have been underestimated.

INFORMATION:

Explore and Discover

Explore the ROM/Parks Canada award winning website about Burgess Shale: http://www.burgess-shale.rom.on.ca Discover more about the Burgess Shale in Yoho and Kootenay national parks by visiting http://www.pc.gc.ca/burgessshale Follow on Twitter with hashtag #BurgessShale or follow @ParksCanada or @ROMToronto

Quotes

"This new discovery is an epic sequel to a research story that began at the turn of the previous century, and there is no doubt in my mind that this new material will significantly increase our understanding of early animal evolution. The rate at which we are finding animals – many of which are new – is astonishing, and there is a high possibility that we'll eventually find more species here than at the original Yoho National Park site, and potentially more than from anywhere else in the world. We are very excited to go back to the field this summer, during the ROM's Centennial year, with one of our main goals being to increase the number of new species discovered." -- Dr. Jean-Bernard Caron
Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and the study's lead author

"We were already aware of the presence of some Burgess Shale fossils in Kootenay National Park. We had a hunch that if we followed the formation along the mountain topography into new areas with the right rock types, maybe, just maybe, we would get lucky – though we never in our wildest dreams thought we'd track down a motherload like this. It didn't take us very long at all to realize that we had dug up something special. To me, the Burgess Shale is a grand tale in every way imaginable, and we are incredibly proud to be part of this new chapter and to keep the story alive and thriving in everyone's imagination." -- Dr. Robert Gaines
Geologist, Pomona College

"The Burgess Shale is a tremendously rich resource important to our understanding of the development of life on this planet. Parks Canada is immensely proud to provide access to the fossils for cutting edge research such as this, for our award-winning guided hikes, and to protect forever these fossils in a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site." -- Melanie Kwong
Parks Canada's Superintendent responsible for the Burgess Shale

Journal Article

Nature Communications: A New 'Phyllopod Bed'-Like Assemblage from the Burgess Shale, Canadian Rockies
DOI # is 10.1038/ncomms4210 http://www.nature.com/search/adv_search?sp-q-1=ncomms

Contacts:

Dr. Jean-Bernard Caron (bilingual – English-French)
Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology, Royal Ontario Museum
and Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto
416 586 5593; jcaron@rom.on.ca

Dr. Robert Gaines
Associate Professor of Geology, Pomona College
Office: 909 621 8674, Cell: 909 451 3073; robert.gaines@pomona.edu

Dr. Michael Streng
Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University
+46 70-9622588 or +46 18-4712579; michael.streng@geo.uu.se

David McKay
Communications Coordinator
Royal Ontario Museum
416 586 5559; davidm@rom.on.ca

Jennifer Thoma
Media Relations Specialist
University of Saskatchewan
306-966-1851; jennifer.thoma@usask.ca

Omar McDadi (bilingual – English-French)
Public Relations and Communications Officer
Yoho and Kootenay national parks
403-760-1090; omar.mcdadi@pc.gc.ca

Christine Elias
Communications
Faculty of Arts & Science
University of Toronto
416.946.5499; christine.elias@utoronto.ca

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Minority political candidates just need a chance

2014-02-11

EAST LANSING, Mich. — It's not necessarily voters who should be blamed for the lack of minorities in state legislatures, but instead the two major political parties for not recruiting enough candidates, indicates new research by a Michigan State University scholar. Eric Gonzalez Juenke analyzed nearly 10,000 statehouse elections in 2000 and 2010 and found Latino candidates were on the ballot just 5 percent of the time. But when Latinos did run for office, they won just as often as their white counterparts – even in districts where most voters were white. Juenke's other ...

Biodiversity in production forests can be improved without large costs

2014-02-11

Forest management is based on recommendations that are supposed to maximize economic revenues. However, in 40% of cases a better economic result would be achieved by neglecting some of the recommendations. This would also greatly benefit biodiversity. These results were obtained by a research group lead by Professor Mikko Mönkkönen at the University Jyväskylä. The group studied a production forest landscape encompassing 68 square kilometers of land and more than 30,000 forest stands in Central Finland. The research project aimed at revealing the potential of a forest ...

