If you are booked to come on one of our hikes or are just interested in the Burgess Shale, here are some great Burgess Shale books to help you learn more.
The Burgess Shale Primer (the field trip companion volume) – This free publication goes over the history, geology and research highlights of the Burgess Shale. It’s well worth the read. However, you may wish to skip this one if you do not have a geology background. This resource is edited by two of the primary Burgess Shale researchers. It was published in 2009 for the International Conference on the Cambrian Explosion (ICCE – Banff, August 3-8th, 2009). This conference marked the centennial discovery of the Burgess Shale.
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale And The Nature Of History – This book by Stephen Jay Gould is the most famous of the Burgess Shale books presented in this post. Gould describes how the Burgess Shale fauna was discovered, reassembled, and analyzed in detail so clear that the reader actually gets some feeling for what paleo-biologists do, in the field and in the lab. The many line drawings are unusually beautiful. This is a great place to start if you are new to the Burgess Shale and the Cambrian Explosion. However, this is an old publication and some of the ideas are outdated.
Fossils Of Burgess Shale – This reference provides good quality black and white photographs and illustrations of the Burgess Shale fauna. It is an excellent resource, albeit, a little hard to get a copy of. It had a limited original print run, and has been out of print for many years.
The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Diversity – This is a highly informative book. However, it is geared towards a reader with a background in biology and paleontology, or a very avid reader on these subjects. It is probably the most comprehensive book on the subject of the Cambrian Explosion. It was published in 2013, so it is relatively recent compared with some of the other titles on this list. If you don’t have a background in evolutionary developmental biology, we recommend that you start by reading Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.
Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body. This book does not deal directly with the Burgess Shale or the Cambrian explosion. What is does do, is explain how paleontology and evolutionary developmental biology (informally, Evo Devo) work together. Much of our understanding of evolution comes both from the fossil record and Evo Devo. This is a popular science book written for a general audience. The author, Neil Shubin, does an excellent job of explaining hard to conceptualize scientific concepts. You may have noticed that the copy of the book used for the picture is well used. I have read this book three times, and it comes with a high recommendation.