Latest news with #BurgessShale
CTV News
18-07-2025
- CTV News
Parks Canada stops hiking permits to Yoho peak after fossil thefts
Parks Canada will not be giving out the permits which previously allowed hikers to summit Mount Stephen, after repeated thefts from the Burgess Shale UNESCO World Heritage site. More fossils thefts from a UNESCO World Heritage site west of Calgary have prompted Parks Canada to end hiking permits to a revered peak in British Colombia's Yoho National Park. 'That's a new change we've implemented this year. We just felt it was important to protect this irreplaceable resource,' said Paul Friesen, who's the park warden for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay Field. Parks Canada will not be giving out the permits which previously allowed hikers to summit Mount Stephen, after repeated thefts from the area including two hikers who stole fossils last year from the Burgess Shale UNESCO World Heritage site — renown for its vast deposits of ancient, well-preserved soft organisms. On August 6, 2024, two American men hiking Mount Stephen without scrambling permits went into the protected area monitored by surveillance cameras and took fossils. 'We were alerted to their presence and were able to apprehend them and when we did, we found they had removed six Burgess Shale fossils,' said Friesen. He said the men were charged in August and this year they were convicted and each fined $4,750. They got the fossils back, too. 'We have a way of repatriating those fossils and putting them back on the landscape where they were removed from,' he added. Burgess Shale fossils, July 17, 2025 Parks Canada and the GeoScience Burgess Shale Foundation are still offering guided hikes of the protected trilobite bed (CTV Calgary) Disappointing Parks Canada and the GeoScience Burgess Shale Foundation are still offering guided hikes of the protected trilobite bed but the inability to summit the mountain is disappointing to some people in the scrambling community. Mount Stephen is listed in Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies by Alan Kane, a guidebook so well-known some local hikers nickname it 'the Bible'. Doug Robson of Calgary dreams of reaching 180 popular peaks, and Stephen is one of them. 'I was going to do it last year and got a permit to do it but wasn't feeling well that day,' he said. 'It's a goal that I would get it done,' Robson said, adding that 'there's other people that would like to do it too.' Unfortunate He said it's unfortunate that people who already weren't following the rules by getting permits played a part in ruining it for others. But that case is only the most recent one of fossils being illegally removed from the area. 'People were consistently getting permits to scramble Mt. Stephen and some of them were entering the closed area and some of them were illegally removing fossils,' Friesen said. Stolen fossils In 2022, Parks Canada recovered 45 fossils illegally removed from the Burgess Shale in Kootenay National Park in 2020. The Montreal man responsible faced a $20,000 fine. (CTV Calgary) In 2022, Parks Canada recovered 45 fossils illegally removed from the Burgess Shale in Kootenay National Park in 2020. The Montreal man responsible faced a $20,000 fine. 'There are people who would collect these fossils in order to sell them. There would be a value on the black market for these fossils, just like anything that's rare,' said Friesen. In other cases, he said people are just so impressed with the site they feel compelled to take a souvenir. Immense damage Researchers say the damage of can be immense. Some of the 500 million year-old fossils from the area have uncovered previously-unknown species. 'We're looking at these incredibly old fossils that aren't preserved in very many places and also the quality of preservation in the Burgess Shale really is unparalleled,' said University of Calgary science professor Ann Quinney. 'They are much, much older than the first dinosaurs. If we want to understand where we come from, we need to protect this resource,' she added. Burgess Shale, July 17, 2025 Doug Robson of Calgary dreams of reaching 180 popular peaks, and Mt. Stephen is one of them. (CTV Calgary) Surveillance Surveillance cameras monitor 12 Burgess Shale sites in the Yoho and Kootneay National Parks. Robson said along with the cameras, Parks Canada also has personal information registered by anyone who applied for scramble permits. 'I don't think it's people like myself who are playing in the mountains who do this (remove fossils),' he said. 'They're about protecting the environment not taking from the environment.' 'I'd like to have a conversation about it, rather than just shut it down.' He wishes there could be discussion about how to preserve the environment and still allow some scramblers to summit. Parks Canada said it tried to strike a balance with its decision. 'We're doing this for all the right reasons. We're not stopping people from hiking in other areas so I would hope people understand why we're making this decision.' said Friesen.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Bizarre Three-Eyed Predator Hunted The Ocean Half a Billion Years Ago
