A Geoscience Guide to the Burgess Shale

Murray Coppold and Wayne Powell

Read May 2007

This is a handy, beautifully illustrated, booklet about the Burgess Shale. It briefly covers how the Canadian Rockies came to be, what the Cambrian must have been like, the history of the discovery of the shale, and other sundry topics. The highlight is a section on identifying trilobite fossils, including brief accounts of their misidentifications. The book ends rather strangely with a section on climate change; as I read it I couldn't see why it was there; then it made some sense; and then it again ceased to make sense. Seting that aside, though, it's an light, handy, excellent companion if you should ever be fortunate to take the gruelling trek to see the Burgess Shale (or any similar, and perhaps less arduous, Cambrian site).