The Burgess Shale paleocommunity with new insights from Marble Canyon, British Columbia

The middle (Wuliuan Stage) Cambrian Burgess Shale is famous for its exceptional preservation of diverse and abundant soft-bodied animals through the “thick” Stephen Formation. However, with the exception of the Walcott Quarry (Fossil Ridge) and the stratigraphically older Tulip Beds (Mount Stephen) which are both in Yoho National Park (British Columbia), quantitative assessments of the Burgess Shale have remained limited. Here we first provide a detailed quantitative overview of the diversity and structure of the Marble Canyon Burgess Shale locality based on 16,438 specimens. Located 40 km southeast of the Walcott Quarry in Kootenay National Park (British Columbia), Marble Canyon represents the youngest site of the “thick” Stephen Formation. We then combine paleoecological datasets from Marble Canyon, Walcott Quarry, Tulip Beds and for the first time, the Raymond Quarry, which lies ca. 20 m directly above the Walcott Quarry, to yield a combined species abundance dataset of 77,179 specim...