A predator that swam Earth's oceans more than half a billion years ago is unlike any creature that lives on our planet today. Mosura fentoni possessed three eyes, grasped its prey with spiny claws, ate with a circular, tooth-lined maw, swam with the aid of flippers that lined either side of its body, and had 26 body segments – more than any other radiodont, the extinct group of animals to which it belonged. Luckily, it would only have been about as long as your finger – most things back then were pretty small. But its segmented tail end has fascinated paleontologists Joe Moysiuk of the Manitoba Museum and Jean-Bernard Caron of the Royal Ontario Museum, who characterized the strange beastie from its fossilized remains in the famous Burgess Shale. They named Mosura for its resemblance to a moth, even though the relationship is distant and tenuous. "Mosura has 16 tightly packed segments lined with gills at the rear end of its body," Moysiuk explains. "This is a neat example of evolutionary convergence with modern groups, like horseshoe crabs, woodlice, and insects, which share a batch of segments bearing respiratory organs at the rear of the body." The oceans of Earth's Cambrian period, between around 539 and 487 million years ago, were a different place than our planet today. That was when life really took off, and the ocean started to thrive. We don't have many records of that time, but the Burgess Shale is, really, if we're being completely frank, a marvel of fossil preservation. It formed around 508 million years ago, when silty mud flowed across the seafloor, trapping and preserving a large number of organisms as it went. That mud became a fossil bed known as a Lagerstätte, so exceptional that fine details, soft tissue, and even internal structures were captured in the sediment. It revealed a rich ecosystem filled with mysterious creatures so bizarre that we've often been left baffled and wrong about their anatomy. In this environment lived the radiodonts, a group of animals that shared a common ancestor with arthropods, but has since gone extinct. This group includes the famous Anomalocaris, a fearsome beast that could have grown up to a meter long. That might not seem very large to us, but back then, when most things were small, it was a giant. Mosura was not a giant, but it was one-of-a-kind, at least as far as we know. Moysiuk and Caron studied 61 fossilized individuals of the species, and characterized it in detail. "Very few fossil sites in the world offer this level of insight into soft internal anatomy," Caron says. "We can see traces representing bundles of nerves in the eyes that would have been involved in image processing, just like in living arthropods. The details are astounding." Of particular interest was the animal's circulatory system. It did not involve veins, as the circulatory systems of vertebrates do, but was instead open, like the circulation of modern arthropods. In crabs, spiders, insects, and other arthropods, the heart simply pumps blood (or hemolymph) into cavities in their bodies, where it swirls around their organs to perform its function. In Mosura, these cavities are called lacunae. They filled the creature's body, and extended into the swimming flaps that extended from each segment, visible as reflective patches in the fossils. "The well-preserved lacunae of the circulatory system in Mosura help us to interpret similar, but less clear features that we've seen before in other fossils. Their identity has been controversial," Moysiuk says. "It turns out that preservation of these structures is widespread, confirming the ancient origin of this type of circulatory system." As for its strange, powerful respiratory system at the rear end of its body, its specialized structure suggests Mosura may have had unique needs. Perhaps its habitat was different from that of other radiodonts, or maybe its hunting methods required enhanced respiratory functions. This is one of those questions that is impossible to answer without more information. However, Mosura is a beautiful example of the strategies life adopts to thrive according to circumstance. "Radiodonts were the first group of arthropods to branch out in the evolutionary tree, so they provide key insight into ancestral traits for the entire group," Caron says. "The new species emphasizes that these early arthropods were already surprisingly diverse and were adapting in a comparable way to their distant modern relatives." The research has been published in Royal Society Open Science. Earth's Rotation Is Slowing Down, And It Might Explain Why We Have Oxygen New Jersey Hawk Develops Clever Hunting Strategy Using Traffic Signals Your Sensitive Teeth May Exist So Ancient Fish Could Avoid Danger
The Independent
20-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Three-eyed ancient predator ‘unlike any living animal' discovered
