55 – Making Space for Fossils

In this episode, we travel to the Burgess Shale: a set of incredible fossil beds in Yoho National Park, preserving 500-million-year-old soft-bodied sea creatures. Today, it is part of a huge World Heritage Site: it has expanded to encompass all of Yoho National Park here in BC, Jasper and Banff, Kootenay, and three BC provincial parks. But back in 1980, the Burgess Shale sites at the Mount Stephen Trilobite Beds and the Walcott Quarry became the first little nucleus of that World Heritage site.

We find out how these fossil sites ended up on that list, what kind of information and evidence and argument were used to lobby for a spot, how it changed this space, and what it all means.

This episode is a recording of a short talk Chris gave on March 25, 2022, called Making Space for Fossils: How the Burgess Shale Claimed a Spot on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The presentation was part of the History, Classics, and Religion Graduate Students Association’s annual conference. This year’s theme was Recovery: Promises and Pitfalls.