Today we received the exciting news that the
Dean's Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship will support our ongoing project entitled "
Revealing the Nearshore Cradle of Animal Evolution: A New Exceptionally Preserved Soft-Bodied Fossil Biota From the Lower Cambrian of British Columbia, Canada". After a successful field season in August 2019, we continue investigating the exceptionally preserved biota from the Rosella Formation (Cambrian Stage 4) in the Cassiar Mountains of British Columbia, which include soft-bodied organisms and instances of internal organ fosilization. The Dean's Competitive Fund will support analytical work to better understand the overall community structure of this biota, as well as the mechanisms leading to the preservation of these fossils in an unconventional proximal depositional environment during a critical period of early animal evolution.
