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An unenticing title, The Fossils of the Burgess Shale by Derek Briggs,
Douglas Erwin and Frederick Collier (Smithsonian Institution Press,
£19.50, ISBN 1 56098 659 X), conceals a remarkable tale. The shale,
discovered in 1909 in the Canadian Rockies, proved a vast treasure of fossils in
which the soft body parts as well as the skeletons of animals living 540 million
years ago are preserved. Only now is it being properly examined. Superb
photographs and plenty of them.