Even moderate weight loss can prevent and cure obstructive sleep apnoea

2014-02-11

Even a moderate weight reduction can prevent the progression of obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), and even cure it, according to a 4-year Finish follow-up study published recently in Sleep Medicine. The study focused on the effects of weight loss on OSA and demonstrated, for the first time, that a sustained weight loss of just 5% was enough to prevent the disease from worsening and even cure it in a long-term follow-up. Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) has become a major burden for our health care systems over the last years. Although it is one of the most increasingly prevalent ...

Photo + fragrance of chocolate cake = more chocolate cakes sold

2014-02-11

Fashion magazines come pre-loaded with scratch-and-sniff panels for perfume and aftershave, but what about advertisements for foods like chocolate chip cookies and fresh-baked bread? According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, when food advertisements combine a photo of food with an "imagined odor," consumers both salivate more for the item and then consume it in larger quantities. "We wondered whether both real and imagined food smells would enhance consumer desire for that product. Does the concept of smelling food make people salivate more and increase ...

Revolutionary new view on heritability in plants

2014-02-11

Complex heritable traits are not only determined by changes in the DNA sequence. Scientists from the University of Groningen Bioinformatics Centre, together with their French colleagues, have shown that epigenetic marks can affect traits such as flowering time and architecture in plants. Furthermore, these marks are passed on for many generations in a stable manner. Their results were published in Science Express on Thursday, 6 February 2014. It seems that a revision of Genetics textbooks is now in order. We've all been taught that DNA is the physical foundation of heredity. ...

How to make the wonder material graphene superconducting

2014-02-11

This news release is available in German. Whenever a new material is discovered, scientists are eager to find out whether or not it can be superconducting. This applies particularly to the wonder material graphene. Now, an international team around researchers at the University of Vienna unveiled the superconducting pairing mechanism in Calcium doped graphene using the ARPES method. Their results are published in the reputed journal Nature Communications. Superconducting materials exhibit an invaluable feature when cooled below a critical temperature – they allow ...

Acidic tumor pH inhibits drug effect

2014-02-11

Low pH in tumours counteracts the desired effect of the drug chloroquine, according to a new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The results, which are published in the journal Autophagy, might explain possible lack of efficacy of chloroquine in clinical studies. Chloroquine, a widely used antimalaria drug, is currently under investigation in clinical trials on cancer patients. It is the ability of chloroquine to inhibit autophagy in tumour cells that has piqued researchers' interest. Autophagy is a homeostatic process by which cells eat parts of themselves, ...

Recent decades likely wettest in 4 millennia in Tibet

2014-02-11

Recent decades may have been the wettest in 3,500 years in North East Tibet – according to climate researchers at the University of East Anglia (UK) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Lanzhou, China). Researchers looked at 3,500-year-long tree ring records from North East Tibet to estimate annual precipitation. They found that recent decades have likely been the wettest on record in this semi-arid region. The precipitation records have been reconstructed using sub-fossil, archaeological and living juniper tree samples from the north-eastern Tibetan Plateau. They reveal ...

Walking in their shoes: How fundraisers can boost donations

2014-02-11

When natural disaster strikes, calls for help are broadcast on television and across the Internet. Despite being exposed to the needs of widespread relief organizations, only a small percentage of us actually follow through by making a financial contribution. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, the more connected we feel with the people needing our help, the more likely we are to donate. "Our thought is that people who act more independently might not necessarily be more benevolent than people who are more connected to others within their own ...

Helical electron and nuclear spin order in quantum wires

2014-02-11

Physicists at the University of Basel have observed a spontaneous magnetic order of electron and nuclear spins in a quantum wire at temperatures of 0.1 kelvin. In the past, this was possible only at much lower temperatures, typically in the microkelvin range. The coupling of nuclei and electrons creates a new state of matter whereby a nuclear spin order arises at a much higher temperature. The results are consistent with a theoretical model developed in Basel a few years ago, as reported by the researchers in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters. The researchers, ...

Researchers discover 'epic' new Burgess Shale site in Canada's Kootenay National Park

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: