The Burgess Shale Faunal Complex  

Beginning in 1975 with a season of talus picking below the Walcott and Raymond quarries on Fossil Ridge, field parties from the Royal Ontario Museum devoted 5 seasons of reconnaissance and 12 seasons of excavation to the discovery and collection of the Burgess Shale faunal complex on Fossil Ridge and Mount Stephen.  Further fossil localities were examined on Mount Odaray and Mount Bosworth in Yoho National Park, and near Stanley Glacier and in Monarch Cirque in Kootenay National Park, 60 km to the southeast. 

By 2000, two new faunas low in the formation (Collins quarry; S7) had been discovered on Mount Stephen, to add to the Trilobite Beds there; one new fauna (Collins UE/EZ quarry) had also been found above the other two quarries on Fossil Ridge.  The Raymond Quarry was greatly enlarged, yielding new species, and another 5 metres of fossil-bearing shale was excavated below the Walcott/Geological Survey of Canada Quarry.  During these excursions, the stratigraphy was also mapped – leading to the formal description of the Burgess Shale Formation and its ten constituent members in the basin, and differentiating it from the Stephen Formation up on the Cathedral platform.  The positions of the various faunas in the formation were then established on both sides of the Kicking Horse Valley. 

This work has furthered our understanding of both the complex structure and biological diversity of the Burgess Shale Formation.