Waptia fieldensis
Walcott, 1912
Middle Cambrian
Burgess Shale
British Columbia, Canada

Waptia is an extinct genus of arthropod that is shrimp-like in form but it is different enough that it hasn’t been classified within any family of crustacean nor any family of arthropods for that matter – another unsolved mystery of the Burgess Shale over 100 years after its discovery. It does appear to be at least related to the ancestors of crustaceans.

Marrella is a small scavenger living on the seabed, typical of the reinterpretation of the old collections of Walcott. Originaly classified among trilobites, Whittington helped to demonstrate that it was neither a trilobite, nor a chelicerate, nor a crustacean, and that the soft-bodied Burgess fauna was more complex and diverse than had previously been anticipated. We can see the different appendages and antennae coming from the specific head shield.

60mm Waptia and two 17mm Marrellas on 85mm slab.

Acquisition: 2021-12-12

Burgess Shale

Discovered in 1911 by Charles Walcott, the fossils site of Burgess contains the remains of a marine biotope, composed of several species, of various forms and sizes. It is famous for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of its fossils, which allowed for a detailed study of anatomy of worms, arthropods and other misunderstood forms at the time.

Early 1970, 3 british paleontologists, Harry Whittington, Derek Briggs and Simon Conway Morris began a thorough reassessment of the Burgess Shale. They realised that the fauna was much more complex and unusual than formerly described. Thus was discovered the Cambrian explosion phenomenon, popularized by Stephen Jay Gould's "Wonderful Life" book.

Before this bloom of diversity of body plans, most of living organisms were composed of individual cells living in colony. Cambrian sees the sudden appearance of all modern animal phyla, including our own one, almost simultaneously in a rather short span of geological period.

Today the Burgess shale is a UNESCO World Heritage site and no collection is allowed on-site. However, prior to the Royal Ontario Museum rediscovering Walcott's collection in 1966, there was a period of over 50 years when Canadian researchers didn't have any interest in the site. During that time, it was an interesting curiosity that was open to collecting and a wide variety of teachers, collectors, hobbyists and the like visited the site and collected specimens.

The fossils presented on this website are coming from these existing private collections of Burgess Shale material, especially from a collection of Lowell Laudon, as well as from specimens sent by Walcott himself to other geologists.