Secrets in Stone, Now in the Cloud: Digitizing Utah’s Cambrian Wonders

By Cosette Reeves

Much remains to be discovered about the Cambrian. This geological period marks the emergence of many of the major animal groups we see today—mollusks, arthropods, echinoderms, chordates, and more. In 2017, NHMU received 2,260 Cambrian fossils from U.S. Customs and Border Protection after federal authorities discovered they were illegally collected from federal land in Utah’s House Range. Now, NHMU’s Collections Digitization Coordinator Alyson Wilkins is digitizing this remarkable array of fossils—not only signifying the first time NHMU’s fossil data is accessible online to the public but also unlocking a wealth of new discoveries for scientists worldwide.

The collection contains several new species, along with many complete specimens of lesser-known species of early animals. Consisting of over 2,000 Cambrian fossils, this collection can help scientists reconstruct how ancient underwater ecosystems functioned 500 million years ago—a significant time for animal diversification. And this is rare. Fossils typically form from mineralized skeletal structures, but most species from the Cambrian time were invertebrates with soft tissues that quickly decay, leaving little-to-no trace of their existence behind. But that’s where this collection, and Utah’s unique environment, comes in. 

Utah’s House Range houses four different Cambrian geological formations, each representing a different stage within that time period: the Spence Shale Member of the Langston Formation, Marjum Formation (see photo), Wheeler Formation, and Weeks Formation.

In many ways, Utah has an unparalleled archive of paleontological history. Its climate is ideal for exposing outcrops of sedimentary rock formations abundant in fossils, and its diverse geology provides a rich window into Earth’s past—spanning nearly the entire Phanerozoic Eon (the last 540 million years). While fossils from the Cambrian Period are found many places worldwide, Utah is home to four distinct Cambrian geologic formations renowned for their exceptional soft-bodied preservation, preserving those soft tissues that would normally decay.

This soft-bodied arthropod Emeraldella brutoni specimen showcases the remarkable detail preserved through soft-bodied preservation.

Thanks to this rare mode of preservation, Utah has become one of the world’s premier sources of Cambrian soft-bodied fossils, along with the more typical Cambrian trilobite fossils, offering an exceptional glimpse into early life. Scientists can now study the imprints of soft tissue from ancient animals like sponges, jellyfish, and sea cucumbers, and the specimens exhibit remarkable clarity. “The amount of detail you can see on these fossils is insane,” Wilkins explained. These details will no doubt be invaluable in helping us understand how these animals interacted with their environment, contributed to the ecosystem, and evolved into life as we know it today.

Harvard University paleontologists Dr. Rudy Lerosey-Aubril and Dr. Javier Ortega-Hernández have found this collection to be a metaphorical gold mine, using many of the fossils in their research on the origins of complex animal life. Their published research is just “scratching the surface,” says Dr. Randy Irmis, NHMU’s Curator of Paleontology, “with many future studies to come.”

An NHMU Paleontology Collections Assistant and a current undergraduate student at Westminster, Niki Krivka worked tirelessly to photograph this incredible collection—using a technique called focus stacking—so NHMU could make it accessible to people worldwide.

Nearly all the collection is now accessible online to the public, not to mention to other scientists who could use this invaluable resource. “Everybody should be able to access science,” and as the state repository housing specimens from public lands, “we hold these collections for the people of the United States to learn about and enjoy,” Wilkins says. 

This online source of ancient history can be accessed by anyone on the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriot Digital Library. You may want to check out a few of Wilkins’ and Irmis’s favorites here: 

• Worm—an unidentified species of a palaeoscolecid worm
• Pahvantia hastata—a soft-bodied arthropod
• Bolaspidella—a species of trilobite

By this summer, Wilkins plans to have NHMU’s entire invertebrate fossil collection online and will begin to add the Museum’s vertebrate and plant collections later in the year. So be sure to keep coming back and be one of the first to witness these rare findings.