had a rounded head with a pair of tentacles and
a four-ganglion brain,
a flexible body with rounded fins on the sides,
and a paddle-shaped tail.
Anomalocaris, meaning “abnormal
shrimp,” was a large arthropod
with compound eyes on two stalks with thirty thousand
lenses.
Canadaspis had claws on its front appendages
and spines on its head to protect its eyes.
It had numerous legs with gill flaps under them.
Its body was protected by hinged clamshells;
the end of its thick segmented tail had spines.
Canadia, a spiny polychaete annelid worm,
looked like a long feathery slug with a pair of tentacles
or parapodia
and it had a gut that it could extend out as a feeding
proboscis.
Choia was a demosponge like the barrel sponge
with a flattened conical body stiffened with long spines.
Hallucigenia, was an odd kind of wormy creature
with seven pincer-tipped tentacles lined up on
one side
and seven pairs of jointed spines on the other,
but with no obvious head or means of locomotion.
Haplophrentis was a small conical shelled
creature
with a small shell closing the big end
and leaving two gaps on each side
from which protruded fleshy curved arms.
Leanchoilia had two front arms ending in
whip-like feelers.
Its body was protected by a segmented shell like a pill
bug.
Marrella is a small animal whose head shield
had two pairs of curved rearward blades
protecting its body from above.
Under its head were two pairs of antennae,
one long and sweeping back,
the second shorter and stouter.
Its body had two dozen segments,
each with a pair of branched appendages,
the lower branches being legs
and the upper branches feathery gills.
Odontogriphus, meaning “toothed
riddle,” was like a tongue
with a circular mouth on its underside having rows of
teeth.
Opabinia had five eyes, a tubular feeding
proboscis
a fifteen-segmented body with side lobes, and a fan-shaped
tail.
Ottoia was a predatory carnivorous priapulid
worm.
Its eversible spiney proboscis protruded from its U-shaped
burrow.
Peytoia, also called Laggania, swam like a
cuttlefish
and had two mouth appendages with long bristle-like spines.
Perspicaris had two large eyes and a forked
tail;
the two sides of its thorax were hinged at the top.
Pikaia was a swimming eel-like finned-tail
creature
with pair of tentacles and gill slits on either side of its
head.
Thaumaptilon, meaning “wonderful soft
feather,”
was a leaf-shaped animal attached to the sea floor.
Trilobite was a common three-lobed arthopod,
with a cephalon or head shield,
a thorax with seven jointed segments,
and a semicircular pygium rump.
Wolcott found the basic Olenoides serratus
and two-lobed Naraoia compacta, which lacks a pygium.
Wiwaxia was a small oval animal sheathed
in small hard overlapping plates or scales
and protected by short ribbed spines or bristles.
Yohoia had a head shield and thirteen body
plates
followed by a paddle-like tail. Under its head
were two long arms, each ending in four spines
like little fingers,
and three pairs of appendages that probably
served as legs,
and under its body plates were single flaps with fringes.
Interpretation
Interpreting the fossils of the Burgess Shale
has continued.
Were they evidence of a Cambrian explosion,
the sudden appearance of multi-celled animals,
defying Darwin and the orderly progress of evolution?
Were they relatives of animals living today,
such as branchiopods, crustaceans, echinoderms, and
molluscs?
Was Amiskwia an arrow worm, a ribbon worm, a
mollusc,
or an animal with no affinity to any living or extinct
animal?
Were the mouth, feeding appendages, and tail of
Anomalocaris,
discovered at first separately, separate creatures?
Was Canadaspis a crustacean or an euarthropod?
Did the spines of Choia radiate up and out for
protection
or were they laid out flat like the guy wires of a tent?
Did Hallucigenia walk upon its spines,
or did it slither in the mud on its belly?
Was Haplophrentis a swimmer or a bottom feeder?
Did Leanchoilia have two stalked compound eyes
and two simple eyes,
or did it have no eyes at all?
Marrella was a primitive arthropod, but was it
an early crustacean, scorpion, or trilobite?
Was Odontogriphus the tongue of another
creature?
Was it an early mollusc, brachiopod, or worm?
Were Opabinia’s gills set on top of its
lobes
or on special blades attached to the underside of its
lobes?
Was Ottoia a hunter, or did it wait for prey
from its burrow?
Walcott mistook Peytoia’s mouth for a
jellyfish.
Its feeding appendage and body were later found to be
attached.
Wolcott categorized Pikaia as a polychaete worm
but others see it as a chordate or primitive vertebrate.
Were Thaumaptilon sea pens, or colonial animals
like corals?
Thousands of spots on one of its sides could be separate
creatures.
Edward Lhwyd described a trilobite in 1698 as
the skeleton of a flat fish.
Charles Lyttleton in 1749 described it as a petrified
insect.
Manuel Mendez da Costa in 1754 said it was a marine louse.
The Utes of North America called them little water bugs
and wore them as amulets to ward off disease.
Was Wiwaxia a polychaete, an annelid worm,
or a primitive mullusc?
To me, it looks like a simple sea urchin.
Yohoia was shaped like a mantis shrimp
but is thought to be an early horse-shoe crab or trilobite.
The tree of life on Earth is big and messy, suggesting it
would not be improbable to find life on other planets.
The strangeness of the animals discovered in the Burgess
Shale strained the efforts of many including Wolcott to force them
into existing phyla. Today, scientists are more likely to create
new phyla to accommodate these creatures. Many of these animals
are arthropods, that is, invertebrates with exoskeletons.
The tree of life on Earth is big and messy, suggesting it would not be improbable to find life on other planets.
The strangeness of the animals discovered in the Burgess Shale strained the efforts of many including Wolcott to force them into existing phyla. Today, scientists are more likely to create new phyla to accommodate these creatures. Many of these animals are arthropods, that is, invertebrates with exoskeletons.
See also in The book of science:
Readings on wikipedia:
Museum sites also describe numerous species found in Burgess Shale: