The Burgess Shale and associated Cambrian formations west of the Fossil Gully Fault Zone on Mount Stephen, British Columbia

Autor: Terence P. Fletcher, Desmond Collins
Rok vydání: 2003
Předmět:
Zdroj: Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. 40:1823-1838
ISSN: 1480-3313
0008-4077
DOI: 10.1139/e03-057
Popis: West of the Fossil Gully Fault Zone on Mount Stephen, the three lowest members only of the Burgess Shale Formation are preserved: the Kicking Horse Shale, the Yoho River Limestone, and the Campsite Cliff Shale. The formation rests unconformably upon the Takakkaw Tongue Formation, whose dark basinal limestones conformably overlie paler shelf-like limestones of the Mount Whyte Formation. Mapping has resolved a long-standing problem and shown that the stratigraphical position of the famous Mount Stephen Trilobite Beds lies within the Campsite Cliff Shale. It has also revealed some of the complexities of the Fossil Gully Fault Zone, among which different periods and directions of component fault movements are indicated. Faunal evidence shows that the Plagiura–Kochaspis to Albertella and Albertella to Glossopleura zonal boundaries lie within the Takakkaw Tongue sequence. Within the Burgess Shale, three distinct soft-bodied communities occur at different stratigraphical levels on this mountain slope. The oldest, characterized by the arthropod Alalcomenaeus and chelicerate Sanctacaris, occurs low in the Kicking Horse Shale Member and is best known from Collins Quarry. The others lie within the Campsite Cliff Shale Member. The Trilobite Beds, characterized by claws of the dinocarid Anomalocaris and moults of the trilobite Ogygopsis klotzi, onlap the sloping top of a proximal bench facies of the Yoho River Limestone Member close to the Cathedral Escarpment. Slightly older and farther out in the basin are beds characterized by the dinocarid Laggania and a tulip-like animal related to Dinomischus, excavated about 12 m above the top of a thin distal wedge facies of the Yoho River Limestone at the S7 site. Among the illustrated trilobites, a new corynexochine from the Campsite Cliff Shale Member is figured.
Databáze: OpenAIRE