What is the age of the Burgess Shale? What is its significance, and why did this unique preservation occur?


The Burgess Shale dates from the Middle Cambrian. The animals and enclosing mud were transported by slumps to anaerobic conditions where bacterial activity could not destroy the buried animals. This allowed preservation of this unique assemblage of fossils of soft-bodied animals.

Environmental & Atmospheric Sciences

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Why do the tails of comets point away from the Sun?

What will be an ideal response?

Environmental & Atmospheric Sciences

Glaciers flow very slowly, usually at rates of ________

A) a few centimeters a year B) a few centimeters to a few meters per year C) a few meters to a few hundred meters per year. D) a few hundred to a few thousand meters per year E) a few hundred kilometers a year

Environmental & Atmospheric Sciences

Who coined the term "oceanography"?

a. Maury and Franklin b. Wilkes and Murray c. Thomson and Darwin d. Thomson and Murray e. Murray and Darwin

Environmental & Atmospheric Sciences

In which of the following classes of organic compounds must there be at least two oxygen atoms?

A) carboxylic acids B) carboxylic esters C) both a and b D) neither a nor b

Environmental & Atmospheric Sciences