A "motherload" of fossils was found near the famous Yoho National Park's Burgess Shale in British Columbia, which boasts its own breadth of ancient artifacts.
The new site in Kootenay National Park contains 505-million-year-old Burgess Shale that could hold even more secrets of the past than its neighbor, a University of Toronto news release reported.
"This new discovery is an epic sequel to a research story that began at the turn of the previous century, and there is no doubt in my mind that this new material will significantly increase our understanding of early animal evolution. The rate at which we are finding animals - many of which are new - is astonishing, and there is a high possibility that we'll eventually find more species here than at the original Yoho National Park site, and potentially more than from anywhere else in the world," Doctor Jean-Bernard Caron Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and the study's lead author said in the news release.
"We are very excited to go back to the field this summer, during the ROM's Centennial year, with one of our main goals being to increase the number of new species discovered," Caron said.
Over the past century over 200 species have been found at the original Burgess Shale site but in only 15 days of field work 50 animal species have been discovered at the Kootenay National Park site.
"We were already aware of the presence of some Burgess Shale fossils in Kootenay National Park. We had a hunch that if we followed the formation along the mountain topography into new areas with the right rock types, maybe, just maybe, we would get lucky - though we never in our wildest dreams thought we'd track down a motherload like this," Doctor Robert Gaines, a Geologist at Pomona College said in the news release.
"It didn't take us very long at all to realize that we had dug up something special. To me, the Burgess Shale is a grand tale in every way imaginable, and we are incredibly proud to be part of this new chapter and to keep the story alive and thriving in everyone's imagination," he said.
The team found some species found at Kootenay are also present in the Chinese Chengjiang fossil beds which are about 10 million years older.
"The Burgess Shale is a tremendously rich resource important to our understanding of the development of life on this planet. Parks Canada is immensely proud to provide access to the fossils for cutting edge research such as this, for our award-winning guided hikes, and to protect forever these fossils in a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site," Melanie Kwong Parks Canada's Superintendent responsible for the Burgess Shale said in the news release.
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