Joe Moysiuk - What New Burgess Shale Fossil Discoveries Tell Us About the Origin of Arthropods

The half-billion-year-old Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park, BC provides a snapshot of life in the aftermath of the “Cambrian explosion” and the establishment of all major animal body plans. Joe will introduce new discoveries from the famous Canadian fossil site, focusing on radiodonts, the group that includes the iconic Anomalocaris. While long considered to be potentially informative about the origin of arthropods – whose myriad modern representatives include insects, spiders, and crabs – radiodont fossils are rare and usually fragmentary, and their bizarre form has in the past led to their characterization as nearly inscrutable “weird wonders.” However, new advances in understanding radiodont morphology, ecology, and development, are unlocking their potential as a model group for illuminating evolution at the origin of a major body plan.

Joe Moysiuk is a palaeontology PhD Candidate and Vanier Scholar at the University of Toronto (Ecology & Evolutionary Biology) and Royal Ontario Museum, supervised by Dr. Jean-Bernard Caron. Following many years of interest in Ontario’s rich fossil record, Joe first joined the ROM Invertebrate Palaeontology section in 2012 as a high school intern and subsequently completed his BSc at the U of T (Departments of EEB and Earth Sciences). His research currently focusses on exceptionally preserved arthropod fossils from the world-renowned Burgess Shale (B.C. Canada), with field work taking him to remote parts of the Canadian Rockies for several past summers.