Sturgess Shales

The Sturgess Shales are a Cambrian-era Lagerstätte in the same continent as Unova and Orre whose fossil content has been dated to 508 million years in the distant past. First discovered in 1909, the shales have revealed some of the oldest recognizable fossils of pokémon, though a few other similar beds could still yield fossils even older. Although it not the only one of its type, the Sturgess Shales were the first and still among the best-preserved pokémon-yielding Cambrian deposits where specific species could be assigned with confidence. The style of preservation found in the shales gave the name "Sturgess-type" to similar pokémon-bearing Lagerstätten across the globe.

Some of the shales' most famous fossils have been confidently identified as belonging to specific fossil species, while others belonged to or at least resembled species still extant at the present. Many other fossils in the shales, however, remain hard to assign a specific species to. They may represent pokémon that have yet to be known to science.

A few of the fossils appear on permanent exhibition in the Unovan Museum of Natural History in Opelucid City. Others tour the world as part of an education and research program. On loan to the Natural History Museum - Wyndon, the exhibit became a target of a Hunter's Guild raid during 2021. The raid was ostensibly done to collect both the DNA extraction method used on Root fossil 63 and whatever genetic material could be extracted from the remaining fossils. Fortunately, the Guild's actions was thwarted by a group of museum visitors and a fast-talking Unovan superhero.

Formation

The area now known as the shales was once the bed of a tropical sea. A mudslide later buried most of its inhabitants and pushed them into deeper waters, where their corpses would be preserved and largely mineralized.

Fossil Resurrection

Prior to the 2010s, it was widely believed that very little genetic material from the Sturgess Shales survived in a state suitable for clone resurrection. This was challenged when Devon Corp. researchers, together with the UMNH's Professor Conroy Hawthorn, successfully cloned several young kabuto from the DNA extracted from the ovipositor of a female kabuto in the middle of mating and laying eggs in 2014. These kabuto grew up to be quite healthy, though it is unknown if they could evolve.

In 2020, another fossil was found to have cloneable DNA through a more efficient if still experimental extraction method. It produced enough genetic material to clone one lileep.

Known Species

Species listed with a pair of quotes ("") are presumed due to similarities.

• Tynamo (earliest evidence of the species, and thus of vertebrates)
• Anorith (found in dis-articulated pieces and originally assigned as 3 possible species of unidentified pokémon. Later finds in Hoenn confirmed the pieces to belong to a single creature).
• Lileep
  • Root fossil 63 (cloned)
• Kabuto
  • Dome fossil 24
  • Dome fossil 28 (ovipositor cloned, yielded several larvae including Zelda, Robbie, and Shinji)
• "Shellder"
• "Corsola"
• "Malamar"

Trivia

• The Sturgess Shales are based on the Burgess Shales, a fossil bed in British Columbia, Canada, that showcased the diversity of animal life in the Cambrian Period.
• Dome fossil 28 and 24 were found and catalogued apart from one another but were later identified to once been attached, indicating that the latter was the mate of the former and thus the father of the clones.
• The jumbled pieces that would later be pieced together as Anorith referred to the discovery of the real-world Anomalocaris, on which the Anorith line is based on. The fossils were presumed to be three different creatures before later fossils revealed them to be parts of one whole animal.