On 30 August 1909, according to tradition, Charles Doolittle Walcott, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, found fossils of a strange shrimp-like animal in a loose slab of dark shale on a ridge between Mount Field and Wapta Mountain in the Canadian Rockies in British Columbia. Returning in 1910 and later he collected some 65,000 specimens from a layer 508 million years old. The Burgess Shale preserves the soft parts of Cambrian animals, such as Opabinia, with five eyes, and the predator Anomalocaris, in extraordinary detail. They made the Cambrian explosion known and were re-examined in the 1970s, as celebrated in Stephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life.
Before and after
- 2 January 1909Origins of Elfstedentocht
- 10 February 1909Founding of Suzuki Motor Corporation
- 22 April 1909Birth of Rita Levi-Montalcini
- 15 June 1909Founding of International Cricket Council
- 30 August 1909Charles Walcott discovers the Burgess Shale
- 7 September 1909Founding of Real Sociedad
- 21 September 1909Birth of Kwame Nkrumah
- 3 October 1909Founding of Bologna F.C. 1909
- 26 November 1909Birth of Eugène Ionesco
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- from 11 February 1896 to 20 February 1897Gojong's internal exile to the Russian legation
The era
This moment belongs to the Industrial era (1760 CE to 1914 CE), steam, factories and revolutions. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.