In 2011, Emily Taylor, a hiker on one of our tours discovered a rare fossil of an organism now described as Ovatiovermis cribratus. There are only two known specimens of Oviatiovermis making it one of the rarest of the Burgess Shale species.
Every year our clients find fossil at the Walcott Quarry and Mount Stephen Trilobite beds that are unknown to us, or are rare. We keep these specimens secure until Jean Bernard Caron, a paleontologist who specializes in Cambrian fossils, can have a look at them.
Jean Bernard Caron had just submitted an academic paper describing Ovatiovermis based on a single known specimen. To his surprise when he arrived in Field he discovered that we had found a second specimen of the organism. He quickly retracted his paper before it was published so that he could update his description of the organism based on the new find.
If anybody knows the Emily Taylor who found this fossil in 2011 please get in touch with us.
Click here to read the Calgary Herald’s article about the find.
Caron, JB., Aria, C. Cambrian suspension-feeding lobopodians and the early radiation of panarthropods. BMC Evol Biol 17, 29 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0858-y