The Spence Shale Lagerstätte: an important window into Cambrian biodiversity

Abstract

The Spence Shale Member of the Langston Formation is a Cambrian (Miaolingian: Wuliuan) Lagerstätte in northeastern Utah and southeastern Idaho. It is older than the more well-known Wheeler and Marjum Lagerstätten from western Utah, and the Burgess Shale from Canada. The Spence Shale shares several species with these younger deposits, yet it also contains a remarkable number of unique species. Because of its relatively broad geographical distribution, and the variety of palaeoenvironments and taphonomy, the fossil composition and likelihood of recovering weakly skeletonized (or soft-bodied) taxa varies across localities. The Spence Shale is widely acknowledged not only for its soft-bodied taxa, but also for its abundant trilobites and hyoliths. Recent discoveries from the Spence Shale include problematic taxa and provide insights about the nature of palaeoenvironmental and taphonomic variation between different localities. Supplementary material: A generic presence–absence matrix of the Spence Shale fauna and a list of the Spence Shale localities are available at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4423145

New exceptionally preserved panarthropods from the Drumian Wheeler Konservat‐Lagerstätte of the House Range of Utah

“…Second, they contain no less than four exceptionally preserved biotas that, with the Spence biota of northern Utah (Kimmig et al . 2019a), represent the most diverse soft‐bodied assemblages of Cambrian age of the USA (Robison 1991; Robison et al . 2015; Lerosey‐Aubril et al .…”

“…If only soft‐bodied taxa are considered, it is the second, given that the Spence Shale fauna is overwhelmingly dominated by trilobites (Kimmig et al . 2019a).…”

Anthropologically introduced biases in natural history collections, with a case study on the invertebrate paleontology collections from the middle Cambrian Spence Shale Lagerstätte

“…The Spence Shale is the middle member of the Langston Formation, dating to the Cambrian (Miaolingian: Wuliuan). Located in northern Utah and southern Idaho, USA (Figure 2), this fossil Lagerstätte preserves large amounts of trilobites, echinoderms, and brachiopods, as well as lightlysclerotized and soft tissues (Kimmig et al, 2019). The University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute, Division of Invertebrate Paleontology (KUMIP) holds the largest collection of material from the Spence Shale, totaling approximately 5,700 specimens as of 2020.…”

First occurrence of the Cambrian arthropodSidneyiaWalcott, 1911 outside of Laurentia

“…Miaolingian Burgess Shale-type Lagerstätten are essentially known from Laurentia, such as the Marble Canyon, Spence Shale, and Wheeler, Marjum and Weeks formations (e.g. Caron et al 2014;Robison et al 2015;Lerosey-Aubril et al 2018;Kimmig et al 2019). The only notable exception is the Kaili Formation in South China (Zhao et al 2011).…”