 The first Burgess Shale fossils were found on Mount Stephen in Canada 's Rocky Mountains by a construction worker , whose reports of them reached Richard McConnell of the Geological Survey of Canada . McConnell found trilobite beds there in 1886 , and some unusual fossils that he reported to his superior . These were misdiagnosed as headless shrimps with unjointed appendages , and were named Anomalocaris because of their unusual appendages – but turned out to be pieces of a puzzle that took 90 years to solve . 
