Professor Richard Fortey journeys high in the Rocky Mountains to explore a 520-million-year-old fossilized seabed containing bizarre lifeforms that revolutionized our understanding about the beginnings of complex life. His discoveries include: marine creatures with five eyes and a proboscis; filter-feeders shaped like tulips; worm-like scavengers covered in spikes but with no identifiable head or anus; and a meter-long predator resembling a giant shrimp.

Encoded with permission for digital streaming by Infobase on November 24, 2014. Learn360 is distributed by Infobase for Films for the Humanities & Sciences, Cambridge Educational, Meridian Education, and Shopware.

Weird Wonders: Introduction(3:23) -- Yoho National Park (2:14) -- Charles Doolittle Walcott (1:18) -- Burgess Shale (3:17) -- Pembrokeshire Coast (2:17) -- Paradoxides (2:12) -- Royal Ontario Museum (3:08) -- Burgess Shale Trilobite (1:25) -- Shale Fossils (3:00) -- Taphonomy (3:17) -- Anomalocaris (2:17) -- Anomalocaris Canadensis (3:19) -- Opabinia (1:13) -- Stephen Jay Gould (2:58) -- Royal Ontario Museum Field Work (2:40) -- Cambrian Sea Life (3:53) -- Burgess Shale Non-Fossil Discoveries (2:04) -- Summary and Preview (2:12) -- Fossil Record (1:39) -- Credits: Weird Wonders (0:38) -- Yoho_Walcott_Burgess (3:29) -- Yoho_Walcott_Burgess (3:29).