Scientists examining a rare fossil found in Canada's Burgess Shale have discovered a predator with three eyes that lived over 500 million years ago. The fossil species, named Mosura fentoni for resembling the fictional Japanese kaiju Mothra, was about the size of an index finger with three eyes, spiny jointed claws, a circular mouth lined with teeth, and a body with swimming flaps along its sides, researchers from the Royal Ontario Museum said. Mosura fentoni, also dubbed 'sea moth' due to its broad swimming flaps and narrow abdomen, was a member of an extinct group of animals called radiodonts, which included the meter-long marine predator Anomalocaris canadensis. It was, researchers said, 'unlike any living animal '. Mosura had a unique abdomen-like body region with multiple segments at its back end, according to a new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. 'This is a neat example of evolutionary convergence with modern groups like horseshoe crabs, woodlice, and insects, which share a batch of segments bearing respiratory organs at the rear of the body," study co-author Joe Moysiuk said. Scientists said it was not clear why Mosura had this unique body adaptation but suspected it could be related to a particular habitat preference requiring more efficient respiration. It was distantly related to modern moths and belonged to a deeper branch of arthropods including spiders, crabs and millipedes. "Radiodonts were the first group of arthropods to branch out in the evolutionary tree, so they provide key insight into ancestral traits for the entire group,' Jean-Bernard Caron, another author of the study, said. 'The new species emphasises these early arthropods were already surprisingly diverse and were adapting in a comparable way to their distant modern relatives.' Mosura did not have arteries and veins, but an "open" circulatory system that involved the heart pumping blood into large internal body cavities called lacunae. "The well-preserved lacunae of the circulatory system in Mosura help us to interpret similar, but less clear features that we've seen before in other fossils,' Dr Moysiuk said. The Burgess Shale fossil grounds in Canada 's Yoho and Kootenay National Parks are recognised as Unesco World Heritage Sites. 'Very few fossil sites in the world offer this level of insight into soft internal anatomy. We can see traces representing bundles of nerves in the eyes that would have been involved in image processing, just like in living arthropods,' Dr Caron said, adding that the 'details are astounding'.
BBC News
20-05-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Mosura fentoni: Scientists discover ancient sea predator that breathed through its bottom
Experts in Canada have discovered fossils of a 500-million-year-old predator that lived in the only that, it also possessed some rather, err, unusual had three eyes, spiny claws and scientists think it breathed through its... bottom!The discovery was made on the Burgess Shale - an important rock formation and fossil hotspot found in Canada's Rocky Mountains. What did scientists discover? Palaeontologists at the Manitoba Museum and Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) made the discovery, which was published in the Royal Society Open Science new find has been named Mosura fentoni and was about the size of an adult's index finger (around 8cm long). According to researchers, it had three eyes, spiny claws, a circular mouth lined with teeth and a body with swimming flaps along its say these features show it to be part of an extinct group of sea predators known as the it also had a feature not seen before - an abdomen-like body region made up of multiple segments at its back Moysiuk, Curator of Palaeontology and Geology at the Manitoba Museum, who led the study explained: "Mosura has 16 tightly packed segments lined with gills at the rear end of its body."He added that having respiratory organs at the back end of the body is similar to that found in modern radiodont relatives such as horseshoe crabs, woodlice and insects. Although it's not known exactly why this was the case, scientists think it could have allowed it to capture more oxygen from its environment, or to survive in lower-oxygen environments.
CTV News
15-05-2025
- Science
- CTV News
Manitoba Museum paleontologist helps in discovery of 506-million-year-old predator
Paleontologists with the Manitoba Museum and Royal Ontario Museum have made a remarkable discovery – an extinct, moth-like predator that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. On Wednesday, the museums announced the discovery of the Mosura fentoni, which lived in the Burgess Shale in British Columbia 506 million years ago. The ancient predator was about the size of your index finger and had three eyes, spiny jointed claws, a circular mouth lined with teeth, and swimming flaps along its sides. According to a news release, these traits show it was a part of an extinct group of arthropods called 'radiodonts.' The museums explain that unlike other radiodonts, the Mosura fentoni had an 'abdomen-like body region made up of multiple segments at its back end.' The reason for this adaptation remains unknown, but researchers believe it may be related to habitat preference or behavioural characteristics. Researchers say the Mosura fentoni is an important discovery as it provides insights into the ancestral traits and internal anatomy of arthropods. A specimen will be exhibited at the Manitoba Museum later this year.
