High in the Canadian Rockies above Field, British Columbia, a mudslide buried a Cambrian seafloor so fast and so finely that it preserved gills, guts and eyes. What came out rewrote the understanding of the Cambrian explosion: Opabinia with five eyes, Hallucigenia on stilts, Anomalocaris the metre-long predator. LOOK ONLY, UNESCO World Heritage, and the quarries can be reached only on a guided hike that is a serious full-day climb.
Soft-bodied Cambrian animals · Cambrian, ~508 mya
This ground is protected. Photograph it, record it, leave it where it lies. On US federal land the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act 2009 makes collecting vertebrate fossils an offence, and penalties are real.
British Columbia
See it on the map
