How to classify this trove has been a contentious question. Walcott conservatively tried to place the creatures into groups that were known from other fossils, or living descendants. But decades later, when the Cambridge geologist Harry Whittington and his colleagues took another look, they realized that the Burgess Shale contained not just unique species, but entire phyla (the broadest classification of animals) new to science. The first European to see a kangaroo could not have been more surprised.

posted 3822 days ago